Man dies at age 77.
Double the life expectancy of a human not 100 years ago.
I still don't really understand the "controversy" surrounding concussion.
Hitting your head hard isn't good - that shouldn't be news to anyone.
It's a delayed effect, sure, but it's a major contributor to a large number of players. It's also not confined to people in later life; these kind of mental issues (mood swings - which have in a couple of cases resulted in suicides, memory loss, dementia, etc.) can occur as a result in early middle age. There are cases where NFL players who aren't even 40 are gettting memory loss; it's not just "oh, I'm going to die age 89 instead of 90 so what".
Sure, someone dying at 77 wouldn't be a huge deal if it weren't from a hot-issue illness but it's a big deal because it's the first one found, not because it's the only one. There's bound to be other guys out there and they will include some players who are only just retired, for sure - hell, the footballer in that article you quoted was 29!
Now, the stats for pro-level rugby are that for every minute you play, you're roughly half as likely to get a concussion as in the NFL (and about double as likely as in ice hockey). Given that they've got hundreds of cases of NFL players in their 40s, 50s having dementia from this then you've got to admit half of that is still a huge number.
There is an element of risk to anything in life, but that just means being aware and keeping it as low as possible not taking an "oh, of course it's dangerous" attitude. Look at Formula 1; during the '60s and '70s people died regularly because it was "of course it's risky" but it was actually down to factors that were entirely controllable - poor barriers meaning people hit immovable objects like trees, marshals not having fireproof overalls so drivers choked to death in burning cars, cars not designed with safety in mind - and once they began to improve those, by the '80s the fatality level reduced and from '86 nobody died until '94. After Ratzenberger and Senna, they introduced neck restraints and made changes to the cars and no driver died until DiVillota died of complications from her crash the other year. If people had kept dying at the rate they did in the '70s then over the last 20 years there would have been 18 deaths not 3 - and that doesn't even factor in people driving in other championships who have benefitted from the safer tracks.
Now, with this it's harder to track, harder to fix and it won't be possible to make improvements that dramatic, sure. But people deserve to actually be able to have a proper life, so whatever improvements can be made are definitely worthwhile.