Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and the NFL

As the football world has come to better understand the causes and effects of brain damage in its sport, three general assumptions about Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) started to take hold:

* It is a result of concussions, particularly multiple concussions
* It happens to people with long, contact-filled careers
* Its onset happens later in life

Basically, the general consensus was that Mike Webster was the poster child for CTE.

And then Chris Henry died, and now there's evidence that blows up all three of those assumptions. And that is just about the worst news possible for the sport of football.

Star-divide

In fact, not only does Henry satisfy none of those three conditions, he doesn't even come close. Down the line:

It is a result of concussions, especially multiple concussions: If Henry ever suffered a concussion, it was news to his teams; Henry never missed a game to head injury during his career at West Virginia or Cincinnati.

It happens to people with long, contact-filled careers Chris Henry spent four years at West Virginia, then five in the NFL. But even those numbers are both somewhat inflated; Henry redshirted one of those four years at WVU, declaring for the draft after his junior year. Once in the NFL, Henry was suspended for half a year due to arrests--some of which included erratic, violent behavior. So of those nine seasons after high school, Henry was actually playing for just 7 and a half.

Further, Henry played wide receiver, one of the least contact-intensive positions in sport. Yes, Colin Sandeman can surely attest to how violent the worst hits can be for wideouts. But the repetitious, incessant helmet contact that we've been led to believe (and not unfairly) causes CTE and that linemen, linebackers, and safeties face just isn't there.

Its onset happens later in life Henry died at 26. And not only did he exhibit classic signs of CTE, his brain was already in advanced stages of decay:

Finding CTE in a current pro football player wouldn't surprise Robert Cantu, whose Boston University research group has received funding from the NFL.

"It also wouldn't surprise me that somebody as young as 26 would have it, either," Dr. Cantu said of Mr. Henry. "What would be a big surprise is if the amount of Tau protein. ... would be as excessive as it is in people who had much more lengthy careers and died at a much later age."

"It didn't look like the brain of a 26-year-old," said Dr. Omalu, a former Allegheny County pathologist who first found CTE in an autopsy of Mr. Long in September 2005.

A picture of the tissue study of Henry's frontal cortex, compared to that of a normal brain, is here. As one researcher put it, "you should never see" the red stainings evident in Henry's brain. One would expect them in an Alzheimer's patient.