Opinion: The most shocking thing about the latest statistics on CTE in football is that we find them so shocking

OpinionFirst Opinion The most shocking thing about the latest statistics on CTE in football is that we find them so shocking Since its earliest days, it’s been clear football is bad for the brain Manage alerts for this article Email this article Share this article By Emily HarrisonAug. 31, 2026 Harrison is a historian of science and public health at Wellesley College. A new study led by Boston-area researchers has set my media feeds abuzz with the finding that nearly 1 in 4 NFL players in their sample had CTE at time of death.

CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is a degenerative brain disease. It is caused by repeated concussions and smaller non-concussive hits. As shocking as the 25% statistic is to many, the authors have suggested that this estimate is on the “low end,” with maximum possible prevalence around 98%.

Although they take care to note that the findings of this study “cannot necessarily be generalized to the American football community,” and reporters dutifully report on this caution, the announcement of this new evidence has been treated in the media as a landmark event for the whole of football. In a statement reported by ESPN, the NFL Players Association remarked that “the findings should serve as a call to action across the entire football ecosystem.” Advertisement As a historian of science who has studied the history of traumatic brain injury in football, I have an objection to this coverage. It’s not that I am surprised by the statistic — I’m not.

Nor do I object to the notion that it should serve as a call to action for the whole of football. Rather, I object to an assumption baked into the coverage of the new study: namely, that this new statistic changes everything. The statistic re-quantifies but does not reveal a problem, and although it is appropriate for scientists to be cautious about extrapolating particular data to make scientific claims about prevalence in other populations, we do not have to wait for that level of scientific evidence before taking action to make other sports, and the college and youth levels of football, safer for brains.

As I documented in the American Journal of Public Health in 2014, with an argument that I have elaborated with colleagues here and abroad in the decade since, people have long been aware that getting hit in the head — especially multiple times, and even when those hits are sub-concussive — is bad for the brain.Advertisement In the early years of college football, before there were children’s leagues and before there were pros, Harvard College team doctors highlighted the risk of concussion in a report published in the prominent Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. It was accepted in medical worlds of the time that concussion had lasting and serious consequences. There was ample evidence that football caused concussion and that concussion had serious consequences.

Those who loved the game set about designing technical reforms that they promised would make it safe enough. But those reforms took shape at the same time that many preferred to ignore, forget, or doubt the evidence-based conclusion that shaking up the brain was unsafe. Throughout the history of the game, as concerned parties sought evidence, some of football’s most powerful protectors obfuscated the problem.

Walter Camp, known in his time as the father of football for his influence on organizing, game rules, and advocacy, covered up reports of concussion as early as 1894. In his archived papers, you can find the original results of a survey in which player accounts of head injury are crossed out in thick black crayon, and missing entirely from the glowing accounts of the game and its virtues that Camp published and circulated. With ongoing advocacy and reform, football not only persisted in colleges, but spread across the population and deepened its social, political, economic, and emotional stakes, carrying along with it the problem of traumatic brain injury.

Evidence was dismissed in favor of preserving the game. No matter that collegiate sports authorities acknowledged, in a 1933 NCAA Medical Handbook for Schools and Colleges, that concussion caused “punch drunk,” or what we would now call CTE. In a statement that turned out to be prescient, the Harvard team doctors of 1906 had forecast that football would continue so long as people “fear unpopularity more than they dare to be right.” To be sure, more granular and robust understanding of the extent and severity of hits to the head is crucial work that can guide and refine policy, practice, and personal judgments.

But this shocking new statistic is not the first time this kind of evidence has been offered. Earlier studies have estimated similar prevalence of CTE among professional football players. Nor are we at a total loss of what to do.

With existing estimates of risk in youth populations, experts have already laid out steps that can be taken to mitigate harm.Advertisement As we develop our next moves, we — the corporate football agents, players, families, researchers, health officials, fans — must remember that interventions of the past that promised to reduce risks have also masked the ongoing problem, cast parents (especially mothers) as responsible for risk inherent in their children’s available recreation, and in some cases worsened the problem now showing up as CTE statistics. Demanding more evidence has become a strategy for delaying action. It’s also worth asking whether, with clear eyes on the past, we still want to cheer for violent games that cause lifelong damage for entertainment.

This moment troubles me not only as a historian, but also as a longtime mentor for college-age student-athletes. For 10 years I served as a residential adviser to undergraduates and had long talks with students who sustained concussion after concussion but were expected to keep their head in the game and return to play once they received green lights from the athletic staff, even when none of the conditions that had caused their prior injuries had been changed. Few are privileged to have a view like this into the private struggle and worry born by students, because struggle and worry are stigmatized in sports until they become stories of overcoming.

I’m also moved now as a mother of young children increasingly curious about contact sports. Three years ago, I was struck all too painfully by an interactive article featuring interviews with parents of student athletes. The video essay followed the release of another study by Boston-based collaborators, this one centering contact-sport athletes who died young, which found signs of CTE in 40% of these youth.

It is incredibly difficult to watch videos of parents who lost a child and know these parents have been left to do the work of explaining to themselves and the world why they had let their children play games that were popular, available, and nonetheless led them to be hit in the head again and again as a matter of course.Advertisement If the game of football is to continue, the best responses will not stop at court settlements and grief or technical fixes. They will integrate improved technical protections with regulatory modifications, enforcement of rules and polices, public education, consideration of social equity, and improved diagnostics and treatment for the injuries that will surely continue to occur. They will also, crucially, integrate awareness of how this problem we are talking about today has been repeatedly forgotten over time.

Emily Harrison is a historian of science and public health at Wellesley College. Letter to the editor Have an opinion on this essay? Submit a letter to the editor.

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