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Can you read this study and still love football?

The NFL’s brain damage problem is even worse than we thought.

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

Football season kicks off soon, and there’s an elephant on the field. Not the University of Alabama’s pachydermal mascot, alas — but a new study on the incidence of brain injury in football players.

The startling paper, published this morning in the journal BMJ, examined the brains of 235 of the 878 former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021. It found that at least one in four of those players — and, in all likelihood, many more than that — had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) at their time of death.

A daily, curiosity-driven guide to the big, weird, and fascinating ideas shaping the news cycle.

CTE is an ugly disease. It’s a progressive, degenerative brain disorder caused by repeated blows to the head. It can be debilitating in its advanced stages, with symptoms........

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