Quote:As the NFL nears an end to its long-running legal battle over concussions, new data from the nation’s largest brain bank focused on traumatic brain injury has found evidence of a degenerative brain disease in 76 of the 79 former players it’s examined.

The findings represent a more than twofold increase in the number of cases of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, that have been reported by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ brain repository in Bedford, Mass.

Researchers there have now examined the brain tissue of 128 football players who, before their deaths, played the game professionally, semi-professionally, in college or in high school. Of that sample, 101 players, or just under 80 percent, tested positive for CTE.

To be sure, players represented in the data represent a skewed population. CTE can only be definitively identified posthumously, and many of the players who have donated their brains for research suspected that they may have had the disease while still alive. For example, former Chicago Bears star Dave Duerson committed suicide in 2011 by shooting himself in the chest, reportedly to preserve his brain for examination.

Nonetheless, Dr. Ann McKee, the director of the brain bank, believes the findings suggest a clear link between football and traumatic brain injury.

“Obviously this high percentage of living individuals is not suffering from CTE,” said McKee, a neuropathologist who directs the brain bank as part of a collaboration between the VA and Boston University’s CTE Center. But “playing football, and the higher the level you play football and the longer you play football, the higher your risk.”

Quote:He will turn 60 next April, and is already 25 years removed from his professional playing days, when he dazzled Cowboys fans with his rushing skills and moves, a career that propelled him into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

But Tony Dorsett is a self-professed “changed man” these days, and none of the change is good, as he tells it. He says he suffers from memory loss, depression and anger issues, symptoms he attributes to playing in a violent sport for 11 years. One day he will forget where the grocery store is, while another day he will unexpectedly explode at his 10-year-old daughter.

“Let me tell you something dude, I can’t remember the names of people. Every time I’ve got to go somewhere, almost every other day, I’ve got to ask my wife, ‘How do I get there?’ That is embarrassing,” says Dorsett. “I’m short-tempered and I don’t like that. I break down, because I’m like, ‘Man, what’s happening to me? Why did I just snap at my daughter?’”

The NFL and over 4,500 former football players may have reached a proposed settlement in the class-action concussion lawsuit Thursday — in which the plaintiffs alleged that the league for years covered up what it knew about the dangers of concussions suffered while playing professional football — but Dorsett is one of the plaintiffs in the suit who isn’t climbing atop a soap box to proclaim victory just yet. He and other former players think there are huge holes in the settlement terms, most glaringly, the lack of a clause that would ensure guaranteed lifetime medical benefits.