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Ticats' legend Angelo Mosca is battling Alzheimer's, adding to the list of former CFLers with neurological diseases

Angelo Mosca capped off his amazing CFL career with this 1972 Grey Cup win. Now, he's battling Alzheimer's disease. (Chuck Stoody/The Canadian Press.)
Angelo Mosca capped off his amazing CFL career with this 1972 Grey Cup win. Now, he's battling Alzheimer's disease. (Chuck Stoody/The Canadian Press.)

The numbers of former CFL players facing neurological battles continues to grow, as Curtis Rush of The Toronto Star reports that Hamilton Tiger-Cats' legend and Canadian Football Hall of Fame member Angelo Mosca is dealing with Alzheimer's disease. The 78-year-old Mosca has shown signs of memory loss recently, and a MRI test last week led to the Alzheimer's diagnosis. What's particularly notable are the comments about how his football (and wrestling) careers may have led to this, though. From Rush's piece:

“The MRI showed a lot of brain damage,” Mosca said. “I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t bitter; I was hurting. This was a real tough day.”

When the doctor saw how badly damaged Mosca’s brain was, he asked: “Did you get in a lot of fights as a kid?” The doctor didn’t know that Mosca was, for years, one of the most feared defensive linemen in the CFL — and followed that up with a career as a pro wrestler.

That puts Mosca in the ranks of the many former CFL players who have faced severe neurological diseases, from ALS to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) to dementia and more. Of course, it's not only football players who develop Alzheimer's and the like, but former football players are developing these diseases at a rate much higher than the general population, and links have been found; as Rush notes, the NFL's concussion lawsuit settlement indicates that league expects 6,000 former players to develop Alzheimer's or moderate dementia in the coming decades. Thus, while it's difficult to specifically attribute neurological diseases that come on decades later to particular football hits (and particularly so in Mosca's case, given that the years he spent as a prominent wrestler likely factored in too), the probabilities would appear to indicate that his years in the CFL likely contributed to this.

Mosca was one of the CFL's most legendary defensive tackles from 1958 to 1972, spending most of that time in Hamilton (1958-59 and 1963-72, with stints in Ottawa and Montreal in between). He earned five divisional all-star nods and two league all-star selections, and he was a big part of the legendary Ticats' squads of that era. He appeared in nine Grey Cup games, the most in CFL history, and he won five (four with Hamilton and one with Ottawa). Mosca, originally from Waltham, Massachusetts, has also settled down in Ontario, and he's been a key ambassador for the Ticats and the CFL over the years, even attending plenty of practices and forming friendships with the current players. This news about his battle with Alzheimer's is sad news for all CFL fans given what Mosca's done for this league over the years.

The odds would also suggest that this is far from the last case of severe neurological issues we're going to see from a former CFL player. More and more CFL alumni have come forward with their stories of the struggles they're facing now, and in addition to the ongoing suit filed by recent player Arland Bruce III, there's still reportedly an alumni lawsuit in the works involving plenty of prominent players. We'll see how that plays out. For now, the thoughts of the CFL community are with Mosca, his wife Helen, and all the other former players dealing with neurological struggles.