NPR · https://www.npr.org/2026/08/25/nx-s1-5943168/cte-nfl-concussions-deaths-study
At least one in four dead NFL players had the brain disease CTE. Its worst comes years later, long after the crowd has gone home.
You knit me together in my mother's womb… I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful.
Psalm 139:13-14
On August 25, researchers led by Boston University reported that at least one in four NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease known as CTE. The number is a floor. Not every brain was examined, and most that were came from families who already suspected what they would find.
The finding landed on the eve of a new season, as the stadiums begin to fill again.
Sit with what the study is actually made of. A man in his fifties who can no longer hold a memory. A wife describing to a researcher the slow disappearance of the person she married. A family deciding, after the funeral, to donate a brain so someone can finally name what took him. The game is watched by millions at once. The undoing happens alone, years after the last snap, in a house where no one is cheering.
The psalmist looks at his own body and is astonished. Knit together in the dark, fearfully and wonderfully made, a work its own maker marvels at. CTE is that intricacy coming apart, thread by thread. The mind that knew its name loses it. What was woven is unwoven, and for much of it the man is awake.
There is a temptation to call this sacrifice, to say these men gave themselves for a game they loved. The text will not let the loss be dressed up that fast.
Mark 8:36For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his life?
The question assumes one man makes the trade, gaining and losing in the same breath. A stadium splits the ledger in two. The crowd gains the world. The players forfeit the life.
The stadium empties in an hour. What it cost is paid for years, in rooms the cameras never reach.