One in four former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had degenerative brain disease — and the league that built a multibillion-dollar empire on those broken bodies is still selling the same product, with the same corporate press looking the other way.

A study published in the British Medical Journal by researchers from Mass General Brigham, Boston University, and the Concussion + CTE Foundation examined 878 former players who died in that six-year window. Of the 235 who donated their brains for research, 215 were found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy — a degenerative condition that can only be diagnosed after death. Researchers calculated a "conservative minimum" CTE prevalence of 24.5%, with the true rate potentially as high as 97.7%.

"We and others have shown that in NFL players, specifically, there is about a four times higher rate of death from neurodegenerative disease than the general population," said lead author Daniel Daneshvar, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

The numbers are staggering. The league's response is predictable.

An NFL spokesperson offered the standard corporate line: "The NFL continuously strives to make the game of football safer, including by implementing strategies to reduce concussions and head impacts." The league "remains committed" to resources for former players and "encourages" them to seek treatment.

That's from the same league that fought concussion-related lawsuits for years until the Supreme Court cleared a settlement with thousands of retired players in 2016. The same league whose broadcast deals underwrite the networks that lecture Americans about public health while cashing in on the body count stacked up during their own Sunday programming.

The Hits That Add Up

Daneshvar made clear the damage starts long before the professional level. "The bulk of the head impacts that these former NFL players experienced didn't occur at the NFL level," he said. "They occurred at the collegiate level... and at the high school level and in many cases the youth level."

He noted that nearly 70% of head impacts happen in practice — meaning the sport could dramatically reduce cumulative brain damage "without changing a single minute of game time at any of those levels." The NFL's 2011 collective bargaining agreement limited contact practices to less than one per week. The Ivy League banned full-contact tackling during practices five years later. But those reforms haven't propagated to the college, high school, and youth levels where most of the damage accumulates.

High-profile NFL players who took their own lives — Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, Aaron Hernandez — were all found to have CTE. The study confirmed dementia was common among brain donors.

The Coverage Gap

The BBC led with the 97.7% maximum estimate. The Guardian buried the lede with the conservative one-in-four figure and gave the NFL spokesperson unchallenged space to claim the league is making the game safer. Neither outlet followed the dollars back to the networks profiting from the product, or asked why the same media conglomerates that scold Americans about health risks won't scrutinize the one generating their own ad revenue.

Researchers urged prevention measures across all levels of the sport. The NFL urged former players to use its "resources." One side is calling for systemic change. The other is offering a hotline after the damage is done.

The question isn't whether football is dangerous. The question is how long the people profiting from it — in league offices and network boardrooms — get to pretend they didn't know.