As the Super Bowl brings teams and fans together in legal cannabis states, the NFL’s evolving stance reflects how marijuana has quietly become part of American sports, recovery, and game-day culture.

Researchers are exploring whether cannabinoids may help protect football players’ brains from repetitive head trauma and CTE—but current evidence is early, limited, and far from conclusive.

New York’s nascent legal marijuana market continued to surge at the tail end of the summer, with a whopping $214.4 million in sales for the month of August, a new monthly sales record for the nearly ...