It's football season in America, but there are new questions about the concussion crisis looming over America's most popular sports.
It's football season in America, but there are new questions about the concussion crisis looming over America's most popular sport.
This season, the NFL is wrestling with new data showing just how many of its players ended up with CTE, a deadly and debilitating brain disease caused by repeated hits to the head.
Now, we're uncovering how the real roots of the problem aren't just in NFL play, but start years before it.
Chris Nowinski was built for impact.
He loved the game of football.
As an All-Ivy defensive tackle at Harvard, he said concussions were part of the game.
"I certainly remember times where I'd go helmet to helmet, hit the ground, the sky would change colors, go to orange and I'd feel fuzzy walking off the field," he recalled.
Chris Nowinski said he loved the game of football when he played at Harvard University (Photo: SBG)After Harvard, he threw his body into the ring, becoming a superstar in the WWE.
Concussions continued, including one he sustained after a notoriously brutal blow to the head during a match in 2003.
"It was a series of concussions with WWE that put an end to my career and gave me post-concussion syndrome," Nowinski said.
It was a diagnosis delivered by Dr. Robert Cantu, the renowned neurosurgeon and early voice warning about CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the devastating brain disease caused by concussions and repetitive subconcussive blows to the head.
Chris Nowinski suffered multiple concussions when he was in the WWE (Photo: SBG)That concussion connection led Nowinski down an unlikely path, from brawn to brain, teaming up with Dr. Cantu to form the Concussion Legacy Foundation, now the Concussion & CTE Foundation.
In 2017, Nowinski earned a Ph.D. from Boston University as a behavioral neuroscientist.
"I never thought neuroscience was my future. But because it became such a part of my life and I found it so fascinating and I found the problem so big, I decided that this is what I'm here to do," Nowinski said.
What Nowinski is doing now is hunting a killer in the brains of athletes who passed away, as he calls it "chasing the brains for the brain bank."
We visited the brain bank in 2023 with Dr. Ann McKee explaining her quest to understand CTE (Photo: SBG)Many of the brains he helped collect have now led to a groundbreaking study with staggering findings: At least one in four of the former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had CTE.
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Nowinski said the actual rate is much higher, in fact, he said 25% is likely "not close to reality."
Here's why: 878 former NFL players died in the five-year period, but only 235 had their brains donated for study. CTE can only be confirmed in a postmortem examination of the brain. Of those 235 donated brains, 215, about 91%, had CTE. The others, whose brains were not donated, remain unknown.
Biostatisticians are trying to figure out how many cases may be happening in patients who didn't donate their brain (Photo: SBG)"The question is, those other 600 brains we didn't get, how many of them have CTE?" Nowinski said.
Right now, biostatisticians are working to gain a clearer picture of how pervasive the disease is. Whatever the true number, the study makes it clear CTE is many times more likely in pro players than the general population, where its prevalence is less than 1%.
Our cameras were there at an NFL team owners' meeting in Atlanta, the day after the study was released, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell addressed the findings.
"We've seen some of those reports in the past, so I don't think that was different, but that's why we continue to invest in research," Goodell said. "We continue to invest in, how do we make the game safer?"
Our cameras were there when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was asked about the study (Photo: SBG)The big question is whether the new data will lead to serious change for the NFL.
Nowinski said addressing the problems starts before players go pro.
"They've made changes to their game, but the NFL is also spending money to recruit children to the game," Nowinski said. "If Roger Goodell does understand that football causes CTE, I don't understand how he's still comfortable recruiting five-year-olds to the NFL."
Nowinski added that Goodell declined a meeting to talk about the research before it was released.
"The average NFL player plays 15, 18 years of tackle football, but the average NFL career is about three years," Nowinski said. "Even if the NFL went to flat, they would barely make a dent in the CTE rate because so many have CTE coming in through youth high school and college. So the battleground is with the youth."
Millions of kids start playing football early in life (Photo: SBG)That battleground is exactly where Nowinski said we need to go to prevent CTE before it begins, joining his mentor Dr. Cantu in calling for no-contact football for kids
"Kids should not be playing tackle football until high school," he said, adding, "You should not hit your child in the head hundreds of times each year for any reason, but tackle football is is somehow exempted from that in our minds."
While only 20,000 men have ever played pro football, millions of kids and teens are playing tackle football every year.
"That is why football in America deserves to be in these crosshairs," Nowinski said. "The question we have to have is, should we be doing this to children? Should our school system be the number one creator of degenerative brain disease in teenage boys?"
Nowinski says the "battleground" for addressing CTE lies with youth tackle football (Photo: SBG)While Nowinski pushes to prevent CTE, he worries about his own fate, saying it would be foolish for him to think that CTE may not be a part of his future.
A major component to advancing the science is finding a way to diagnose CTE before death. Nowinski told us he believes that will happen in the next five years, which would unlock the race to launch clinical trials and even find a cure.
We asked if he was on a quest to get answers about CTE for himself, or for others.
His answer was simple: "Both."
The groundbreaking study is unquestionably a game changer, but the question is whether it will play a real role in changing the game.
The NFL has said it's committed to research and protecting players' health (Photo: SBG)The NFL Players' Association is taking the study very seriously, telling us it sent out emails to its communities and has arranged calls for players and their family members to speak with medical experts. The Association called it a "sobering" reminder about the risks of playing football, and issued a "call to action" to advance research and secure access to proper care.
You can read the full statement below:
"This study is a sobering reminder that football carries real risks, and those risks can have lasting consequences for players and their families. It also reinforces one of the NFLPA's core priorities: improving player safety and supporting players throughout their lives, both during and after their careers.
The NFLPA has made major investments in brain health research, player care, and support services. That includes leading institutions such as the American Brain Foundation and the Football Players Health Study at Harvard University, as well as resources available to former players through The Trust, the Professional Athletes Foundation, and our Former Players Department.
The findings should serve as a call to action across the entire football ecosystem. We all share a responsibility to advance research, improve access to care, develop better treatments, and support those affected by the long-term impacts of the game. While we have learned a great deal over the past two decades, there is more work to do, and the NFLPA remains committed to being part of that effort.
