"An offensive lineman can’t do his job without "using his head," one veteran says, but neuropathologists examining the brains of ex-N.F.L. players have found trauma-related degeneration.

One evening in August, Kyle Turley was at a bar in Nashville with his wife and some friends. It was one of the countless little places in the city that play live music. He’d ordered a beer, but was just sipping it, because he was driving home. He had eaten an hour and a half earlier. Suddenly, he felt a sensation of heat. He was light-headed, and began to sweat. He had been having episodes like that with increasing frequency during the past year—headaches, nausea. One month, he had vertigo every day, bouts in which he felt as if he were stuck to a wall. But this was worse. He asked his wife if he could sit on her stool for a moment. The warmup band was still playing, and he remembers saying, “I’m just going to take a nap right here until the next band comes on.” Then he was lying on the floor, and someone was standing over him. “The guy was freaking out,” Turley recalled. “He was saying, ‘Damn, man, I couldn’t find a pulse,’ and my wife said, ‘No, no. You were breathing.’ I’m, like, ‘What? What?’ ”"

I have been dimly aware of this issue and its impact on older, retired players, and the raw deal old players get in terms of medical care, etc., but this really crystallized it for me. With the retirement of one of our warriors, Jeff Ulbrich, and the same issue for Michael Lewis the reality of Ulbrich's retirement and the possible health impact for him because of brain trauma is a big issue.

This article about the impact of concussion on football players is truly disturbing and not something I really understood until reading this in the New Yorker. Kyle Turley's accounts of his experience with obvious brain damage since stopping playing, even during his playing days, and the affect of the traditions of toughness and manning up in the NFL are very disturbing.