N.F.L. Great Ken Stabler Had Brain Disease C.T.E.

[n2doc]

Shortly before he died last July, the former N.F.L. quarterback Ken Stabler was rushed away by doctors, desperate to save him, in a Mississippi hospital. His longtime partner followed the scrum to the elevator, holding his hand. She told him that she loved him. Stabler said that he loved her, too.

“I turned my head to wipe the tears away,” his partner, Kim Bush, said recently. “And when I looked back, he looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘I’m tired.’ ”

They were the last words anyone in Stabler’s family heard him speak.

“I knew that was it,” Bush said. “I knew that he had gone the distance. Because Kenny Stabler was never tired.”

The day after Stabler died on July 8, a victim of colon cancer at age 69, his brain was removed during an autopsy and ferried to scientists in Massachusetts. It weighed 1,318 grams, or just under three pounds. Over several months, it was dissected for clues, as Stabler had wished, to help those left behind understand why his mind seemed to slip so precipitously in his final years.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/sports/football/ken-stabler-nfl-cte-brain-disease.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

[meaculpa2011]

1. I love football, but...

there is no way to make the game safe.

Helmet improvements are meaningless. The danger is repeatedly moving full speed in one direction and then getting knocked violently in the opposite direction, time after time in practice and in games.

If it was simply about head-to-head contact CTE wouldn't be showing up in OLs like Mike Webster.

Frank Gifford had signs of CTE and he played in an era that was "less violent" than it is today.

[BeyondGeography]

2. This sport is just plain sad

Stabler is the seventh former N.F.L. quarterback to be found to have had C.T.E. by Boston University, which has found C.T.E. in 90 of the 94 former N.F.L. players it has examined, including the former Giants safety Tyler Sash, who died in September at age 27 and whose diagnosis was made public last week.