The New York City Midtown Shooting, CTE, and the Cult of Football

On Monday evening, violence erupted at 345 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, a sleek tower that houses the offices of private equity giant Blackstone and the National Football League. Just before 6:30 p.m., a 27-year-old man named Shane Devon Tamura walked into the building’s lobby carrying an M4-style assault rifle. Within minutes, he had killed four people and injured a fifth before taking his own life. Among the victims was NYPD officer Didarul Islam, who had been working a private security detail, and Wesley LePatner, a senior Blackstone executive. The shock of the event was compounded by what Tamura left behind—a three-page note referencing the NFL, the dangers of brain injury, and an eerie final request: “Study my brain. I’m sorry.”

Tamura, who had driven from Las Vegas across the country, appeared obsessed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease associated with repeated head trauma. Whether Tamura actually played football, or merely saw himself as part of the broader culture shaped by it, his writings expressed a sense of betrayal. He accused the NFL of hiding the truth about brain injuries and framed his act of violence, disturbingly, as a kind of vengeance or warning.

This incident would be troubling in any context, but its location—inside a building that symbolizes the merger of capital and American sports mythology—demands closer scrutiny. It touches the raw nerve of a national cult that HEI has investigated before.

In October 2024, we published The Cult of NCAA Football and the Destruction of Young Men, an examination of how Division I college football programs systematically exploit young athletes. These programs market dreams of glory, mobility, and masculinity, only to discard players whose bodies or minds no longer serve the machine. We reported on the toll this system takes—not just in physical injuries, but in suicides, depression, substance abuse, and post-collegiate disillusionment. The culture around football demands pain and silence, while the profits flow to coaches, administrators, and television executives.

That investigation built on earlier work, including The Tragedy of NCAA Athletes Who Died Young, which chronicled the stories of former college athletes who died early—some by suicide, others from heart conditions, overdoses, or unexplained circumstances. These deaths were not random. They were systemic, the result of intense physical demands, inadequate medical oversight, and emotional isolation within a culture that worships toughness and punishes vulnerability.

The broader evidence around CTE has grown increasingly clear. As of 2023, researchers at Boston University had identified CTE in 345 of 376 former NFL players studied after death—an astonishing 91.8 percent. A 2024 study by Mass General Brigham found that one in three former NFL players surveyed—approximately 35 percent—believed they were experiencing symptoms of CTE, such as memory loss, depression, or emotional instability. Even among those who had never been officially diagnosed with a concussion, symptoms were common. Scientists now argue that it is not concussions alone, but repetitive sub-concussive impacts—those hits that don’t cause symptoms but still jostle the brain—that pose the greatest long-term threat.

The crisis starts early. A study funded by the CDC found that youth tackle football players aged 6 to 14 sustained 15 times more high-magnitude head impacts than flag football players. Despite the NFL’s public safety campaigns and rule modifications, many of these reforms have not trickled down to college, high school, or youth programs. Guardian Caps—foam covers placed over helmets to reduce head impacts—are now standard in NFL practices but remain optional or absent in amateur leagues.

Tamura’s final request to have his brain studied postmortem mirrors the last acts of former football players like Junior Seau, Tyler Hilinski, and Phillip Adams, who took their own lives and were later confirmed to have suffered from CTE. The difference here is that Tamura reportedly had no known football career. His identification with CTE suggests something darker—a cultural proximity to violence and despair reinforced by football’s influence on masculinity, toughness, and worth.

Football is not just a sport in the United States; it is an institution that binds masculinity to sacrifice and identity to violence. It teaches boys to ignore pain, suppress fear, and prove their value through physical domination. For those who succeed, there are scholarships and contracts. For those who don’t, there are broken bodies and forgotten names. And for a growing number, there are stories ending in suicide, addiction, or in this case, public violence.

The NFL has the resources to protect its players. Universities have the responsibility to care for their students. But what remains in question is whether either institution has the will to do so. HEI has chronicled the recurring patterns—of exploitation, denial, and silence—in both sports and education. We have seen young athletes discarded after injury, whistleblowers ignored, and mental health support offered only when it serves branding or liability defense.

Monday’s shooting was not simply a tragedy—it was a mirror held up to a society that profits from physical destruction while ignoring psychological harm. It reminded us that the myth of football’s nobility has a human cost. And that silence, whether in locker rooms or corporate boardrooms, is not safety. It is complicity.

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Sources
Higher Education Inquirer. "The Tragedy of NCAA Athletes Who Died Young." April 2025. https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2025/04/the-tragedy-of-ncaa-athletes-who-died.html
Higher Education Inquirer. "The Cult of NCAA Football and the Destruction of Young Men." October 2024. https://www.highereducationinquirer.org/2024/10/the-cult-of-ncaa-football-and.html
Boston University CTE Center. "BU CTE Diagnoses in NFL Players." Updated 2023. https://www.bu.edu/cte/
Mass General Brigham. “One in Three Former NFL Players Believe They Have CTE.” 2024. https://www.massgeneralbrigham.org/en/about/newsroom/press-releases/study-finds-1-in-3-former-nfl-players-believe-they-have-cte
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Comparing Head Impacts in Youth Football.” 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/traumatic-brain-injury/data-research/comparing-head-impacts
ABC News. “Shooter’s Note Referenced NFL, CTE.” July 29, 2025. https://abcnews.go.com/US/midtown-shooting-suspect-left-note-mentioning-nfl-cte/story?id=124163966
People. “Blackstone Executive Killed in NYC Shooting.” July 29, 2025. https://people.com/blackstone-executive-wesley-lepatner-new-york-city-mass-shooting-victim-11780775

The NCAA–DoD CARE Study Suspended: What’s Next for Concussion and CTE Research?

The Higher Education Inquirer is calling on both the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to explain the suspension of the Concussion Assessment, Research and Education (CARE) Consortium, the largest concussion study in U.S. history. Since 2014, CARE has sought to illuminate the effects of concussion and repetitive head impact exposure (HIE) on student-athletes and military service members.

A Decade of Groundbreaking Work

Funded through an initial $30 million “Grand Alliance,” CARE enrolled more than 53,000 athletes and cadets and tracked over 5,500 diagnosed concussions across more than two dozen universities and four service academies. Its successive phases—CARE 1.0 (acute effects), CARE 2.0 (cumulative impacts), and CARE-SALTOS Integrated (long-term outcomes)—provided unprecedented insights into how concussions affect recovery, cognition, mood, sleep, and overall well-being.

The CARE study generated more than 90 peer-reviewed publications, influencing safety protocols, athletic training practices, and public health debates in both NCAA settings and the U.S. military.

CTE and the Need for Decades-Long Research

The suspension comes at a critical moment. Concerns about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)—a degenerative brain disease linked to repetitive head trauma—are rising. Because CTE’s symptoms often surface decades after injuries, researchers emphasize that only long-term, continuous studies can reveal who develops CTE and why.

Pausing or dismantling CARE risks losing continuity in precisely the kind of data needed to connect the dots between adolescent or collegiate injuries and late-life neurodegenerative conditions.

Collateral Damage: Workers Left Behind

The disruption of CARE has already produced casualties beyond lost data. At the University of Michigan, one of the leading CARE sites, about two dozen research workers were abruptly laid off. Without union protections, they had little recourse. This underscores how fragile large research consortia can be—dependent not only on grants and institutional goodwill, but also on a workforce often treated as disposable.

These layoffs raise troubling questions: If the workers who made CARE possible are discarded without warning, what does that say about the broader commitment to athlete and cadet safety?

Outstanding Questions for NCAA and DoD

The Higher Education Inquirer is pressing for answers:

• Why was CARE suspended? Was this due to funding shortfalls, shifting priorities, or political pressure?

• Will existing data remain accessible? The CARE Consortium has been a vital contributor to the Federal Interagency Traumatic Brain Injury Research (FITBIR) database.

• What about the workforce? Why were employees terminated without protections, and what obligations do the NCAA, DoD, and participating universities have to them?

• What is the long-term plan for concussion research? Without decades-long studies, the risks of CTE and other late-life conditions will remain poorly understood.

Big Loss for Athletes

If CARE is permanently suspended, the consequences will extend far beyond academia. Athletes and cadets will lose a vital source of protection, science will lose irreplaceable data, and workers will continue to bear the costs of institutional indifference.

The Higher Education Inquirer urges the NCAA and DoD to clarify CARE’s future and recommit to the kind of decades-long research that brain science demands. Anything less is a betrayal—to athletes, to service members, and to the very workers who made this research possible.

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Sources

• NCAA. NCAA-DOD Grand Alliance: CARE Consortium. ncaa.org

• CARE Consortium. About the Consortium. careconsortium.net

• NCAA. NCAA and Department of Defense expand concussion study with $22.5 million. (October 31, 2018). ncaa.org

• U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command. Research Supporting a Lifetime of Brain Injury. mrdc.health.mil

• NIH. Concussion Assessment, Research, and Education Consortium (CARE) Study Data. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

End of an Era

[Editor's note: We have suspended our three decade long run of independent (muckraking) journalism and analysis and will let you know where we go from here. The 2024 lawsuit against founder/editor Dahn Shaulis (Chip Paucek and Pro Athlete Community v Dahn Shaulis) is pending. While the legal bill is enormous, we expect to win. In the meantime, please support independent voices like Richard Wolff, Roger Sollenberger, Julie K. Brown, and Troy Barile.  #veritas]

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On our last full day of operation, we extend our deepest gratitude to the many courageous voices who have contributed to the Higher Education Inquirer over the years. Through research, reporting, whistleblowing, analysis, and public service, you have exposed inequities, challenged powerful interests, and helped the public understand the realities of higher education.

Special thanks to:
Bryan Alexander (Future Trends Forum), J. J. Anselmi (author), Devarian Baldwin (Trinity College),  Lisa Bannon (Wall Street Journal), Joe Berry (Higher Education Labor United), Kate Bronfenbrenner (Cornell), Stephen Burd (New America), Ann Bowers (Debt Collective), James Michael Brodie (Black and Gold Project Foundation), Patrick Campbell (Vets Ed Brief), Richard Cannon (activist), Kirk Carapezza (WGBH), Kevin L. Clay (Rutgers), Randall Collins (UPenn), Marianne Dissard (activist), Cory Doctorow, William Domhoff (UC Santa Cruz), Ruxandra Dumitriu, Keil Dumsch, Garrett Fitzgerald (College Recon), Glen Ford (with the ancestors), Richard Fossey (Condemned to Debt), Erica Gallagher (2U Whistleblower), Cliff Gibson III (Gibson & Keith), Henry Giroux (McMaster University), Terri Givens (University of British Columbia), Luke Goldstein (The Lever),  Nathan Grawe (Carleton College), Michael Green (UNLV), Michael Hainline (Restore the GI Bill for Veterans), Debra Hale Shelton (Arkansas Times), Stephanie M. Hall (Protect Borrowers),  David Halperin (Republic Report), Bill Harrington (Croatan Institute), Phil Hill (On EdTech), Robert Jensen (UT Austin), Seth Kahn (WCUP), Hank Kalet (Rutgers), Ben Kaufman (Protect Borrowers), Robert Kelchen (University of Tennessee), Karen Kelsky (The Professor Is In), Neil Kraus (UWRF), LACCD Whistleblower, Michelle Lee (whistleblower), Wendy Lynne Lee (Bloomsburg University of PA), Emmanuel Legeard (whistleblower), Adam Looney (University of Utah), Alec MacGillis (ProPublica), Jon Marcus (Hechinger Report), Steven Mintz (University of Texas), John D. Murphy (Mission Forsaken), Annelise Orleck (Dartmouth), Margaret Kimberly (Black Agenda Report), Austin Longhorn (UT student loan debt whistleblower), Richard Pollock (journalist), Debbi Potts (whistleblower), Jack Metzger (Roosevelt University), Derek Newton (The Cheat Sheet), Jeff Pooley (Annenberg Center), Fahmi Quadir (Safkhet Capital), Chris Quintana (USA Today), Jennifer Reed (University of Akron), Kevin Richert (Idaho Education News), Gary Roth (Rutgers-Newark), Mark Salisbury (TuitionFit), Stephanie Saul (NY Times), Christopher Serbagi (Serbagi Law), Alex Shebanow  (Fail State), Bob Shireman (TCF), Bill Skimmyhorn (William & Mary), Peter Simi (Chapman University), Jeffrey Sonnenfeld (Yale), Gary Stocker (College Viability), Strelnikov (Wikipedia Sucks), Taylor Swaak (Chronicle of Higher Education), Theresa Sweet (Sweet v Cardona), Harry Targ (Purdue University), Moe Tkacik (American Prospect),  Kim Tran (activist), Mark Twain Jr. (business insider), Michael Vasquez (The Tributary), Marina Vujnovic (Monmouth), Richard Wolff (Economic Update), Todd Wolfson (Rutgers, AFT), Helena Worthen (Higher Ed Labor United), DW (South American Correspondent), Heidi Weber (Whistleblower Revolution), Michael Yates (Monthly Review), government officials who have supported transparency and accountability, and the countless other educators, researchers, whistleblowers, advocates, and public servants whose work strengthens our understanding of higher education.

Together, you form a resilient network of knowledge, courage, and public service, showing that collective insight can illuminate even the most entrenched systems. Your dedication has been, and continues to be, invaluable.

Dahn Shaulis and Glen McGhee

NCAA Football Is Dirty… And It Always Has Been

For more than a century, college football has wrapped itself in pageantry, school colors, marching bands, and the language of amateur virtue. It has sold itself as character-building, educational, and fundamentally different from professional sports. Yet from its earliest days to the present NIL era, NCAA football has been marked by exploitation, corruption, racial inequality, physical harm, and institutional hypocrisy. The truth is not that college football has recently become “dirty.” It has always been this way.

College football emerged in the late 19th century as a violent, chaotic game played almost exclusively by elite white men at private Northeastern universities. By the 1890s, dozens of players were dying each season from on-field injuries. In 1905 alone, at least 18 young men were killed. The brutality became so extreme that President Theodore Roosevelt summoned university leaders to the White House, demanding reforms to save the sport—or shut it down entirely. The NCAA’s predecessor organization was born not to protect players, but to protect football itself.

From the beginning, control and image management mattered more than athlete welfare.

As the sport spread nationally in the early 20th century, universities discovered football’s power as a marketing and fundraising engine. Gate receipts financed campuses, built stadiums, and elevated institutional prestige. With that money came cheating. Schools openly paid players under the table, provided fake jobs, and created academic loopholes to keep athletes eligible. The NCAA responded not by ending exploitation, but by codifying “amateurism”—a concept designed to deny players compensation while preserving institutional profit.

That amateur ideal was always selective. Coaches became highly paid public figures, administrators gained power and prestige, and universities used football to attract donors and students. Players, meanwhile, were expected to risk their bodies for scholarships that could be revoked, often steered into academic programs that prioritized eligibility over education. The system worked exactly as intended.

Race made the exploitation even starker. For much of the 20th century, Black athletes were excluded outright or limited by quotas, especially in the South. When integration finally occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, it did not bring equity. Black players disproportionately filled the most physically punishing positions, generated enormous revenue, and remained shut out of coaching, administrative leadership, and long-term financial benefit. The plantation metaphor—uncomfortable as it is—has endured because it fits.

Throughout the postwar era, scandals became routine. Academic fraud at powerhouse programs. Boosters laundering payments. Universities covering up recruiting violations while publicly moralizing about rules and integrity. The NCAA positioned itself as a regulator, but enforcement was inconsistent and often political. Blue-blood programs negotiated slaps on the wrist while smaller schools were hammered to make examples. Justice was never blind; it was strategic.

Meanwhile, the physical toll on players worsened. As athletes grew larger, faster, and stronger, the sport became more dangerous. Concussions were downplayed for decades. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was ignored until it could no longer be denied. Players suffering brain injuries were dismissed as weak, while universities and conferences cashed ever-larger media checks. The NCAA claimed ignorance, even as evidence mounted and lawsuits piled up.

The television era transformed college football into a billion-dollar entertainment industry. Conference realignment chased broadcast revenue, not regional tradition or student well-being. Athletes were asked to travel cross-country on school nights, miss classes, and perform under relentless pressure—all while being told they were “students first.” The hypocrisy became harder to conceal.

By the early 21st century, the contradictions finally cracked. Legal challenges exposed the NCAA’s amateurism rules as a restraint of trade. Courts acknowledged what players had long known: universities were profiting massively from their labor while denying them basic economic rights. Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) was not a revolution—it was an overdue concession.

Yet even in the NIL era, the dirt remains. The system still lacks transparency. Booster-driven collectives operate in legal gray zones. Players are encouraged to chase short-term deals without long-term protections. There is no guaranteed healthcare beyond enrollment, no pension, no real collective bargaining for most athletes. Coaches can leave at will; players are scrutinized, transferred, or discarded.

The NCAA insists it is reforming. Conferences promise stability. Universities speak the language of athlete empowerment. But the underlying structure remains unchanged: unpaid or under-protected labor generating extraordinary wealth for institutions that claim educational mission while operating like entertainment corporations.

College football’s defenders often say, “It’s always been this way,” as if that excuses the harm. In reality, that phrase is an indictment. From the deadly fields of the 1900s to the concussion-ridden stadiums of today, from Jim Crow exclusion to modern NIL chaos, the sport has been built on control, denial, and profit.

The problem with NCAA football is not that it lost its way. It never had one.

What is new is not the dirt—but the visibility. Players now speak openly. Courts intervene. Fans question the myths. The mask is slipping, and the century-old fiction of purity is harder to maintain. Whether that leads to real change—or merely a cleaner narrative over the same exploitative core—remains to be seen.

But history is clear. College football did not fall from grace.

It was born compromised.

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Sources

– National Collegiate Athletic Association, History of the NCAA
– Michael Oriard, Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle
– Taylor Branch, “The Shame of College Sports,” The Atlantic
– Allen Sack & Ellen Staurowsky, College Athletes for Hire
– ESPN Investigations and NCAA Infractions Reports
– Boston University CTE Center research on football-related brain injury
– U.S. Supreme Court, NCAA v. Alston (2021)