A top official with the NFL made a stunning admission Monday, agreeing with a neuropathologist before a congressional panel that a link exists between football-related brain injuries and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The league had never before publicly acknowledged such a connection.
A post-mortem analysis of the brain of Jovan Belcher, the Chiefs linebacker who killed his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins in a Dec. 1, 2012, murder-suicide, found the 25-year-old linebacker probably was suffering from CTE. And last month former Oakland Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler was added to the grim list of NFL players afflicted by the brain disease.