RALEIGH, N.C. — In the last years of his life, the longtime football coach for dominating college teams wrestled with impaired speech, forgetfulness, lapses in concentration. And with his conscience.
His body was betraying him, and now, possibly, so was the sport he loved.
A few years earlier, the coach, Don Horton, had learned that he had Parkinson’s disease, but these new, intensifying infirmities were more commonly linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated hits to the head and linked to football and other contact sports.
Was his deteriorating health, Horton wondered, a consequence of his many years as a football lineman?