Does it pay better than a career as a dockworker or insulation installer over the course of each career?

Did it when the people being impacted by CTE today played?

I think most people overestimate the career earnings of the average football player and especially don't discount for the dramatic increase in pay that happened in the last 20 years?

Or the fact that an overwhelming majority of football players don't ever collect a paycheck. It isn't like all of these NFL players just started receiving brain damage once they reached the NFL at the age of 22. They probably started playing football in their early teens. Odds are no one else on that player's middle or high school teams and only a hand full of people on their college team made the NFL. Yet they were all subject to the same type of head trauma.

Something like 6% of HS students play football. If 9% of them get CTE, that'd be a huge number of people.

Well presumably the risks are much less after 1-3 years vs 10+.