The stunning announcement Sunday that former 49ers star Dwight Clark had been diagnosed with ALS immediately quickly raised the question:
Did football cause this?
And it was Clark himself, in a letter to his fans, who posed it.
“I have ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease,” Clark wrote. “Those words are still very hard for me to say. I’ve been asked if playing football caused this. I don’t know for sure. But I certainly suspect it did.”
Clark continued: “I encourage the NFLPA and the NFL to continue working together in their efforts to make the game of football safer, especially as it relates to head trauma.