AUSTIN, Texas -- When you think football, you think touchdowns, but maybe not head injuries.

"We deal with them every year," said Reagan High School Head Football Coach Keith Carey. "Every single year since I've been a player and a coach."

The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study this week that found 110 of 111 brains of former NFL players showed signs of CTE.

"CTE stands for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, which basically just means, over a long period of time with a lot of brain trauma, you could start to have problems with the function of the brain," said Baylor Scott & White's Dr. K. Michael Webb.

Doctors say CTE is difficult to identify because symptoms may show up years later or not at all. But you have to pay attention.

"If you've had trouble concentrating, if you black out, all of those things are signs that you've had a brain injury," Webb said.

Part of that awareness is taking injuries seriously.

You know, I was a football player and that wasn't always the culture, whether that was a good or bad or wrong thing but we are where we are now and we need to move forward," Carey said. "Players, be comfortable telling their coaches that they're hurt and coaches, understand that we need to report that to our athletic trainers."

If you're injured, hope is not lost.

"There's definitely a high rate of having actual brain dysfunction or changes in the structure of your brain from that, but that doesn't mean that 99 percent of people who play football will get CTE," Webb stressed.

Football may be king, but both doctor and coach said, a healthy athlete is paramount.

"From the inside, looking out, as a parent who loves his kid and a coach who loves football, I think we're in the right place right now and continuing the conversation would be a good thing for everyone," Carey said.

CTE can only be positively identified through an autopsy. Researchers examined a total of 202 brains for the disease, 14 of them are from former high school football players and three showed signs of CTE.

Learn more about the University Interscholastic League's local high school football rules on head injuries: