A Life-and-Death Puzzle

continued

But the risk a person is willing to take himself, and the risk he's willing to see his child take, are often very different. Football made New England Patriots (and former U-M) quarterback Tom Brady rich and famous--yet earlier this year, his dad was quoted as saying that if he had known then what he knows now, he might not have encouraged his now multi-millionaire son to play pro football.

"I don't know if I'd let my son play," Hipple concurs. Making it to the pros, he says, "is a pretty cool experience. But there's a lot of stuff that happens to you. You don't know if you'd wish that on your enemy."

But Hipple doesn't believe the future necessarily has to repeat the past--or that awareneses of the risk of CTE will spell the end of his sport. "I think rule changes will happen in football," he says. "I think right now it is inevitable ... And that is not a bad thing.

"When they moved the goal posts out of the end zone--you look back at that now and you say, 'that looked like a really smart thing to do.' But why did they have them in the end zone, when people were running into them?