The evidence is too strong, the alarms too loud, the effects too real for members of both these Miami Dolphins and the franchise’s most famous and accomplished team to simply ignore them any longer.
Nick Buoniconti and Jim Kiick, two prominent members of the 1972 undefeated team, now are dealing with progressively diminished cognitive skills, a potential warning sign of a degenerative brain disease, CTE, that has been strongly linked to football head injuries.
Meanwhile, NBC’s Bob Costas predicted, during a roundtable discussion at the University of Maryland earlier this month, that the sport could collapse over time, barring development of technology to make it reasonably safe.