Just found this article and thought it was a pretty sobering look at the game we all love. I don't think the CTE discussion is going away any time soon, and the more it's discussed the more uncertain the future of the game becomes. Below is a brief excerpt and the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/sports/football/ken-stabler-nfl-cte-br...
“The cancer took him away, but his mind was definitely in a pretty quick downward spiral,” Stabler Moyes said. “I’m grateful that he was still so present, still so there. Because I definitely don’t think he would have been in even three more years.”
McKee found widespread damage and the buildup of abnormal tau proteins throughout Stabler’s brain, consistent with the symptoms that Stabler tried to disguise, mostly with his sense of humor, from all but his closest friends and family.
“His changes were extremely severe in parts of the brain like the hippocampus and amygdala, and those are the big learning and memory centers,” McKee said. “And when you see that kind of damage in those areas, usually people are demented. So if he was still functioning reasonably well, he was compensating, but I don’t think that compensation would have lasted much longer.”