1 in 4 NFL players suffer from brain disease. Where is the accountability?

I have written about the NFL before, often critically. Several years ago, I wrote about the league’s use of “race-norming” in evaluating dementia claims by former players. That piece, published in The Independent, helped shape thinking around the topic. 

I have also spent plenty of time talking about football on the radio, including as a regular guest on regional ESPN radio. I love the sport. I understand why people love it. I understand why autumn Sundays occupy the place they do in American culture. 

So I’m not coming for football here. I am asking a much more uncomfortable question about the NFL: How is this OK? 

This week, the New York Times published a remarkable piece by John Branch, who has been reporting on chronic traumatic encephalopathy for more than 15 years. The headline should be enough to get anyone’s attention: “Study’s Alarming Finding: At Least 1 in 4 N.F.L. Players Gets Brain Disease.”

The underlying numbers are even harder to shake. Researchers looked at every former NFL player known to have died from 2016 through 2021. There were 878. At least 215 had the brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy — 24.5 percent.

Because most of those players’ brains were never examined, one in four is essentially the floor. The actual prevalence could be substantially higher. 

I look at that number partly through a legal lens, because I have spent much of my career around lawyers and the civil justice system. But I also look at it just as a person who loves sports. From either perspective: How is this OK?

Imagine an American company where at least 25 percent of former workers developed a progressive neurological disease associated with something they were........

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