Football is here – and so is a new study on CTE

August 31, 2026

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5 min read

Football is here – and so is a new study on CTE

This time of year, most afternoons, you can hear the sounds of practice from my house. And honestly, I love it. I love football. I love playing it in high school. I love watching it with buddies like millions of other Americans do each Sunday. But like many football fans, I have also felt conflicted between loving the game and being horrified by the injuries people can get playing it. A new study that came out last week sheds light on one of the scariest risks of the sport: chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease caused by repetitive hits to the head. NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan has been covering this research, and the findings are sobering.

What the study found about CTE prevalence

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Introduction & Conflict** - Host Nate Rott introduces his love of football alongside the horror of football-related brain injuries.
2 (01:16) **The Core Question: How Common is CTE?** - Becky Sullivan states the long-standing question of CTE prevalence among football players.
3 (01:56) **The Study's Wide Range** - Lead author Dr. Daniel Danishfar explains the methodology behind the 25% minimum and the 98% maximum rate.
4 (03:51) **What Exactly is CTE?** - Becky explains the pathology of the disease and why it is so difficult to study.
5 (05:25) **Symptoms and Historical Context** - The symptoms commonly associated with CTE are described, along with its long history.
6 (06:53) **The Junior Seau Effect and Brain Bank Bias** - The tragic death of Junior Seau and the subsequent creation of the BU brain bank are discussed.
7 (08:58) **How the Study Found a Baseline** - The researchers explain how they circumvented the sample bias to find a more accurate baseline.

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Show Notes

The NFL season begins this week, but America’s favorite sport has been on our minds for other reasons recently. New research released in the journal BMJ reveals that 1 in 4 former NFL players in this sample had CTE, a neurodegenerative brain disease caused by repetitive head injuries. Past studies already showed that football players are at high risk for CTE, but this study – which assessed ex-NFL players who died from 2016 to 2021 – revealed that at least a quarter of those former players died with CTE, and the study’s lead author says the actual numbers are likely higher. What does that mean for players (and fans) of American football? Short Wave host Nate Rott and NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan find out.

Interested in more sports science? Email us your question at [email protected].

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