Today’s NY Times has two articles about NFL players who went on to develop serious neurological problems as a result of repeated blows to the head (concussion and sub-concussive impacts) while playing the game.
1. Here’s an article-with-video about recently deceased Ken Stabler, whose brain, during the autopsy, revealed he had advanced CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Article quotes:
On a scale of 1 to 4, Stabler had high Stage 3 chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., the degenerative brain disease believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head, according to researchers at Boston University.
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Stabler, well known by his nickname, the Snake…, is one of the highest-profile football players to have had C.T.E. The list, now well over 100, includes at least seven members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, including Junior Seau, Mike Webster and Frank Gifford.
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On Wednesday, the family of another Super Bowl quarterback, Earl Morrall, told The New York Times that Morrall was found to have Stage 4 C.T.E. after his death in 2014 at age 79….Morrall was an all-American at Michigan State and drafted second over all in 1956 by the San Francisco 49ers. He played 21 seasons with six N.F.L. teams. When he died in April 2014, his family said that the cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease.
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For decades, the N.F.L. rebutted research by independent experts that connect brain trauma to long-term cognitive impairment. Only in recent years, long after Stabler’s career ended, has the league begun to publicly acknowledge it has a problem.
2. The NY Times has also compiled a list of prominent NFL athletes whose deaths came about as a result of CTE and related injuries. Click here for that. This meta-article also includes a sidebar showing what CTE-damaged brains look like.
So my question is: What are you going to do about this, NFL leadership?
Note: I downloaded the image above from Wikipedia. (Actually, Wikimedia Commons…)
Click here to start reading my earlier posts about this topic.
