Ex-QB Matt Hasselbeck part of quest for living diagnosis of CTE - ESPN

PHOENIX — Matt Hasselbeck took some nasty hits to the head during his 17-year NFL career, four years at Boston College and a childhood full of sports, but the quarterback seems to have emerged from more than two decades of collisions relatively unscathed, enjoying middle adulthood with his wife and three children.

The 50-year-old knows that some of his friends and former teammates haven't been as lucky.

That's why the three-time Pro Bowl selection recently spent two days at Boston University, going through a battery of scans and tests to determine how much all those collisions affected his brain. The hope is that it will be a small step toward a goal that has eluded doctors: diagnosing chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the living.

«They need guys like me. They need people who are feeling good to step up to the plate and volunteer,» Hasselbeck said. «I played quarterback, so I didn't take some of the hits that a lot of my teammates took.

»But the guys who were blocking for me, or playing special teams, or trying to get the ball back for me on defense, I wanted to do something. They had my back, so in a way I'd like to have their back."

A degenerative brain disease that has been linked to concussions and other head trauma common in military combat and contact sports, CTE has been diagnosed in more than 100 former NFL players, casting a pall over the United States' most popular sports league. Some high-profile football players diagnosed with CTE after their deaths include Hall of Famers like linebacker Junior Seau and quarterback Ken Stabler, along with former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez.

Right now, CTE can be diagnosed only after death.

CTE can affect regions of the brain involved with regulating