The Science of Concussion and Brain Injury, League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth. BOB FITZSIMMONS: The NFL acknowledges that repetitive trauma to the head in football, football can cause a permanent disabling injury to the brain. Without any history of diagnosed concussions, it seemed unlikely he had CTE. STEVE FAINARU: He was very much a creature of this expanding juggernaut of the NFL. It looks as almost as if he's out cold. And he said, "No, you can't attend. And that is not scientifically valid data. MARK FAINARU-WADA, FRONTLINE/ESPN: There's going to be a meeting that the commissioner is holding with former players. I know theres something wrong, but you need to help me tell the world what happened to you.. PETER KEATING, ESPN Reporter: Good PR is one part of the NFL strategy. I'm, like, "Wow! Then Perfetto took matters into her own hands. ", CHRIS NOWINSKI, Co-Director, BU CTE Center: I spent time making calls. Let's go! STEVE YOUNG, San Francisco 49ers, 1987-99: I remember thinking as I walked to the sidelines, "This is not good," you know? He was he actually he broke down in tears in front of me a couple of times because he couldn't get his thoughts together and he couldn't keep them in order. NARRATOR: What she saw was that telltale protein, tau. I think that we need to learn more about these former athletes, learn more about them during their living years so that we can better understand what their neuro-cognitive function is like, what their emotional status is like. MIKE ORIARD: The sense of football as something powerful and elemental and mythic and epic. You have to sacrifice years down the line. NARRATOR: Webster's Sunday afternoons were spent on the line of scrimmage, brutal territory known as "the pit.". HARRY CARSON, Author, Captain For Life: I think everyone now has a better sense of what damage you can get from playing football. Once you hit full speed and you're moving backwards and he hits you, you're gone. He removed Websters rib cage with a small oscillating saw. DOCUMENT: "These statements are based on a complete misunderstanding of the relevant medical literature.". CHRIS NOWINSKI, Author of the Book/Film Head Games: I'd be a fool not to worry about CTE personally. You're just trying to get by in this storm. It says you guys are now the NFL's "preferred" brain bank and that the league will help with efforts to direct families to donate the brains of former players to Boston so that they will be studied for CTE. It's still being debated. There must be really important variables, genetics, things about the type of exposure to brain trauma people get. COLIN WEBSTER, Son: You know, he was supergluing his teeth back into his head, and he actually made that work. The league donated $30 million dollars to the NIH to study sports injuries, including joint disease, chronic pain and CTE. Outside the building, TV trucks and reporters had gathered with the news that Iron Mike Webster, the indestructible force of four Super Bowl champions, the center of gravity of the Steeler dynastyour strength, Bradshaw had called himwas inside on a slab. STEVE FAINARU: He was a steroid user. NARRATOR: Junior Seau's brain was sent to the National Institutes of Health, the NIH. MARK FAINARU-WADA: Five minutes later, they're sitting there, they're continuing to hang out, and Aikman suddenly turns to Steinberg and says, "What am I doing here?" He was not an expert in neurology and had no background in brain research. NARRATOR: One week later, the commissioner made the league's position clear. Superagent Leigh Steinberg saw it firsthand. What? And not that everybody was looking down. Bailes delivered Omalu's message: Playing football could cause permanent brain damage. NARRATOR: Such an advanced case of CTE had never been found in such a young person. NARRATOR: Aiello insisted the study's design was flawed. And I said, "Well, you're in the hospital." Ranking NFL coaches by hotness of their seat. It's only for players. And she's told she's not allowed to enter the room. In the meantime, we have to do everything we can to advance the game and make sure it's safe. I said, "What are you talking about?" NARRATOR: For Mike Webster, the head hits just kept on coming for 17 years. JANE LEAVY: The attitude is so careful about that this is a person that's being delivered into their care. MARK FAINARU-WADA: The Times now suddenly has a huge story, that the NFL has acknowledged a link between brain damage and football. NEWSCASTER: The National Football League says it will encourage current and former players to donate their brains, NARRATOR: As the story of the deal broke, NEWSCASTER: The NFL is donating $1 million towards the study. NARRATOR: Harry Carson has been studying the matter since he retired 25 years ago. Webster wanted to prove to the world that he was going to be the toughest, and he did anything that he possibly could to do that. NARRATOR: Some researchers say Dr. McKee has examined only a limited sample of players and too few brains to justify her conclusions. Dr. BENNET OMALU: Mike looked older than his age. It was a hard message, a difficult message, a bad message, but it appeared to be true. And I said, "The 49ers." CTE has dragged me into the politics of science, the politics of the NFL. He's he's up in the autopsy room." They basically told him to go away and never come back. Ah! Mike, you need to help me. 2023 Scientific American, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. For 70 years, they've loved their football team, the Steelers. Dr. ANN McKEE: I had an 18-year-old at that time. BETH WILKINSON, NFL's Attorney: Let's be clear. To help answer that question we've created a dual chronology, with growing scientific concern about the link between football and brain disease on the left-hand column, and the NFL's public. This is not good science. NARRATOR: And Tagliabue said he was skeptical about the risk from concussions, once calling the controversy the result of "pack journalism.". DOCUMENT: "indicate that his disability is the result of head injuries he suffered as a football player.". Sammy White, he did a remarkable catch with Skip Thomas and Jack Tatum jackknifing him as he caught the ball for a first down on the Oakland 45-yard line. The thing you want your kids to do most of all is succeed in life and be everything they can be. And I said, "But my player my husband is a player who's severely disabled, and he can't be here right now.". And I feel strongly about that, too. PAM WEBSTER: He took a knife and slashed all his football pictures. Hell, I don't know what I'm saying. Odd bulges protruded from his back, varicose veins spidered down his legs, and deep cracks ran along the bottoms of his feet. The minute you put your pads on, you're only one play away from getting seriously injured. It was it was like, you know, a picture of him that was just shattered into a million pieces. Rep. JOHN CONYERS: I just asked you a simple question. PAM WEBSTER, Wife: Mike wasn't Mike. He soon replaced the rheumatologist Dr. Elliot Pellman and promoted the neurologist Dr. Ira Casson. I'm, like, "What does that mean? ", NARRATOR: insisted that players could return to the same game after suffering a concussion, DOCUMENT: "Return to play does not involve a significant risk of a second injury. I really worry for my running back brothers. Stallworth touchdown! Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Park Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. NARRATOR: It was the brain of 18-year-old Eric Pelly. They would not. MARK FAINARU-WADA: And so ultimately, he committed suicide by drinking antifreeze. He had died of a heart attack. NEWSCASTER: Terry Long killed himself by drinking anti-freeze. The skin on his forehead had built up almost a shelf of scar tissue that from the continuous pounding of his head into other people. Jun. STEVE FAINARU: They'd just been hauled before Congress and the commissioner was embarrassed by Linda Sanchez. And in fact, when you talk about that later with Fitzsimmons, he describes that as the sort of proverbial smoking gun. Dr. JULIAN BAILES: I was not the bearer of good news, probably, in many people's minds. Signs of a concussion, according to the league's protocol, include the following: loss of consciousness, lack of balance, holding head after contact, a look of confusion, getting up slowly, a . To see the skull exposed is to understand the preciousness of its contents, the brains utter indispensability to who we are. 3Josh Cribbs feels very fortunate that he played for the Browns when he did, because if he were an undrafted rookie in 2023, his NFL career . NEWSCASTER: Terry Long committed suicide by drinking anti-freeze. That was the message, "Don't worry about it. ", STEVE FAINARU: And Omalu becomes very firm in that moment, and he says, "Fix the brain. NARRATOR: By the mid-90s, the concussion crisis had made its way to NFL headquarters on Park Avenue in New York City. Dr. McKee had read Dr. Omalu's research, but she wanted to see for herself. February 1, 2016 06:09 IRA CASSON, M.D., Co-Chair, MTBI Committee, 2007-09: No. HARRY CARSON, Author, Captain For Life: The human body was not created or built to play football. TYLER SEAU: People started saying things about Omalu, kind of telling me the kind of character that he has. So everything's crumbling. He was the right person to do it. JUNIOR SEAU: You have to sacrifice your body. I don't know how he held onto that! Rep. MAXINE WATERS (D), California: We have heard from the NFL time and time again. NARRATOR: Back in the lab, McKee had seen another surprising case. If I had not been told his age, I would say he looked like 70. NEWSCASTER: The NFL will have a new commissioner. STEVE FAINARU: Webster's forehead was essentially fixed to its scalp. CHRIS NOWINSKI: At the beginning, when I first kind of got up the nerve to do it, you know, I wrote down a script and I prepared, I practiced, mentally preparing myself for wandering into someone's life like this. But one person was missing. From the beginning of the autopsy, Dr. Omalu could see the effects of 17 years in the football wars. NARRATOR: And according to Dr. McKee, there was something else, something familiar about the way the NFL committee was acting. He knocked him to the moon.". CHRIS NOWINSKI: You have the responsibility of actually possessing somebody's brain, which is probably the best representation of who they were. Omalus specialty was the science of death. MARK FAINARU-WADA, FRONTLINE/ESPN: This is the genius of Nowinski, really, I mean, right? But this time, it was the league saying it. I could answer this real easy at other times, but right now, I'm just tired. ANNOUNCER: An awesome physical team were the Steelers today! Dr. ANN McKEE: We have examined thousands of brains, and this is not a normal part of aging. TV is paying huge money to televise the sport. NARRATOR: Long was an offensive lineman with the Steelers for eight years. But rather than just publish in scientific journals, Chris Nowinski was determined to get the word out. PAM WEBSTER: We didn't understand what was happening. STAN SAVRAN: That just fit perfectly into the way they saw their own lives and what they had to be in order to survive. CHRIS NOWINSKI: And I said, "There's something really wrong with me." You love 'em wild and woolly, and you're seeing it now. That brain is normal. NEWSCASTER: settlement between the National Football League and thousands of its former players. STEVE FAINARU: About 200 people are gathered there, and running the show is Ira Casson. And it was probably 15 members of the committee. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And I think the NFL has given everybody 765 million reasons why you don't want to play football. It became sort of like his little private mission. NARRATOR: and in one of the papers, even suggested their research might apply to younger athletes, despite the fact they had not studied high school or college players. Concussions and play-related head blows in American football have been shown to be the cause of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which has led to player deaths and other debilitating symptoms after retirement, including memory loss, depression, anxiety, headaches, stress, and sleep disturbances.. Knock him out! NEWSCASTER: The untimely death of Junior Seau is provoking questions. MARK FAINARU-WADA: He basically got his job by writing to the commissioner and saying, "Please, I'd like to work in the NFL.". 22. ", STEVE FAINARU: The message was that football is safe to your brain. So I get it. BENNET OMALU, M.D., Neuropathologist: So when Junior Seau died, just like every other case, people called me. [laughs] So we continued talking, talking. FAITH HILL, Entertainer: [singing] All right, what a night, it's finally here. NARRATOR: Dr. Ira Casson and others on the committee expressed their skepticism that playing football was the cause of CTE. Five years earlier, when Webster was inducted into the Hall of Fame, his old quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, introduced him as the best center thats ever played the game, the best to ever put his hands down on a football. Bradshaw, bald except for a fringe of blond hair, looking like a TV evangelist in his gold Hall of Fame sport coat, gazed up to the gray skies and cried: One more time, let me put my hands under Mike Websters butt! Webster, looking sheepish and befuddled, bent over in his khakis and hiked the ball to Bradshaw as the crowd roared. Thanks for reading Scientific American. He may have been "the" legend and "the" hero because here's that blue-collar worker, a center, who doesn't get any glory, doesn't catch the touchdown passes, doesn't kick the 52-yard field goal to win a game. We need to figure those things out. JEANNE MARIE LASKAS: He is shunned. LEIGH STEINBERG: I watched athletes I represented play with collapsed lungs. He peeled back Websters abdomen, which was thick and taut from the embalming fluid. Do you now acknowledge that there is a link between the game and these concussions that people have been getting, some of these brain injuries? And there he is. There were no long-term psychological problems or cognitive problems in these athletes, in essence, saying it wasn't a problem. At the time, it was something the league would not admit publicly. NARRATOR: The commissioner arrived like a celebrity, the star attraction at the hearing and the focus of all the cameras. NEWSCASTER: He was arrested for forging 19 prescriptions for Ritalin, which he used to combat the erratic behavior caused by. You only get one brain. LEGAL AIDE: OK, representing the National Football League will be Paul Clement. STEVE FAINARU: And that decision would change the NFL because if Webster's brain had not been examined, I don't honestly think that we would be where we're at today. Midfield! NARRATOR: Omalu started at the feet and worked his way up. NEWSCASTER: He died on Tuesday. NARRATOR: For Dr. McKee's colleague Dr. Cantu, the controversial answer was that no one under 14 should play tackle football. He had been out clubbing the night before. NARRATOR: The admission would not be made public until years later, when it was discovered by the Fainaru brothers. Webster had accumulated an arsenal of weapons that included a Sig Sauer P226 semiautomatic pistol, an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle, and a .357 Magnum revolver. Here's a roll-out. How sick, only a few people knew. No.". He's going forward, but all of a sudden, his head is going back and his brain is hitting up against the inside of his skull. And and I think she's a brilliant woman. My boyfriend's been shot! Dr. IRA CASSON: In my opinion, the only scientifically valid evidence of a chronic encephalopathy in athletes is in boxers and in some steeplechase jockeys. And if there's anything that may infringe on that, that may limit that, I don't want my kids doing it. MARK FAINARU-WADA: He's a Nigerian-born, incredibly well-educated guy. I looked again. His brilliance intellectually was matched by being an incredible athlete. I mean, he just walks out of the room, and he takes his empty brain briefcase and he gets back on the plane, and he goes back to San Francisco without having any success. And what I like is he wants to get up off the ground. They're looking into the long-term impact. How many brain traumas do you need to get this? COLIN WEBSTER, Son: He would forget, you know, which way the grocery store was, which way it was to go home. But we didn't really relate that in a modern sport like football, in a helmeted sport, that it could lead to that. Then he submitted a scientific paper on the Webster case to the one journal that seemed to be most interested in head injuries in football, Neurosurgery, and Dr. Apuzzo accepted it. How do you eliminate them with and have the game still be football? Maybe 10 minutes passed, and he looked at me with the same puzzled expression and asked the same sequence of questions. NARRATOR: In 2008, Dr. Ann McKee was a leading Alzheimer's researcher. NARRATOR: Steve Fainaru and his brother, Mark Fainaru-Wada, are investigative reporters. STAN SAVRAN, Pittsburgh Sports Reporter: It fit the personality of a society that became more violent, that became faster, wanted instant gratification. Now he'd get you up in the air. CHRIS NOWINSKI: What motivated me every day was the fact that my head was killing me. NARRATOR: Mike Webster's body was delivered to the Allegheny County coroner's office. NARRATOR: Still, McKee and her colleagues at BU acknowledge there are limits to her research. NEWSCASTER: Linebacker Junior Seau died today in an apparent suicide. She showed up uninvited to a league meeting about caring for retired players. NARRATOR: Casson insisted there was no evidence that football players were at risk for CTE. And you know, that's the way it is. NARRATOR: As the concussion story received more attention, the coverage helped spark interest in the nation's capital. And he's sacked! And so the image of the situation to most fans is that the NFL got taken to task for the concussion problem, OK? JULIAN BAILES, M.D., Team Neurosurgeon, Steelers, 1988-97: Certainly, we knew that if you got hit on the head so many times, maybe you had a 20 percent chance of having dementia pugilistica if you were a former professional boxer. So no, they're definitely different diseases." But the details of how they went about it, that's what's going to stay locked away. NARRATOR: And it had paid off. The Hall of Fame center Mike Webster died at the age of 50. Once his career was over, McHale ran a successful chain of restaurants. He was angrier quicker than before, and didn't have the patience to have, you know, the kids on his lap or take a walk with the kids. It terrified me to see how tender the bond was between sentient consciousness and potential dementia and confusion was. This was not something that I made up. Maybe there should be better evidence by now. NEWSCASTER: The NFL changes its playbook, NEWSCASTER: New rules for treating athletes with concussions, NEWSCASTER: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell wants all teams to adhere to a new policy for head injuries. MARK LOVELL, Ph.D., Neuropsychologist: I look back on some of the papers, yeah, I think I could have done it differently. "Did I play well?" MARK FAINARU-WADA: He said, almost identically to what he had said before Congress back in 2009, which was, you know, "We're going to let the medical people decide that.". And it became part of the popular jargon, you know, "He knocked him silly. PETER KEATING, Reporter, ESPN: It sure looks like it was just a relentless and endless delaying action. ROBERT CANTU, M.D., Neurosurgeon, Boston University: If you're going to put together a blue ribbon committee to study brain trauma, it should have as its chair somebody who has that as a background, either a neurologist, neurosurgeon, neuropathologist, preferably a clinician. LISA McHALE, Wife: Restlessness, irritability and discontent describe Tom to a T today, but no way is it anywhere near the man I had known and the man I had been married to for years. NARRATOR: Eleanor Perfetto was one of them. And I knew that I felt awful. He telephoned Seau's son, Tyler, to get consent to take his father's brain. There was no recognition that anything was caused by football. NARRATOR: On this day, the commissioner would take a front row seat to listen to the best medical minds in the league. I mean, you know, it was, like, "Oh, the girl talked. PETER KEATING: The threat to the NFL from this litigation was existential. The process stiffens the brain until it can be sliced like pound cake and then shaved into slivers to be viewed under a microscope. ANNOUNCER: Down he goes! NARRATOR: Once one of Pittsburgh's greatest football heroes, Webster began living out of a pickup truck. The way the Steelers played the game meshed perfectly with the people. I was, like, floored. She had found CTE in 19 of them. ESPN, where we work, their new contract with the NFL is worth almost $2 billion year. She pushed the rough skin of Websters forehead over his eyes and pulled back his scalp to reveal the top of his head. NARRATOR: In the months following Seau's death, the NFL went on the offensive. NARRATOR: It was young's seventh concussion. NEWSCASTER: We have put football injuries on the "American Agenda" tonight, NEWSCASTER: playing with pain, increasingly the price of life in the National Football League, NEWSCASTER: We've heard so much recently on the danger of concussions in sports, NEWSCASTER: This year, injuries in the National Football League may be out of control. He's 21. The papers were published despite his objections. That's really what is happening here, right? NARRATOR: Then there was the matter of Webster's forehead. But I'm not out there crying about it. ALAN SCHWARZ: And I said, "Greg, you realize that's the first time that anyone associated with the league has made that connection." MARK LOVELL, Ph.D., Neuropsychologist: There's been a sense of fear that's been put into parents that "Maybe I shouldn't let my kids play sports." NARRATOR: It was the first hard evidence that playing football could cause permanent brain damage. NARRATOR: Just two years later, in 2002, Mike Webster died. BOB FITZSIMMONS, Webster's Attorney: Mike was a legend and a hero. You know, here we were in the midst of everything and this potentially giant story was being told, and virtually no one was there. NARRATOR: Lisa McHale had decided to go public with her husband's story. BOB FITZSIMMONS, Webster's Attorney: The thing that struck me the most was how intelligent Mike was, and the problem was that he just couldn't continue those thought patterns for longer than a 30-second period, or a minute or two minutes. They're now denying their own study. No.". This is information that I would have like to have had.". When you have force against force, you're going to have injuries. LEIGH STEINBERG, Sports Agent: It became an entertainment show. And then to be down to a place of poverty, a place where, you know, your brain can't function to finish a sentence without some help from Ritalin or whatever you need to function for a short period of time. Steve has a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in Iraq. NEWSCASTER: There's a changing of the guard at the National Football League. Websters ex-wife, peering into his casket, had noticed that his fingers remained curled so that it looked like he was still holding a football. Webster was 50 years old when he died, but a lot of people thought he looked 70. NARRATOR: For Nowinski, the issue of CTE is personal. ANNOUNCER: And the future opponents are going to have some trouble! If it was ignorance, they should have known. LEIGH STEINBERG: The damage was occurring every week. And the pathologist who's on call that day is this guy, Bennet Omalu. NARRATOR: It is the brain of a former football player. NARRATOR: Webster's final application for disability contained over 100 pages and the definitive diagnosis of his doctors football had caused Webster's dementia. He's, like, "What are you talking about? The NFL and NFLPA established a five-step process that every NFL player diagnosed with a concussion must follow before being cleared to fully practice or participate in an NFL game. NARRATOR: For Webster and others on the field, physical injuries went with the territory. SYDNEY SEAU, Daughter: The past two years have been the roughest. PETER KEATING: Dr. Omalu is excluded, just underscoring how they don't want to do business with him. NARRATOR: And Goodell offered Dr. McKee something she needed even more than money brains. But at that point, I was just kind of you know, I don't want to hear all these things. PAUL TAGLIABUE, NFL Commissioner: [Sports panel discussion, December 1994] Concussions I think is, you know, one of these pack journalism issues, frankly. NEWSCASTER: An apparent suicide by a powerful athlete, NEWSCASTER: A beloved NFL star apparently took his own life today. Those things seem to happen around 1,000 to 1,500 times a year. Game time! PAM WEBSTER: His teeth were falling out. Dr. ANN McKEE: 8, 10, 12? ANNOUNCER: He gets it away quickly and finds the tight end over the middle, and it's Heath Miller! LEIGH STEINBERG: The actual logo of Monday Night Football showed helmets hitting together. NARRATOR: For Chris Harvard, the performance often ended with a blow to the head. He had issues, certainly, during his career. Nobody knows that at this point in time. He fumbled the ball! What possible motive? JEANNE MARIE LASKAS, GQ, "Game Brain": He didn't understand why that would be, but he became more and more curious. 1:57 PBS will premiere a Frontline documentary%2C League of Denial%2C on Tuesday night Two ESPN reporters co-wrote the film and a book%2C examining the NFL%27s past handling of concussions Film. PETER KEATING: The way the NFL handled this was for 15 years to do research that looks awfully like it was designed to say that the league was OK in doing what it was doing which wasn't much to protect players from the dangers of concussions. And prevalence how many players had it. In fact, if I want to relax, that's one way I can relax. And the next thing you know, they are reliving this conversation they'd had five minutes earlier. I had no idea that she was a super football fan. It's you know, it's this sort of surreal scene where the city is celebrating and the quarterback who won the game is in the hospital with his agent. He moved to Lodi, California. I had, you know, a lot of we had a lot of mutual friends, spoke to people at his foundation and just said, you know, "We would like every other case, we would like to review this case, if you want.". NARRATOR: The NFL doctors insisted Dr. Omalu was misunderstanding the science of brain injury. I don't follow football, so I said, "Who is Junior Seau?" And it would be freezing and he'd just be sitting there, just looking miserable. ANNOUNCERS: Oh, did they hit him that time! ANN McKEE, M.D., Neuropathologist, BU CTE Center: We dissect and section his brain, do a whole series of microscopic slides, look at it with all sorts of different stains for different things, and then come to a conclusion about what the diagnosis is. Each time that happens, it's around 20G or more. And I remember thinking, "Why is Ira Casson calling me?". We're going to give them the money, advance that science. You know, there are other issues that we've got to look at. So we continued talking again. You know, like, she had the experience and they didn't. And how common is this? Just a few blocks from NFL headquarters, the commissioner had another problem. And the NFL's message was, "Sorry. NARRATOR: As he had for Webster, Dr. Omalu sectioned part of Long's brain and again had it stained. I really think it shouldn't be published. I mean, what have I done? He's so young. If they got knocked out and went back into the same contest, it didn't matter. CORRESPONDENT: With early onset of Alzheimer's? NARRATOR: But the settlement left one big question unanswered. Doctors have learned a tremendous amount about concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain condition believed to be caused by repeated hits to the head, since. Or is it the result of steroid or drug abuse in a small number of NFL players? So again, I think that's where we had we may have had an issue. And with that head, he'd pop you. STEVE FAINARU: The Disability Committee is part of the NFL. All those parameters are removed. NEWSCASTER: and violent, off-the-field incidents. You know, it was just. ALAN SCHWARZ: It was the people who the league hired to find out the answers to these questions giving them the answers. Simpson gets the call. ANNOUNCER: They're number one in the nation. I'm just tired and confused right now, that's why I say I can't really I can't say it the way I want to say it. There was great doubt. ANN McKEE, M.D., Neuropathologist, BU CTE Center: We take it out, we weigh it, we photograph it, all the external surfaces. This committee was founded in 1994. I'm not saying I was different than that. MARK FAINARU-WADA: Though the league previously, through Greg Aiello, acknowledged a link, there's no more acknowledging a link exists. ", Dr. HENRY FEUER: I you know,I don't know why she feels that way. "Yes, you won." NARRATOR: Besides Mike Webster and Terry Long, Omalu also found CTE in the brains of Andre Waters and Justin Strzelczyk. He didn't know what was going on. CORRESPONDENT: Is there any evidence as of today that links multiple head injuries with any long-term problem like that? NARRATOR: Nowinski made the hard calls, asking families to donate the brain of a deceased loved one. That's all I can say about that. NARRATOR: He had used his body and his head for 20 years in the NFL. An awesome physical team were the Steelers today, Pittsburgh, the Super Bowl champs! I want you to fix the brain.". Oh, yeah! ANNOUNCER: [ABC "Monday Night Football," 1970] O.J. I'm just saying the things we do to one another, OK. You know, "I'm experiencing some problems. NARRATOR: It was a scientific study of former players commissioned by the National Football League itself. But it's not the only issue. PLAYER: Set the tone! We would just we would listen, and "Thank you," and that's it. : We don't know who is at risk for it. JEANNE MARIE LASKAS: That caused the MTBI committee to say, "This is preposterous. He became depressed. I'm really wondering where this stops. STEVE FAINARU: You've got a half dozen prominent researchers immediately began to mobilize to try to get their hands on this brain tissue. ANNOUNCER: He's at the 40! I thought that she presented herself, as I recall it's been several years that there was something something in her manner. But the little mini-concussions are just as dangerous because you might be sustaining six to ten, maybe a dozen of these hits during the course of a game. PETER KEATING, Reporter, ESPN: The closer you look, the less this holds up. He was on my left. NARRATOR: Brain trauma became an obsession. And people always say the brain is the last frontier. NARRATOR: A doctor, Omalu was also a trained neuropathologist. And I remember the technician telling me, he said, "What are you fixing this brain for? It's still wild and woolly, and I love 'em that way! He said, "But I haven't slept nothing." NEWSCASTER: ABC News and ESPN have learned exclusively Seau's brain, NEWSCASTER: visible signs of CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Bradshaw fires. You wont find it in the record books. COLIN WEBSTER, Son: They were fighting it from the beginning, against just the common sense of, you know, here's this guy, look at him, you know? ", [www: Timeline: NFL's changing positions]. NARRATOR: For years, Pellman's committee would insist they were studying the problem, that the danger from concussions was overblown. Before dissecting his subjectsmurder victims, people who had died of unknown or suspicious causeshe carried on internal conversations with the people laid out before him, imploring the dead to help him figure out what had caused their demise. Dr. BENNET OMALU: If you read, Pellman made statements like what I practice is not medicine, it's not science. Then a third time, he interrupted me, and I turned to him and I said, "OK, why don't you tell me what implications are?" ALAN SCHWARZ, The New York Times: Documents were passed to me at Smith and Wollensky's in Manhattan, in an envelope. PRODUCED BY Early in his career, he worked as former commissioner Pete Rozelle's driver. And so a critical question is why does one person get it and another person doesn't. I was really scared. What time is it? NARRATOR: At Dr. McKee's research lab, thanks to the NFL's endorsement, the brain bank business was booming. He looked he looked worn out. NARRATOR: Then just one month later, in Chicago, a dramatic gesture from Commissioner Goodell. I mean, it was great it was very "Deep Throat" by somebody who shall remain nameless. A small, dapper forensic pathologist named Bennet Omalu climbed out. And the answer was, and I'm virtually quoting, "Research has not shown that there are any long-term consequences to concussions in NFL players as long as each injury is treated properly. He was a leader on the team. We don't know that right now. Dr. ANN McKEE: There were NFL players out there that were talking to their wives and saying, "I think this might be something." DOCUMENT: "Omalu et al's description of chronic traumatic encephalopathy is completely wrong.". And he said, "Well, why am I here?" LISA McHALE: He is now the sixth confirmed case of CTE among former NFL players. He looked drained. But one night, in a private meeting, he brought his CTE slides and finally met face to face with one of the NFL's doctors. JIM OTTO, Oakland Raiders, 1960-74: I mean, it's affected my life. It's Dennis Brown coming in. That means denial. The NFL not only publicly denied evidence that long-term brain damage could result from concussions suffered by its players, but worked to undercut it. And it's impacting the way the brain is working, and ultimately, erupting in issues around memory, agitation, anger. And there may be other confounding factors in terms of the genetics that we simply don't understand. And sure enough, stripped across the top of The Times sports section the next day is that very story. NARRATOR: In September of 2006, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue stepped down. THOMAS GIRARDI, Players' Attorney: The main allegations here are it's very simple. ANNOUNCER: a sight that is the last thing in the world the 49ers would want to see. I have to stun him, get my hands on him, throw him off when I see where the ball is going. NARRATOR: Dr. Omalu believed the National Football League would want to know about his discovery. NARRATOR: Most of Pellman's committee was made up of NFL loyalists. Like, you don't try to get a paper retracted unless there's evidence of fraud or plagiarism or something like that. ROBERT STERN, Ph.D., Neuropsychologist, BU CTE Center: Not everyone who hits their head gets this disease. I want to know, what are you doing now? KEVIN GUSKIEWICZ, Ph.D., NFL Head, Neck and Spine Cmte. He's not a neuro anything. 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