Originally Posted by Steve B.

You are missing the point, it's not the period they played - 15 years as is the case with Montana, but that it's been 20-30 YEARS since he (and others) retired (20 in Montana's case).

This is a disease that typically manifests itself upwards of a decade after an athlete would have been engaged in multiple brain trauma hits. It's only been recently (6-10 years) that this disease has been recognized as a real problem for professional football players as well as a host of other athletes who can have brain hits as part of their career.

Have they been mis-informed ?, probably not the players of 15 -20 years ago and earlier, as it's questionable and hard to prove the NFL knew the scope of the problem. But no question the NFL has been hiding the issue for the past 10 years. Both the NFL as well as the players union were roundly criticized for the 1 billion settlement in 2014 but many lawyers for the union and players were looking for money in a hurry to help players suffering who otherwise had no other financial resources to get treatment. One clause of the settlement had this "Players diagnosed in the future with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition linked to repeated blows to the head, will not be covered by the settlement."

My attitude is the NFL got away cheap and should be paying out the wazoo.

WiKi has a decent article. Just type in CTE