The NFL has a major CTE problem, sure, but to me the bigger problem is for amateur sports, especially high school and the NCAA.
I can justify following a sport that is essentially a blood sport when I know the players involved are making many, many times what they could ever hope to earn in a "normal" profession given their level of education and skills outside of that sport.
There are lots of industries where workers agree to do heavy, dangerous labor for long hours week after week, inevitably resulting in their bodies failing at a young age, in exchange for a much larger paycheck than they would receive in a safer job with comparable educational and skill requirements. We as a society don't have a problem with those jobs existing. We don't mind the idea that a person might choose to sacrifice their own health in order to provide for their family.
What about all of the players who are very serious about football from a young age up through their senior year of college, and never earn a single paycheck for playing?
I suspect many of them end up with very significant CTE, even if it's not at the same level as guys who play in the NFL for 5, 10, 15 years.
I feel that it is much harder to justify being a fan of amateur football, from a moral perspective, than it is to justify NFL fandom.
Of course, the question that is raised by these findings with Hernandez is what liability should the NFL have toward the victims of players who commit violent acts which can likely be proven to be made possible at least in part by frequent head trauma?
I would say the NFL needs to make sure they have a huge pool of funds set aside for settling such lawsuits. I imagine they do. I would guess they've had one for a long, long time.