Researchers at Boston University’s CTE Center released results from a study which examined the post-mortem remains of 376 former National Football League players. They found that an astonishing 92% had indicators of CTE, that devastating brain disease that only in recent years has gotten the world’s attention.
11Alive in Georgia brings us this segment.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is the full name of the disease. Once considered a disease restricted to professional boxers (“punch-drunk syndrome”), the pool of possibly affected athletes rose with the popularity of American football. (Indeed, I would wager that once football became televised and displaced baseball as America’s pastime—once Superbowl quarterbacks could become heroes for life with a clutch or memorable performance, it was inevitable that the population most susceptible to CTE would gradually shift to these players.)
In comparison, the general population is at far lower risk of CTE:
[A] 2018 BU study of 164 brains of men and women donated to the Framingham Heart Study found that only 1 of 164 (less than 1 percent) showed signs of the progressive degenerative brain disease. And that lone CTE case? A former college football player.
Famously, Herschel Walker—former running back and recent candidate for one of Georgia’s Senate seats—downplayed the severity of concussions in general and seemed to imply that critics wanted to put all the blame on CTE; instead, players should just reach down inside and find a cache of personal resilience. It’s a shame, because certainly as a running back Walker is one of the likeliest of his cohort to possibly be diagnosed with this disease.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy has an incredible (and unfortunate) range of symptoms.
The symptoms of CTE are insidious, first manifest by deteriorations in attention, concentration, and memory, as well as disorientation and confusion, and occasionally accompanied by dizziness and headaches. With progressive deterioration, additional symptoms, such as lack of insight, poor judgment, and overt dementia, become manifest. Severe cases are accompanied by a progressive slowing of muscular movements, a staggered, propulsive gait, masked facies, impeded speech, tremors, vertigo, and deafness[.]
(emphasis added)
Quarterbacks and kickers are the positions most protected by rules (penalties are assessed for “roughing” the passer or kicker, etc.). On the other hand, certain positions are more likely to incur incoming tackles. Running backs and wide receivers become moving targets onto which linemen and cornerbacks throw their bodies. Football is a chess game insofar as a coach has eleven pieces on the board, all of whom can reckon and calculate as they move down the field. But all bodies have limits. Bones and muscle bruise, even break.
The skull houses an organ that is about 3% of one’s body weight but commands 20% of its energy. The brain, it has been said, has the consistency of gelatin. It’s packed not only with neurons, the cells that communicate information to other neurons to produce our experience of the world, but other supporting cells as well, all densely packed into a compact formation. It’s surrounded by fluid that allows it to disperse some of its weight, so it can be said in some ways to float. It’s the command center of consciousness but is extraordinarily fragile. And football players are incentivized every week to allow forces to bang and reverberate against their skull. Those forces ripple, like a wave.
But not a slow wave. Considering the speeds at which these collisions on the gridiron can occur, the players become susceptible to what is known as shearing. Similar to what happens in a car crash, when the player’s skull is knocked back, the brain follows that trajectory. Then it hits whatever side of the skull is opposite the force. Sometimes this causes a contusion (bruising). Sometimes it does more internal damage, depending on the incoming velocity. The neuron generally communicates through one apparatus, the axon, by which it can send on its message. Sharp forces can shear those axons, like clipping an animal’s tail. This causes other cells to seal off this damage, and that seal becomes a glial scar, where information can no longer flow.
92% is a striking percentage. I had watched football in the past, beginning with an exciting season of Michigan football back in 1989. It was a great season to start learning the game. Off and on, I watched right up until the pandemic forced sports around the world to close. Since then, especially with lax Covid protocols, I just stopped watching: I didn’t want to feel I was contributing to the consumerism of putting those players in danger. I wonder: will other fans come to similar conclusions, if and/or when they hear of these results?
You take a look at the speculation surrounding Aaron Rodgers. I’m not a fan of Rodgers—I’ll leave it at that—but much of the chatter has been whether or not he feels like he still has anything in the tank. Some of the commentary, to be honest, sounds like the talking heads are goading him to defy expectations and remain in the game. Meanwhile, Tom Brady has seemingly retired for good. CTE never is mentioned in these conversations.
Just recently, a retrospective on Barry Sanders career aired. Sanders was another bright spot in the football world around 1989, that era where football in the state of Michigan was promising indeed. The Detroit Lions had struggled for decades, and Sanders turned their prospects completely around. But Sanders shocked the world when he retired, at the height of his game, the prime of his life. Why would anyone with so much left exit stage right at that juncture? He said, simply, that his desire not to play had come to outweigh his desire to play.
Sanders, a running back, may still be at great risk for CTE. But he left with so much time left on the clock, it’s possible that he may dodge even this great foe.
More on the Boston University CTE study (this is a segment from Fox 2 News in Detroit):
As mentioned in another diary, here is a segment from WDIV-TV regarding the sheer physical forces involved in concussions.