Chris Nowinski is the co-founder and CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation. Nowinksi, as told to SI senior writer Greg Bishop, reacts to SI’s story and documentary on Tyler Hilinski, a Washington State quarterback who committed suicide in January. Hilinski’s family later found out that Tyler had Stage I chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE.
I wish I was more surprised by the diagnosis. One thing I consistently struggle with is that nearly all of the college and professional football players whose brains we’ve looked at had the disease. And even if you factor in who the sample is coming from, families should not be right 95% of the time at guessing this.