By: Andrew Cheng

In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Ray Perkins, a former player and coach at Alabama, experienced brain deterioration after dedicating his whole to the sport.

In 2020, the month before his death at 79, Pekins let the scientists study his brain once he was gone. They wanted to figure out the true disease that caused this respectful football player and coach to face awful suffering in his latest years.

The study’s result was familiar to experts, players, and their families. Perkins had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurological disorder linked to blows to the head and sometimes seen in men who played elite football.

In an interview with The New York Times, Lisa Perkins, Ray Perkins’s wife, said, “In my heart, I knew he had it.” In the family’s first public disclosure of Ray Perkins’s medical history, the man played at Alabama with Coach bear Bryant which later gave him a successful career.

The 1965 Alabama football team, which got a victory over Nebraska in the Orange Bowl and capped its title run, has had at least three former players die of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Also, at least two other team members’ families have found that they developed the disease. Players with CTE often experience confusion and memory loss, spasms of anger, and steep declines in communication and decision-making skills.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/07/sports/ncaafootball/alabama-football-cte.html#:~:text=the%20main%20story-,They%20Made%20History%20at%20Alabama.,it%20in%20other%20players%2C%20too.