MCT News Service
MINNEAPOLIS – Despite an expanding body of evidence linking brain damage to violent collisions on the football field, Bob Stein can still indulge in a little gallows humor. "The good news," he said, "is that I can’t remember how many concussions I had."
The attorney and former Minnesota Timberwolves president spent eight years knocking heads as an NFL linebacker. One injury he does recall just barely happened in 1971, when his Kansas City teammate Willie Lanier tried to stop O.J. Simpson on a kickoff return by swinging a fist at him. Lanier missed and hit Stein instead, knocking him unconscious.
A doctor examined Stein on the sideline and told him he might have a concussion. As was the custom at the time, he asked if Stein wanted to return to the game; as was the custom, Stein said yes. He had no idea he had a skull fracture until 15 years later, when a sinus infection slipped through the break and morphed into a near-fatal case of spinal meningitis.
Stein knows he could well be blindsided again in another 15 years. The Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University announced last week that a 10th NFL retiree had been diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The degenerative brain disease causes such symptoms as memory impairment, emotional instability and erratic behavior as it grows into full-blown dementia.
A week earlier, CTE also was diagnosed in a former college player who died at age 42, marking the first time the illness has been found in a player who did not go on to a pro career. The disease, which can only be diagnosed postmortem, has been found in all 11 football players whose brains have been examined at BU. Yet the NFL continues to deny, ignore or downplay such studies, even as Stein sees the mounting toll. READ MORE
