A previous version of this story included the incorrect year that Wycheck died. He died on Dec. 9, 2023.
If you’re a fan of the sport of football this is an amazing time. Five consecutive days of college and NFL playoffs started on Thursday and go through Monday night. There’s probably never been a stretch like this in the modern history of the sport. Some of you will cheer. Or boo. Or just sit and watch football for hours.
There’s one other thing I also want you to do: remember. Remember that these are human beings playing this game. Remember people like Frank Wycheck.
Football is a beautiful sport that makes a lot of people rich and often celebrates the physical heights human beings have reached. But we also have to remember what the sport does to the people that play it. Actually, a better way to say it is, we have to never forget what it does. That’s where Wycheck and many others come in.
Wycheck’s family announced this week that the former Tennessee Titans tight end, who played in the NFL for 11 seasons, suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, before he died on Dec. 9, 2023. He was just 52.
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Wycheck’s family did something in the aftermath of his death that wasn’t just brave, it was helpful for the rest of us. His family explained in a statement that it paired with Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center to posthumously examine Wycheck for CTE. The disease is an insidious one caused by repetitive head trauma. Not necessarily just big hits, either. But the things you see every play; the basic building blocks of football: blocking and tackling.
It’s what you’ll see every minute of one of these college playoff games. Every play of every NFL postseason contest. Almost every tackle football game that’s ever played on any level. It’s what Wycheck did on the NFL level for over a decade.
CTE can lead to significant mental health issues like memory loss, depression, dementia and other frightening traumas. Wycheck’s family said he had Stage III CTE at the time of his death. Stage IV is the most advanced form of the disease.
As of early 2023, CTE has been diagnosed in 345 of the 376 NFL players studied by Boston University’s CTE center.
‘For comparison, a 2018 Boston University study of 164 brains of men and women donated to the Framingham Heart Study found that only 1 of 164 (0.6 percent) had CTE,’ writes the center. ‘The lone CTE case was a former college football player. The extremely low population rate of CTE is in line with similar studies from brain banks in Austria, Australia and Brazil.
‘The NFL player data should not be interpreted to suggest that 91.7 percent of all current and former NFL players have CTE, as brain bank samples are subject to selection biases. The prevalence of CTE among NFL players is unknown as CTE can only be definitively diagnosed after death. Repetitive head impacts appear to be the chief risk factor for CTE, which is characterized by misfolded tau protein that is unlike changes observed from aging, Alzheimer’s disease, or any other brain disease.’
In other words, no one can say definitively if the vast majority of current NFL players, or past ones who are still alive, have CTE, but it can be said the vast majority of deceased NFL players examined for the disease do.
Wycheck’s two daughters, Deanna Wycheck Szabo and Madison Wycheck Nowell, did something following their father’s death that we should all be grateful for. They expressed hope that his struggles with CTE would shine a light on this horrible disease. They are, in many ways, asking us not to forget players like their dad. Players who entertained us. Players who had a choice, yes, but that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve our care. Or, at the very least, for us to be educated about what CTE is.
‘My father put his body on the line throughout his career,’ Szabo said. ‘He loved the game and even more so loved his teammates. After retirement, he fought for years to bring light to his post-NFL journey and the fears he had around his struggles and symptoms that he knew whole-heartedly was CTE. He often felt forgotten and ignored, and that his situation was helpless.
‘Reflecting back, I wish our family had been educated on the signs and symptoms of CTE. Instead of believing that something was inherently wrong with him, we now know he was doing the best he could as a father and friend under circumstances beyond his control.
‘Our family is grateful to learn of his confirmed CTE diagnosis in hopes to continue our father’s desire to bring awareness, increased intervention, education, and support for NFL alumni and their families related to CTE. Our hope is that NFL alumni, who believe they are suffering from CTE, will be given the much-needed resources and guidance prior to their symptoms reaching a debilitating state. With on-going CTE research and diagnosis’, we hope future NFL alumni and families will be explicitly given an outline and plan of action in receiving care and treatment. That’s what our father would have wanted.’
Wycheck should also be remembered for something else. That like so many before him, and now, he played in a sport that is full of wonders, but also potentially has extreme long-term dangers. We should never forget that, either.