The late Junior Seau: "Degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma."

Let's check back with a topic sure to liven your enjoyment of the NFL this playoff weekend.

ESPN: Junior Seau and our "appetite for destruction." (May, 2012)

As human sports go, are boxing and football exempt from personal moral scrutiny merely because people have a choice not to participate?

The Seau autopsy report is finished, and the verdict, while not unexpected, is chilling.

Seau Suffered From Brain Disease, by Mary Pilon (New York Times)

The former N.F.L. linebacker Junior Seau had a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma when he committed suicide last spring, the National Institutes of Health said Thursday.

The findings were consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease widely connected to athletes who have absorbed frequent blows to the head, the N.I.H. said in a statement. Seau is the latest and most prominent player to be associated with the disease, which has bedeviled the sport in recent years as a proliferation of studies have exposed the possible long-term cognitive impact of head injuries sustained on the field.