Matt Hasselbeck joins BU push to diagnose CTE in living
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- Matt Hasselbeck, the 50-year-old former three-time Pro Bowl quarterback, spent two days at Boston University undergoing MRIs, PET scans, blood draws, and cognitive tests — and pledged to donate his brain after death to the same CTE research effort.
- Michael Alosco, co-director of clinical research at the Boston University CTE Center, is principal investigator on a study aiming to detect CTE in living patients; CTE can currently only be confirmed post-mortem, and researchers are hunting for a protein marker specific to CTE rather than Alzheimer's.
- The National Institutes of Health awarded $15 million in 2025 to fund the study, which is enrolling former football players and Alzheimer's patients with no contact-sport history across sites in Boston, California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida.
- Bryan Savage, a 56-year-old former Division III linebacker at Union College diagnosed with depression and ADHD in recent years, flew from Maryland to Boston for the study and received reassuringly normal scan results for a man his age.
- CTE has been confirmed post-mortem in more than 100 former NFL players, including Hall of Famers Junior Seau and Ken Stabler and former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, fueling the urgency behind the diagnostic push.
- Hasselbeck said he suffered three concussions before college and recalled a locker-room culture in which the only acceptable answer after a head hit was 'I'm good,' though that shifted dramatically toward honest reporting by the mid-2010s during his 1998–2015 career.
Why it matters: CTE has been diagnosed post-mortem in 100+ former NFL players, yet no living test exists — and principal investigator Nicholas Ashton said treatments 'exploded' with Alzheimer's once accurate diagnosis became possible. The NIH's $15 million, five-state push could finally give the same diagnostic foothold to a disease that has shadowed the league for decades, with Alosco saying treatment trials can begin the moment a living test is validated.
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