Los Angeles Times
by Jerry Crowe
July 4, 2010

After playing only one game as a professional in the 1960s, Roberts focused on a career as a surgeon. He now has partnered with the NFL Players Assn. to screen retired players for heart disease.

He wanted to be a surgeon and a professional football player.

So there he was in the mid-1960s, the Columbia graduate and aspiring quarterback endeavoring to make an impression on the Cleveland Browns and Miami Dolphins while also attending medical school, a daunting double few would even attempt.

Roberts, his professional football experience limited to one game, ultimately left a more indelible legacy with a scalpel than a football, performing more than 4,000 open-heart procedures during 2� decades as a cardiovascular surgeon.

More recently, he founded the Living Heart Foundation, which pioneered advanced mobile methods for cardiovascular screening in an attempt to raise awareness about heart disease.

Concerned about the increasing size of NFL players and the risks associated with the added weight, Roberts has partnered with the NFL Players Assn. to screen retired players.

"It's really something wonderful," Andre Collins, a former NFL linebacker and director of the NFLPA's retired players division, says of the program. "There have been life-threatening situations that have been avoided because of these routine screenings."

Roberts, 67, estimates that about 1,500 former players have been tested so far, with about 10,000 more to go.

"It feels natural and comfortable," the physician passer says of his return to the NFL universe all these years later. "I can make a contribution where I feel there has been a real need."

A three-sport letterman as a prep star in Holyoke, Mass., and again at Columbia, Roberts decided before he ever set foot on the Ivy League campus in Manhattan's Morningside Heights neighborhood that he would pursue a career in medicine.

But his football and baseball success at Columbia, where he set numerous Ivy League records in football and was an All-American shortstop, gave him opportunities he never anticipated.

The Kansas City Athletics, he says, wanted to make him a high pick in the 1965 amateur baseball draft � but only if the undergraduate would leave school a semester early.

The New York Jets showed interest too, making him the 51st pick in the 1965 AFL draft � after making Joe Namath the first.

"But it was not meant to be for me because of the way I was brought up and the value systems I had developed."

Medicine was his mission.

But then the Browns made an offer he couldn't refuse: In a deal brokered by owner Art Modell, a transplanted New Yorker, they paid for Roberts to study medicine at Case Western Reserve University while basically working part-time for the Browns.

For two seasons, Roberts joined the Browns at training camp, stayed with them through the exhibition season and then was assigned to the taxi squad as an emergency backup.

"In today's age, it wouldn't be possible," he says of the arrangement, "but even in those days, it was way out."

Roberts, however, longed to do more than sit and watch.

In 1967, sensing a greater opportunity elsewhere and without objection from the Browns, he signed with the Dolphins, who had joined the AFL as an expansion team a year earlier.

"But as luck would have it," Roberts says, laughing, " Bob Griese was drafted and came in that year."

During a semester's leave of absence from medical school, however, Roberts finally got onto the field.

In a 41-0 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, he completed five of 10 passes for 11 yards, with one interception.

And that was that.

He never played again and, after the season, returned to med school to resume his studies. A few years later, Roberts launched a distinguished career as a cardiologist.

Settled in Little Silver, N.J., with wife Nancy, the grandfather of six looked forward to several more years of open-heart procedures when, in 1997, he felt numbness in his right arm and helplessly slurred his words while giving a lecture.

He had suffered a stroke.

"I was a doctor giving advice to my patients but not living healthy myself," says the 6-foot, 190-pound Roberts, who at the time carried an additional 25 pounds. "There were risk factors that any good doctor would have recognized � I had put on weight and my cholesterol was high � yet I was too busy doing my thing.

"And that's pretty stupid."

The stroke may have prematurely ended Roberts' surgical career, but it led him back to the NFL through his foundation.

What if, years ago, he'd devoted his full attention to football?

"I've often wondered," Roberts says. "I'll always wonder. But I can never answer the question."

Thousands of heart patients, of course, are the better for it.

George Keporos was a specimen. The curly haired tackle stood 6-1, weighed 255 pounds, had 21-inch arms, a 22-inch neck, benched 350, and ran the 40 in 4.9. This was 40 years ago, before such things were common. Still, George sometimes got knocked around, as everyone who played Big Ten football did. In the 1971 Northwestern opener against Michigan at Dyche Stadium, he took a blow to the head and went down.

''I got knocked out before half, and they carried me off the field,'' he says now, as we sit in the living room of his compact but luxurious condo on Illinois Street. just east of Michigan Avenue. ''We were ahead, 6-0, when I went out, and I wake up on the bench and it's 21-6, Michigan!

He laughs at the silliness of the tale, the cartoon-like dreaminess that comes with getting the old bell rung. But George played hard and got dinged a few times. And some of the players around him were concerned.

When Eric Hutchinson, our All-America free safety, got a concussion in a 1970 game, he came to the sideline and was disoriented and done for the day. Tears trickled down his cheeks as he watched the game. ''Please don't make me like George,'' he pleaded to no one.

We all joked about each other's head collisions, about seeing stars, about birds tweeting, planets circling. Hutchinson was briefly out of his mind and had no idea what he was saying for that day. Brain trauma was not that big a deal back in that era, anyway, largely because no one understood the lingering or delayed or compounding effects of such unseen wounds.

It also was hard to take any injury seriously when the guy looked fine. That is rapidly changing. A recent Time Magazine cover story on the dangers of football states, ''No other sport gives rise to as many serious brain injuries as football. High school players alone suffer 43,000 to 67,000 concussions per year, though the true incidence is likely much higher.'' The reason the incidence is underreported is that most concussed players never say anything about their symptoms.

There is another, unwitting, culprit here. In a survey, college trainers stated that they observed concussions in only about 6 percent of the players under their watch. But when the college players were asked anonymously, more than 70 percent said they had experienced concussion-like symptoms. Clearly, it's hard for trainers to diagnose what they don't know much about and the wounded won't describe.

George Keporos, 60, looks good, feels good, and he's in good health. He's a big dude, but he has run in 14 marathons. His joints are fine. He's happy, has three beautiful daughters, ages 21 to 28, and because he's recently divorced, he is dating again.

But none of us know about our heads.

After Northwestern, Keporos had a free-agent tryout with the Bears, and then he got into the car business with his father. George proved to be an outstanding salesman and businessman. He and his dad built up their stores until they had successful Lincoln-Mercury, Honda, Ford and Accura dealerships in Chicago. When they sold out at the perfect time -- 2007 -- George walked away with millions.

But what does the future hold? We all know the horror stories about former NFL players like Andre Waters, who shot himself at 44, and was found to have brain tissue resembling that of an 85-year-old man, with characteristics of early stage Alzheimer's.

But that's the NFL. Waters was a banger for a dozen years after college. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a long term for what boxers call dementia pugilistica, or plain old punch drunk. Yet it doesn't matter if you get the blows from a glove or a helmet, or, for that matter, fastballs or hockey checks. CTE can apparently strike anyone who has had repeated and violent brain trauma.

Our middle linebacker John Voorhees likes to talk about the punch drunk boxer who used to loiter in front of the Busy Bee hamburger joint in downtown Peoria, near where John went to high school. The boxer was harmless, but he talked crazy stuff to the Spaulding guys when they came by for hot dogs, and he just seemed like a funny aberration.

I talked to Freddie Roach in Los Angeles recently. He's superstar boxer Manny Pacquiao's trainer, and he has trained 25 world champions. But he was once a ferocious pro fighter himself. Though he was only 49 when we talked, Roach staggered about because of Parkinson's syndrome caused by boxing too long. His first symptoms appeared at age 27.

''They told me to retire, and I had five more fights and got knocked out in two of them,'' he says. ''I probably have dementia -- pugilistica dementia. I do respond to Dopamine two times a day. But I have tremors, I have drop-foot, I trip a lot.''

It's hard to get out on top, isn't it? I say to him.

He smiles ruefully. ''Only one of my fighters retired as a champion.''

But such stories might be irrelevant to us former college football players. We didn't play for years and years. We didn't exclusively hit each other in the heads.

Talk about good brains? There were 31 players on our freshman team in 1967, and 18 made it to our senior season. Among the 18, we have three post-graduate education degrees, a doctorate of veterinary science, four MBAs, three law degrees and two Ph.Ds. (I'm sorry for bringing the curve down with my lowly B.A.)

By almost any measure, George Keporos, in the class behind me that has two MDs among its ranks, has been a success in life. While we were talking, his youngest daughter, Kelly, a 6-1 recently graduated scholarship volleyball player at Northwestern, entered the apartment, dropped off a few things, hugged her pop, said, ''I love you,'' and left. Their affection was obvious. George's life is good.

But we're talking about maybes here. Kelly, after all, has two bad knees, and George says she'll likely need replacement surgery in her 30s. Sports competition carries its toll. I ask George if he has had any brain issues.

''My memory isn't what it used to be,'' he says. ''I have to jot things down to remember them. I leave things on the counter over there and forget to pick them up. My memory loss is getting worse. Is that because I'm getting old?''

I laugh. I looked for my reading glasses for five minutes the other day, and they were on my head. I put the orange-juice in the cereal cabinet. I'm no judge.

George and I look at an old photo of him sacking the Syracuse quarterback. We study the enlarged and framed newspaper page with photos of the Illinois 1967 All-State High School football team, with George there as well as Peoria's Voorhees, Elmhurst's Jack Derning and Moline's Randy Anderson, all of whom would be terrific players for Northwestern.

''You know, five years ago, I had amnesia,'' George says. ''From 9 to 5 of that day I have no memory.''

I look at him. I think about this. ''Then how do you know it happened?''

''I'd gone to work and the manager at the store said I was walking in circles,'' he says. ''He asked me if I was OK, and I kept saying, 'I don't know.' He drove me to the hospital, and at the hospital they asked me who the president was and I didn't know. I couldn't remember anything in the present. There's a name for what I had. But they couldn't find any reason for it, and it went away that day. I'm thinking, 'How about that hit in college?'''

A half hour after I leave, George calls my cell phone.

''I remembered it,'' he says. ''It's called transient global amnesia.''

Transient global amnesia, or TGA, has been described by neurologist Oliver Sacks as temporary ''amnesia for the amnesia,'' in that for a brief time one can't remember that one has no memory. It's unknown what causes it, but stress, migraines, head injuries, compromised blood flow to the brain, sudden immersion in cold water, even sexual intercourse are believed to be possible catalysts.

It strikes me in a silly way that during the time when George was trying to recall the name of the episode, he displayed amnesia to the third level. Not true. As the Mayo Clinic describes it, TGA ''is rare, seemingly harmless and unlikely to happen again. Episodes are usually short-lived, and afterward your memory is fine.''

George is fine. As we all are for now. Until, as Sacks puts it, the ''final amnesia'' comes calling.

'I was on the air in 1999 when I had my first seizure,'' says Mike Adamle, the Channel 5 sportscaster. I ask him what it felt like. ''One part of my brain was speaking, the other part was having a tidal wave,'' he says. ''There was deja vu. All kinds of flashing, loud ringing in my ears. Dizziness. My short-term memory was gone. There were tears in my eyes, thoughts of being a kid, thoughts of my grandfather. I was in the hospital for three days.''

Mike and I go way back, to the late summer of 1967, when we greeted each other for the first time on the sidewalk in front of Anderson Hall at Northwestern University. We were incoming freshman scholarship football players, and we were to college life as shrimp eggs are to the sea.

In this series, Rick Telander catches up with former teammates, who describe how football helped them in their lives, but also how injuries suffered 40 years ago haunt them today.

I was 18, almost 6-2, a mighty 188 pounds, with a crew cut and barely a beard. He was 17, maybe 5-9, wearing shorts, seemingly muscle-free, baby-faced with a big smile. My first thought upon looking at him was, ''This team is in trouble.'' I knew Cub Scouts who looked older than Adamle.

He was from Kent, Ohio, played linebacker and running back, and I knew immediately that my suspicions about Northwestern football were correct: The program only took plankton from the bottom of the aquarium after it had been drained and the plastic mermaid removed. That plainly was the case with myself -- an unwanted, weak-armed quarterback from Peoria, projected, like all suspect high school quarterbacks, to be a defensive back in college.

But this infant was to be our running back? I am not kidding when I say that, at that moment, a protective shield whirred down over my delicate self-esteem and I steeled myself for four years of having my ass handed to me on a platter.

Fast-forward to the fall of 1970, our senior season, when Adamle would lead the Wildcats to within 30 minutes of going undefeated in the Big Ten, our only conference defeat coming against Ohio State in Columbus after leading at the half. There was the Wisconsin game that season when Adamle carried the ball for a Big Ten-record 316 yards. There was the Silver Football Award he would win as the best offensive player in the Big Ten. He was our captain and our leader.

''I have epilepsy from lesions on the left hemisphere of my brain,'' he says now, tapping the upper left part of his head. ''Scar tissue up there. From football. Neurologist Richard Rovenor, from Northwestern Memorial, diagnosed it and probably saved my life. I went to his funeral recently, and I shoveled dirt on his casket. He was a guy who knew about football, a wonderful man. He helped me so much, and I miss him.''

What do you do for the epilepsy? I ask.

''I take medications,'' he said. ''And when they stop working, I take different ones.''

What if you feel a seizure coming on?

''I try to get in a safe place, tell people to help me so I don't bite or swallow my tongue, and I get in the fetal position,'' he says.

I ponder this. I am amazed, astounded. It's one thing to have epilepsy; it's another to have it and be on TV, to do everything Mike does.

''I looked at the tape of that first time,'' he says, ''and I don't think people knew. I have lost words on air occasionally, and viewers have sent letters to the news director, wondering if I'm drunk. Maybe some people feel sorry for me, but I want people to know about this.''

We look at each other. Why not? The clock is ticking for us all.

� �

The toughest, smartest and most talented people I played with at NU were defensive tackle Jack Rudnay, safety Eric Hutchinson, linebacker John Voorhees and Adamle. Adamle was the best.

He looked like a child back then -- though he's 60 now, he still looks 10 or more years younger than I do -- but he weighed a deceptive 198 pounds and could leg-press 680 pounds. One man couldn't tackle him. His thighs were massive (which I hadn't noticed), his balance uncanny. And his desire was off the charts.

In that record-setting Wisconsin game in Madison, our coach, Alex Agase, called Adamle's number eight consecutive times on one scoring drive. Not just his number, the same play. By the end, even the body-passing student drunks in Camp Randall knew Adamle was going off right tackle. When he scored on the last of the runs, he looked fresh. But he wasn't.

''I had bite marks, scratches all over me,'' he says.

And then there were the head blows. We all took them. But when you carry the ball 483 times in three seasons -- 48 times in one game (Minnesota, senior year) -- you up the ante dramatically.

''Saw stars?'' Adamle says. ''I can't count the times.''

We're eating dinner at P.J. Clarke's on Fairbanks, not far from the NBC studio. Adamle is off today, no newscast, and he's having a yolk-free spinach omelet and a glass of red wine. He's in terrific shape, having recently completed the Ironman in Hawaii -- a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run -- in a better time than he did at 50.

He's always up for physical challenges, always has been. He has jumped from airplanes, scuba-dived, gotten in the ring with a pro wrestler, run up the John Hancock Center stairs. At Northwestern, he ate 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour, just like our hero, Cool Hand Luke.

I saw Mike one day at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia -- he was there doing TV work -- and the area around one eye was a hideous pastiche of green and purple. He'd done a back flip off the 10-meter board and landed on his face. He'd never tried such a dive before, never been on a 10-meter board. But he'd told his boss at NBC, Larry Wert, a former varsity diver at Wisconsin, that he had to do it.

''He'd come into my office, and we'd practice,'' Wert says. ''He'd fall backward, and I'd catch him. I told him, 'Stand there. Look out. Fall. Don't move your head.' Then I said, 'Do you really want to do this?'''

He did.

Wert remembers how it ended.

''I got a call from a worker in Sydney, who said, 'Your boy splattered,''' Wert says.

The irony is that Wert, never a football player, did a lot of head and spine trauma to himself in his seemingly gentler sport. He hit his head twice on diving platforms, suffering two concussions and multiple stitches. Entering the water again and again at almost 40 mph eventually led to him having to undergo cervical fusion because of ruined vertebrae. He has to medicate himself because of the constant neck pain, and he says there are days ''when I'm speaking to a crowd or to our team, and I wonder if I'm up to it, feeling ready.''

But he wouldn't give up his athletic past for anything.

''Not a chance,'' Wert almost shouts. ''Competing brought me everything.''

So he understands the drive of the hyper-competitive Adamle, saying: ''I'm aware of his condition, and I'm supportive of him. There's always risk in live television for all performers. If things happen, we'll discuss them.''

� �

In a victory against Illinois in our junior year, Adamle got knocked out at the end of a long run. He played seven seasons in the NFL, once gaining 100 yards for the Bears. While with the New York Jets, he was on the ''suicide'' bomb squad with fellow wild man Lou Piccone, an undersized speedster who sometimes wore a ''Saturday Night Live'' conehead off the field. Together, they were wedge-busters.

''Lou was R-1 and I was L-1,'' Adamle says. ''Before games, we painted red suns on our chests, drank sake and yelled, 'Banzai!' One time we agreed to dive over the wedge simultaneously. We launched ourselves and landed on the receiver. Our quarterback, Joe Namath, said it was the best freaking play he'd ever seen.''

When did the brain trauma occur for Adamle? Who can say? Maybe it happened in increments. Maybe it happened as I and other Northwestern defensive players watched from the sidelines, cheering him on.

On a recent broadcast on Channel 5, Adamle does a fine job reporting the day's sports news, finishing a bland non- statement from Bulls general manager Gar Forman with the editorialism, ''Blah, blah-blah, blah-blah, blah-BLAH!'' It's appropriate and hilarious.

''Mike is a bona fide celebrity athlete, and when he's on, he's great,'' Wert says.

But there is the head issue. Was playing football worth it?

''Yes,'' says Adamle, who began in pre-med before switching his major to broadcasting.

Why?

''Because we were all together,'' he says. ''Because of the camaraderie. Because of the time in our lives. Because we punched holes in our tickets we could never punch again.''

We're finished eating, and the waiter takes the dishes away. Adamle looks down.

''I'm scared,'' he says. ''I have two girls, and I don't want them to see me with a drool cup. I combat this by doing the Ironman, by hustling up the Hancock, having people say, 'How did you do that?' My mom had Alzheimer's, and she didn't know who I was at the end. My dad had it, too. And I said, 'That's gonna be me.' I'm a perfect candidate.''

My old pal looks at me. He has a wry smile on his young face.

''Yes, I'm scared,'' he says.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is dropping some not-so-subtle hints about expanding the regular season to 18 games.

Wilber Marshall thinks he knows why.

"Money," he said.

Shocking, huh?

Marshall is the former Astronaut High standout who later had a great career for the Florida Gators that earned him induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. Then he assembled 12 NFL seasons that resulted in two Super Bowl championships and three Pro Bowl appearances.

He knows a little bit about football and what makes that oblong ball go round.

Yeah, obviously it's money.

But what particularly troubles Marshall and many other current and former NFL players is a perceived disregard the league has for the toll football takes on the body.

Marshall knows all too well about that.

For years now, doctors have told him he's going to need knee and hip replacement surgery -- on both knees and hips. He is 48.

It can take him a half-hour or longer to get out of bed. When he was recently in Titusville visiting family (he lives in Virginia) even the humidity adversely affected him. So do other weather changes. He's resisted prescription pain medication, but sometimes he has no other choice.

"I take meds just to walk," he said. "I don't like taking them. I know what they do to the liver. I saw what happened to Walter."

Walter was his friend, Walter Payton, the legendary Hall of Fame running back who died at 44 from autoimmune liver disease and bile duct cancer. Ever since losing his friend, Marshall has championed various organ donor programs.

Meanwhile, he feels the aftermath of his NFL career every day, and as he hears more and more reports about the long-term effects of head injuries, it gives him pause, especially because Marshall recently lost his father to Alzheimer's disease.

"So far, my head's good," he said. "It's just the rest of my body that doesn't work."

Henry was 26 when he died on Dec. 17, a day after he jumped or fell off a moving pickup truck that his fianc�e and mother of his children was driving after they had a spat. Now, Henry's family is wondering whether his erratic behavior -- one witness said he threatened to kill himself -- was more a byproduct of brain damage rather than the passion of the moment.

Wilber Marshall wonders, too.

"Love makes you do crazy things," he said, "but maybe there was also something wrong from all the hits to the head."

One thing isn't disputable.

Football is a brutal sport that routinely destroys the bodies of those who play it.

Earlier this year, one of Marshall's contemporaries, Hall of Fame linebacker Harry Carson, revealed that he suffered 12 to 18 concussions in his NFL career, and that today, at 56, his mental health is an ongoing concern.

The list of early deaths and debilitating, degenerative brain damage among former NFL players grows longer almost by the day.

Always well-spoken and eloquent, Carson these days champions the cause of retired NFL players. He also says that if he had to do it over again, he wouldn't have played football.

Against this backdrop, the league wants to expand the regular season to 18 games, while eliminating two preseason games, which already are fairly meaningless.

"They should keep it at 16 games and eliminate the two preseason games anyway," Marshall said. "But you know how it is. It's all about the NFL making money, and not about the players' health."

Last April, the NFL said it is gifting $1 million to the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University. That might sound like a lot of money. But for a billion-dollar industry like the NFL, it's a token. It's sort of like beer companies telling people to drink responsibly at the end of commercials where adults act in the most irresponsible way when there is a brew to be imbibed.

I'm sure the NFL is concerned about head injuries. Why wouldn't they be? It's just that many of its past and present players believe the concern pales in comparison to its most overriding interest.

By VICKI SMITH (AP) � 7 hours ago

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. � Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry suffered from a chronic brain injury that may have influenced his mental state and behavior before he died last winter, West Virginia University researchers said Monday.

The doctors had done a microscopic tissue analysis of Henry's brain that showed he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Neurosurgeon Julian Bailes and California medical examiner Bennet Omalu, co-directors of the Brain Injury Research Institute at WVU, announced their findings alongside Henry's mother, Carolyn Henry Glaspy, who called it a "big shock" because she knew nothing about her 26-year-old son's underlying condition or the disease.

Henry died in December, a day after he came out of the back of a pickup truck his fiancee was driving near their home in Charlotte, N.C. It's unclear whether Henry jumped or fell. Toxicology tests found no alcohol in his system, and an autopsy concluded he died of numerous head injuries, including a fractured skull and brain hemorrhaging.

But Bailes, team doctor for the Mountaineers and a former Pittsburgh Steelers physician, said it's easy to distinguish those acute traumatic injuries from the underlying condition he and Omalu found when staining tiny slices of Henry's brain.

Bailes and fellow researchers believe chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is caused by multiple head impacts, regardless of whether those blows result in a concussion diagnosis. A number of studies, including one commissioned by the NFL, have found that retired professional football players may have a higher rate than normal of Alzheimer's disease and other memory problems.

What's interesting, Bailes said, is that Henry was only 26, and neither NFL nor WVU records show he was diagnosed with a concussion during his playing career.

But it doesn't take a collision with another player for brain trauma to occur.

"The brain floats freely in your skull," Omalu said. "If you're moving very quickly and suddenly stop, the brain bounces."

And over time, with repetition, that causes big problems.

CTE carries specific neurobehavioral symptoms, Bailes said � typically, failure at personal and business relationships, use of drugs and alcohol, depression and suicide.

"Chris Henry did not have that entire spectrum and we don't know if there's a cause and effect here," Bailes said. "It certainly raises the question and raises our curiosity. We're just here to report our findings. That may be for others to decipher."

Henry's personal struggles were well documented.

Although he was a vital part of the Bengals' offense as a rookie, he ended that season with an arrest for marijuana possession. After a playoff loss to Pittsburgh, he was arrested on a gun charge in Florida.

Henry was suspended for half a season in 2007 as the league cracked down on personal conduct.

When he was arrested a fifth time, a judge called Henry "a one-man crime wave" and the Bengals released him.

But Henry got a second chance and played 12 games in the 2008 season.

Teammates said they'd noticed a change his demeanor, and at the start of the 2009 season, he described himself as "blessed" and said he was turning his life around.

Glaspy gave Bailes permission to examine her son's brain in detail.

"I was a little scared," she said. "It was something new to me. I'm still trying to educate myself as to what it means. Some of it makes sense with some of the behavioral patterns in Chris � just like mood swings and the headaches.

"Hopefully I can share whatever they share with me with other parents and help the NFL deal with the matter of being hit in the head and concussions and to educate ourselves as mothers and fathers when we send our kids out there on the field."

Omalu first came across CTE, a condition often seen in boxers, after studying the brain of Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Fame lineman Mike Webster. Webster died in 2002 of a heart attack at age 50. He had suffered brain damage that left him unable to work following his career.

Bailes said he and Omalu have now analyzed the brains of 27 modern athletes, and the majority showed evidence of CTE. But it's found in only a small number of players, he said.

"I think football is a great sport, and we want to make it safer," Bailes said, "but we have to continue to move forward with changes made recently and take the head impacts out of the sport as much as possible."

Former Bengal Henry Found to Have Had Brain Damage

Chris Henry, the Cincinnati Bengals receiver who died during a domestic dispute last December, has been identified by experts as the first player to have died with trauma-induced brain damage while still active in the N.F.L.

Dr. Julian Bailes and Dr. Bennet Omalu of the Brain Injury Research Institute at West Virginia University announced on Monday that Henry, 26, had developed chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the progressive brain disease whose recent discovery in some retired N.F.L. players has raised questions of football�s long-term safety risks.

The 22nd professional football player to be given a diagnosis of C.T.E., Henry is the first to have died with the disease while active after 2007, when prior C.T.E. findings prompted the N.F.L. to begin strengthening rules regarding concussion management. The fact that he developed the condition by his mid-20s � the youngest previous C.T.E. case was the lineman Justin Strzelczyk, 36, who had been retired from the Pittsburgh Steelers for five years before his death in 2004 � raises questions of how many current N.F.L. players might have the condition without knowing it.

�As we got the results, my emotion was sad � it�s so profound,� said Bailes, the chairman of the department of neurosurgery at West Virginia and a former team physician for the Steelers. �I was surprised in a way because of his age and because he was not known as a concussion sufferer or a big hitter. Is there some lower threshold when you become at risk for this disease? I�m struggling to see if something can come out positive out of this.�

In a statement, a co-chairman of the league�s head, neck and spine medical committee, Dr. Hunt Batjer, said: �Our committee has and will continue to address all issues relative to head injuries in current players.�

A message for the union spokesman George Atallah was not returned.

Caused exclusively by brain trauma, C.T.E. cannot be diagnosed in a living person; only microscopic examinations of brain tissue can identify the protein deposits and other abnormalities that mark the disease. So active players who might react to the Henry finding by seeking a test before continuing their careers must make do with unknowns.

�It�s very emotional to hear � it rattles me,� said Sean Morey, a special-teams player now with the Seattle Seahawks, who is a co-chairman of the union�s brain-injury committee. �The fact that this has been found that guys played against last year, an active player, I think it�s sobering. You have to ask yourself how many are playing the game today that have this and don�t even know about it.�

Like many of the other players found to have had C.T.E. after their deaths, Henry had behavioral problems in his final years that might have been at least partly a result of the disease, which is linked to depression, poor decision-making and substance abuse.

He was arrested five times in a 28-month stretch for incidents involving assault, driving under the influence of alcohol and marijuana possession. The league suspended him several times for violating its personal-conduct policy.

Henry caught 12 passes for 236 yards in the Bengals� first eight games last season before he broke his arm and was put on injured reserve.

Henry died in Charlotte, N.C., on Dec. 17 after falling out or jumping out of the back of a pickup truck driven by his fianc�e, Loleini Tonga. The head injuries that killed Henry were not related to the C.T.E. finding because the proteins and other changes that mark C.T.E. develop only over time, Bailes said.

Bailes said that he had not found evidence in news reports that Henry had sustained any diagnosed concussions during his N.F.L. career, and that he would soon make a request for related information from the Bengals. Bailes said he did know that Henry had not reported any concussions during his two seasons at West Virginia, because Bailes also serves as a Mountaineers team physician and had access to those records.

Bailes said he planned to speak with Henry�s family members to learn if he had sustained any notable hits or head injuries at Belle Chasse High School just outside New Orleans.

�I don�t want to imply that this is an N.F.L.-only phenomenon,� said Bailes, who wondered if problems are set up �while the brain is young and vulnerable, and it sustains an injury.�

He added: �Players spend 17 years banging heads in the pros on every play and you think it�s exposure based. Now with Chris Henry being so young, we have to rethink that.�

Near the end of last season, the N.F.L. strengthened several rules regarding concussion management, including the requirement that players with brain injuries not return to the same game or practice, and that they be cleared by independent experts, rather than team doctors. The three leaders of the league�s concussion committee resigned and were replaced by two neurosurgeons who vowed to chart a new course for research.

The N.F.L. is working with the union and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on an information brochure on concussions that is worded far more strongly than the one given to the players since 2007.

�We have to educate the players,� Morey said. �The players have to have the ability to have informed consent.�