Jackson’s brain will be donated to CTE study

The family of Vincent Jackson, the retired three-time Pro Bowl NFL wide receiver who was found dead in a Florida hotel room Monday, donated his brain to researchers at Boston University to determine if he had chromic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma.

“Vincent being who he was would have wanted to help as many people as possible,” Allison Gorrell, a spokesperson for the Jackson family, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “It’s something his family wanted to do to get answers to some of their questions.”

Many unanswered questions, including his cause of death, remain about Jackson’s demise. While it could take weeks to finish an autopsy, Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a radio interview Wednesday that Jackson, 38, had health problems associated with alcoholism, which Chronister said were cited in the unreleased autopsy report. He also said the Jackson family told him that they believed that concussions may have been a factor in his behavior.

Gorrell said the sheriff did not speak for the family. CTE can only be diagnosed posthumously and researchers at Boston University, which houses the world’s largest brain bank devoted to cases involving the disease, said that determination can take months. The severity of a player’s CTE is related to the number of years that he played football and the number of hits he endured, researchers have found.

The brain bank has received a growing number of donations harvested from players who were 34 years old or younger at the time of death. More than half of those athletes had CTE.

A married father of four, Jackson was widely admired in and out of the NFL for his community service and business acumen. A 12-year NFL veteran who played with the San Diego Chargers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jackson was voted Tampa Bay’s nominee for the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award four years running during his five seasons there.

According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, Jackson was found at the Homewood Suites in Brandon, Florida, just a few miles east of Tampa, where hotel staff said he had been staying since Jan. 11. Jackson’s family reported that Jackson was missing Feb. 10. Two days later, sheriffs found him at the hotel and “after assessing Jackson’s well-being,” canceled the missing persons case.

A housekeeper found Jackson dead

Monday morning.

Jackson was a straight-A student in high school and majored in business at Northern Colorado University, where he graduated as the school’s career leading receiver.

He was also a starter on the Bears’ basketball team for two seasons, leading the team in scoring both years.