The recent awareness of traumatic brain injury, particularly chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) has cast a penumbra over the start of the football season. As fans scrutinize offensive lines and passing games and players still work to master playbooks, a new threat lurks on the sidelines. The threat is not a linebacker or a kick return specialist but a statistic. The potential for brain injury to players has many in the game rethinking whether they should to continue in the sport. A report released over the summer revealed that only a single player out of the 111 National Football Players tested was free of chronic traumatic encephalopathy [...]

The man who first identified the football brain injury, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), in former players, has blasted the sport with what is his most captious statement to date. Forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu, San Joaquin County’s chief medical examiner, whose revelations of the degenerative brain disease helped gain a better understanding of sports-related injuries, said letting children play football, is a form of child abuse. Omalu, whose memoir “Truth Doesn’t Have a Side,” published on Aug. 6, said that no one under 18 should play football. “Someday there will be a district attorney who will prosecute for child abuse, and it will succeed,” Omalu said. “It [...]