Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, is a “degenerative brain disease found in athletes, military veterans, and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma” (What is CTE?). CTE is a disease that is only diagnosed once the person impacted dies, which makes it very difficult to understand exactly how it progresses. CTE happens through the transformation of protein clumps, made of Tau protein, that spread throughout the brain slowly. This protein affects a number of processes in the brain, including mood and emotions. Even though this process can take a lifetime to spread enough to have a major impact, the disease has wreaked havoc on many groups of people, with the most studied group being NFL athletes. Dr. Bennet Olamu, a Nigerian-born physician and neuropathologist, was the first doctor to publish any conclusive findings on CTE. He is credited with not only the acknowledgement of CTE in football players, but with a lot of its ongoing research and studies, as well.
Dr. Omalu was born and raised in Nigeria, brought up in the home of a successful father and a mother who cared for him and his six siblings. He grew up educated, and he wanted to move to America in order to avoid the turmoil happening in Nigeria. He moved to Seattle, and began attending the University of Washington, and from there, he attended many universities and earned many certificates and graduate degrees in various outlets. He began to become more interested in neuropathology after his residency at Columbia University’s Harlem Hospital Center. As he became more interested, he pursued certification in the areas of Pathology and Neuropathology from the University of Pittsburgh. While performing an autopsy on NFL star Mike Webster, Omalu noticed something interesting in his brain, causing the spark of interest in what was going on, and this led to his discovery of CTE.
Omalu, in performing the autopsy, knew that Webster’s death was of a heart attack and had heard of his ailments before death. Webster suffered from health concerns like depression, amnesia, and had issues with bone and muscle pain. Omalu discovered that there were “large accumulations of tau protein in Webster’s brain” (Bennet Omalu). He found these protein groups through a special type of dye, one that stained a different color on those areas affected by the tau protein clumps. This contributed to a host of issues, which he compared to the protein that can be traced to Alzheimer’s Disease. While Omalu suspected Webster of a type of dementia entitled “dementia pugilistica,” which is caused by continued blows to the head, he didn’t know how far progressed it would be or what he would be unravelling. There are also “subconcussive impacts, or hits to the head that don’t cause full-blown concussions,” which are just as largely to blame for CTE as full concussions (What is CTE?). As Omalu continued to perform autopsies, he wanted to study further the brains of professional football players, like the one of Mike Webster. He knew that there was a problem that the NFL wasn’t acknowledging, one that was contributing to death in retired players.
The NFL is an organization that earns revenue from athletes making hard hits, great passes, and taking the physicality of football to new extremes every week. America dedicates 3 days of the week to football, and it is no surprise that the NFL didn’t want to compromise revenue by releasing the paper that Omalu wrote about CTE. The NFL, at first, was very reluctant to make any responses to the paper other than that it should be retracted and that it was completely false. But, it didn’t take long for more and more discoveries to come out about CTE and its relationship to professional football players. The NFL, in 2016, acknowledged that CTE and professional football are, indeed, linked together. Jeff Miller, the Senior Vice President of Health and Safety Policy, responded to a question of whether there is a link between CTE and football, to which he replied “the answer to that question is certainly yes” (Martin).
In 2016, the NFL released its budget to fund further research on CTE and how they can make improvements to a growing problem. $100 million dollars were allocated to the project, with 60% going to funding new helmet technology, and 40% going towards actual research on CTE (Serhan). Some of the research being done on CTE surrounds the prevention and treatment of concussions, while a lot of it is going towards CTE itself and learning more about the progression. Also as of 2016, an astounding 90 out of 94 deceased professional football players’ brains showed signs of CTE (Martin). While the NFL does have a settlement plan in place, none of the current players can receive compensation, and because CTE cannot be fully diagnosed until an autopsy, the families of the players cannot collect any monetary figure until it is far too late. The NFL is actively working to improve quality of safety, but the issue is already here, and there is no way to prevent CTE from happening in a contact sport such as football. The NFL is always trying to better the health and safety of their players, even if it seems as though they concealed this issue for far longer than they did.
Of all the post-mortem diagnosis that have been made, Mike Webster stands out. Webster was the first player who was officially diagnosed with having CTE, making his brain the one in the spotlight for quite some time. With a 17-year career as a center under his belt, over 240 games played and 217 starts, Webster was one of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ most decorated players (Mike Webster). Although Webster showed physical signs of head trauma before he retired in 1991, his symptoms after he hung up his cleats couldn’t be left ignored. Webster suffered tremendously from a variety of symptoms of CTE, such as “amnesia, dementia, depression, and acute bone and muscle pain” (Mike Webster). Webster battles with mental illness, and his ex-wife blamed their marriage falling apart on herself, but was relieved when she found out that his behavioral changes were due to CTE. Webster died at age 50 of a heart attack, but CTE was prevalent throughout most of his retired life, and it was noted by family and friends that something just wasn’t right.
Another player that has quite a history with CTE is Andre Waters. Waters, who died in 2006, was a safety that played for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Arizona Cardinals.