Of 1712 (former) NFL players who died 2008-2021, 338 donated their brains. 315 were found to have CTE, of which 104 had stage IV CTE; 202 of brain donors were d

Of 1712 (former) NFL players who died 2008-2021, 338 donated their brains. 315 were found to have CTE, of which 104 had stage IV CTE; 202 of brain donors were diagnosed with dementia. Given when they died, most played in the NFL long ago. If the median age of death was 72 and the median retired at age 28 (most players have shorter careers), most retired before 1980. Since then the NFL has implemented many rules to reduce hitting (partly to create a faster game, partly to reduce injury) and especially recently, to reduce head trauma (to prevent CTE). EDIT: The study provides the numbers: Mean age of death 70.1 yrs (!: for highly athletic people who survived into adulthood), mean NFL career 5.37 years. Assume their first NFL year was age 22, then their last was age 26. That's 44 years retirement til death, and the mean retirement years were 1964-77 - the mean played in the 1960s and 1970s. Still, do you let your kid play American football? Do you even turn on the game and watch? The Premier League just started their season ... "He [the lead author] also said that most of the head impacts that these former NFL players experienced didn’t occur at the NFL level. “They occurred at the collegiate level, and at the high school level and in many cases the youth level,” Daneshvar said. “And all of those cumulative hits to the head added up to result in an increased risk.”" https://www.si.com/nfl/cte-nfl-what-we-know-after-latest-health-study-2026 https://www.si.com/nfl/cte-nfl-what-we-know-after-latest-hea...