At times, Jim Irsay can seem like one of the most generous team owners in the NFL. There was the time he bought an XBox One for each player on the team. He said he sold more than $100 million in assets to reinvest in the Colts. He recently announced plans to build a statue to honor the team’s beloved former quarterback, Peyton Manning.

But how much can players or fans really trust his dedication to his team when he dismisses the well-documented and terrifying risks of playing the game … and does so by comparing playing football to taking an aspirin?

A reminder of what he told Sports Business Daily:

“I believe this: that the game has always been a risk, you know, and the way certain people are. Look at it. You take an aspirin, I take an aspirin, it might give you extreme side effects of illness and your body … may reject it, where I would be fine. So there is so much we don’t know.”

His comments were published on the same day that Chiefs safety Husain Abdullah retired, citing five concussions and concerns for his health. They also came a week after Cowboys owner Jerry Jones made similar comments.

It’s time for these team owners to wake up.

We can argue over the language, or over how direct the connection between head trauma and the game of football but fans and players can’t be fooled into thinking there’s nothing there.

So instead of trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the people who pay large sums from their paychecks to cheer on the Colts (or the Cowboys) or the players that he loves so much he’s willing to immortalize in a statue, it’s time for Irsay to be honest about something to himself — and to his team: It’s a dangerous sport.

Why do that? So that people can make their own decision about what they’re watching and playing. So that we can stop wasting time arguing whether there is a connection and figure out exactly what it is and what to do about it.

And so that he doesn’t disrespect the retired players who can no longer bend down to play with their children, who don’t have full range of movement in their arms, who can’t remember how to get home without the help of GPS and on a more frightening scale who put a bullet into their hearts because they knew something was so wrong with their brains.

It’s hard to believe that Irsay, a man who grew up around football, doesn’t know better.

And to save his sport, it’s time to admit that he does.