And if my sons were to now choose to play football, then yes, they should expect and not begrudge CTE.
Your sons, yes, but their father knows about CTE. But the connection between football and CTE is not in the same ballpark of public awareness as that between, say, smoking and lung cancer.
Everyone knows about lung cancer. What proportion of the public knows anything about CTE? Further, at this point, everyone knows that smoking causes lung cancer. It's even printed on the box. How many kids playing high school or college football are given notice when they sign up that playing football may lead to permanent brain damage? The NFL doesn't acknowledge it, and as with any big business, resistance to this conclusion is very high at the NFL and D1 colleges. They are aided by the fact that we don't yet understand the mechanism of CTE, and as far as I know, we don't yet have studies that establish a good baseline for CTE prevalence in the general population (and without these factors, causation is very difficult to prove).
It was only a few years ago that the Monday Night Football broadcast eliminated their "Jacked Up" segment, which was essentially a brain-damage-in-progress highlight video. And that was several years AFTER the first paper on CTE in football players was published. Even today, while the game broadcasters speak of concussions in a much more serious manner than they did several years ago, none of them are referring to CTE. And all the former players we see in the sports media and commercial endorsements appear physically, and mentally, healthy. We don't see the guys who are so mentally unhinged that they are on verge of suicide.
And what about the sub-concussive hits, which you alluded to earlier - how many people understand that many sub-concussive hits may be an even greater risk factor for CTE than a few acute concussions?
And what about brain injury potential for children? Their brains are more vulnerable to trauma than adult brains. How well is this understood by parents, even by parents who know enough to not let their sons play college football or even high school football?
So bottomline, I'd say that while sons of people in the know should be aware of the brain damage risk they are taking, we are far from the point where this risk is widely understood by everyone joining high school or college football teams.
