Another NFL player is found with a degenerative disease.

The New York Times’ Alan Schwarz has been faithfully following the story of concussion-induced long-term trauma in NFL players.

In today’s editions, he reports:

“Brain damage commonly associated with boxers has been found in a sixth deceased former N.F.L. player age 50 or younger, further stoking the debate between many doctors and the league over the significance of such findings.

McHale died at age 45. Researchers found brain damage uncommon for someone his age.

Doctors at Boston University’s School of Medicine found a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brain of Tom McHale, an N.F.L. lineman from 1987 to 1995 who died in May at 45. Known as C.T.E., the progressive condition results from repetitive head trauma and can bring on dementia in people in their 40s or 50s.”

I have written previously about concussions and the NFL here and here.

One point I want to make: one reason why I cannot abide fans who complain about players’ salaries is that those complaints vastly outweigh, in sheer frequency, complaints about owners’ profits. But athletes – particularly in football, but not only – put their bodies on the line in a way that owners simply do not.  No one has any patience for players complaining that five million dollars a year isn’t enough money, and I understand that. But owners never put anything meaningful at stake, especially in the world of guaranteed profits that is big time athletics in America. That reward follows from risk, a bedrock of American capitalism, surely applies to players. But as in much else in American life, when it comes to the super-rich, owners’ reward comes risk-free.

Stories’ like Tom McHale’s make it hard to stomach the free pass owners get from fans convinced that players make “too much.”

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