CTE Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The CTE Headlines Get Ahead Of The Science, But Maybe That's Not So Bad
Raiders great Ken Stabler suffered from “moderately severe” CTE when he died, according to researchers at the Boston center that examined his donated brain. Another dead football player with cognitive impairment, another CTE diagnosis. The only real surprise is that anyone is surprised—and that anyo...

Former NFL Player Tyler Sash Had CTE When He Died At Age 27
Former New York Giants safety Tyler Sash—who died in September of an accidental painkiller overdose at age 27—had stage 2 chronic traumatic encephalopathy when he died, according to researchers at Boston University. The researchers told Sash’s family that it was rare to see as severe of CTE in such ...

<i>Bone Crunchers</i>, <i>Crunch Course</i>, And How The NFL Hitched Its Brand To Brain Damage Snuff Films
On Christmas Day, Sony Pictures Entertainment will release Concussion, a film that will almost certainly be very bad. As we’ve already noted, the film—starring Will Smith as CTE researcher Dr. Bennet Omalu—suffers from significant issues, both in theory and practice. (When the film studio’s lawyers ...

ESPN: NFL Blocks $16 Million From Being Used To Fund Massive Study Of CTE
In September 2012, the NFL proudly announced that it would be making an “unrestricted gift” of $30 million to the National Institutes of Health, the purpose of which was to fund further research into football’s relationship to brain damage, and to hopefully discover a way to diagnose CTE in living p...

87 Of 91 Former NFL Players Autopsied Show CTE
According to PBS’s Frontline, an ongoing joint study by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University has found CTE in 87 of 91 examined brains of former NFL players, bringing the Boston lab’s total to 131 of 165 of former football players at all levels. ...

Watch Sydney Seau's Tribute To Her Father At His Hall Of Fame Induction
Junior Seau told his daughter Sydney before his death that he wanted her to speak on his behalf if he ever made it into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The Hall wasn’t having any of that, though they eventually relented and gave the 21-year-old a few minutes to talk about her dad. She notably doesn’t...

Junior Seau's Family Banned From Speaking At His Hall Of Fame Induction
Junior Seau’s induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame next month will feature a video celebrating his on-field accomplishments, but no mention of his football-caused brain injuries or his self-inflicted fatal gunshot wound in 2012. It also will not feature any words from his family members....

We Asked 14 Retired NFL Players: Would You Do It Again?
With Chris Borland's retirement from the San Francisco 49ers at age 24, the question of whether an NFL career is worth the potential price is coming up yet again. This makes it a good time to turn to the people with the most informed opinions on the subject: former NFL players....

Retiring From NFL To Juggle Grenades Is A Bad Idea, Says Mike Florio
Bright and promising 24-year-old 49ers linebacker Chris Borland announced his retirement yesterday, after just one season in the NFL. He wants to preserve his neurological and cognitive functioning, and figures a decade of smashing his head into things isn't the best way to do it. Seems reasonab...

Promising NFL Rookie Retires Because Of Concerns Over Head Trauma
Despite being a rookie drafted in the third round, linebacker Chris Borland was an important part of the 49ers defense last season, even starting eight games. With Patrick Willis retiring and Justin Smith reportedly considering the same, the 49ers will rely on Borland even more heavily this season...

What Happens To Enforcers When Hockey Uses Them Up?
More winter Friday nights than not through my first few years of high school, I was in my usual seat at the local arena, three or four rows up behind the home team's bench. On the ice, the Ontario Hockey League's Ottawa 67's, a group of—boys, really, aged 16 to 20. A handful of them would go on to...

Tony Dorsett On CTE: I Didn't Know "The End Was Going To Be Like This"
In 2013, NFL hall of famer Tony Dorsett was among the first few living football players to be diagnosed with signs of the chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease that manifests as dementia and depression. It's gotten worse—by definition, it'll get worse until he dies—and in a r...

Junior Seau's Family Rejects Concussion Settlement With NFL
Junior Seau's family will back out of the proposed concussion settlement being offered to former NFL players, ESPN's Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru report today. Instead, the family will pursue its own wrongful death suit, according to the family's lawyer, Steven Strauss. ...

Football Player Who Was Convinced He Had CTE Found To Have CTE
The really heartbreaking thing about today's Associated Press profile of former college linebacker Michael Keck, who died last year at age 25 from unrelated causes, is just how damned banal it is. Normal kid plays football. Normal kid suffers head injuries. Normal kid turns violent and depressed and...

Chart: How Does Weight Affect The Lifespans Of Pro Football Players?
Over on the Reddit sub r/dataisbeautiful, users have been playing around with an interesting dataset (pulled from Pro Football Reference) that looks at the lifespan of pro players from the late 19th-century to present. The chart above, by user "zipcitytrucker" breaks down the age of death by playing...

What The NFL Can Learn From WWE About Head Injuries
Originally published at Bloomberg View....

Is The New CTE Test For Football Players A Good One?
November 6th was a landmark day in the NFL's ongoing head trauma debacle. We learned that Tony Dorsett, the 59-year-old Hall of Fame running back who'd recently been battling depression and memory problems, had been diagnosed with early signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Not long af...

Tony Dorsett Is One Of The First Living Players To Show Signs Of CTE
We diagnose chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the neurological disease thought to be ravaging former NFL players, at autopsy. But now, for the first time, we're beginning to find ways to discover it in players before they're dead. Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett is one of the first to be tested and foun...

Retired NFL Players Shown To Have Humongous Brain Deficits
Retired NFL players' brains don't work nearly as efficiently as they should. And while that sounds like one more brick on the wall of evidence that football is awful for your brain, it actually goes a little deeper. ...

The Hidden Victims Of The NFL's Concussion Crisis
Late last fall, as the NFL playoff picture began to take shape, I was summoned to the psychiatric ward of my hospital. As an HIV specialist, I routinely encounter patients with mental health issues who have trouble taking their medications, but when I read the page requesting my consultation, I noti...