A real kick in the head
‘THEIR first move was to exterminate me professionally,” Dr. Bennet Omalu tells The Post.
He’s not talking about some Third World government or biker gang. He’s talking about one of America’s most beloved organizations, the NFL.
Omalu ran afoul of the NFL when, back in 2002, he identified a degenerative brain disease associated with playing football.
The story of his research and the battle against one of the world’s most powerful sports organizations is told in “Concussion,” opening Christmas Day. Will Smith plays Omalu.
“Not in my wildest dreams did I think there would be a movie made about me, but this has never been about me,” Omalu says. “It’s more about the players and their families. I realized they suffered in silence and obscurity.”
Omalu grew up in Nigeria, earning multiple degrees. He moved to the US in 1994 and eventually settled in Pittsburgh, working as a forensic pathologist for the county.
He was on call at that job in 2002 when the body of Mike Webster was brought in. “Iron Mike” played for the Steelers from 1974 to 1988 and was a local hero. But following his retirement, he suffered from headaches, de- mentia and other ailments that sent him spiraling downward. At the time of his death, he was living out of his truck, due to his condition and bad investments.
Omalu was puzzled how an otherwise healthy 50-year-old man would have so many mental issues. Using his own money to pay for tests, he took the unusual step of examining Webster’s brain.
“I knew nothing about football,” Omalu says. “I wasn’t [swayed by my love or] addiction to football. I was objective. I was guided by my experiences and my faith to do what is right.”
He later had the chance to examine other deceased football players — and what he found would shake up the NFL.
Omalu published his findings in the July 2005 issue of the journal “Neurosurgery.” The article posited that repeated blows to the head during football games could lead to dementia, depression and other problems. He called it “chronic traumatic encephalopathy.”
The NFL, whose leading in-house concussion expert was a Long Island rheumatologist who went to medical school in Mexico, immediately asked
Omalu to retract his findings.
“As a scientist, if you publish a scientific paper and it’s retracted, you are finished,” Omalu says. He refused.
“I was followed once or twice. I got threatening phone calls,” says Omalu, who is currently chief medical examiner of San Joaquin County, Calif. “When I wrote my book, ‘Play Hard, Die Young,’ I self-published it for the sake of posterity. I figured if anything happened to me, something was written down.”
In 2013, the NFL made a $765-million deal to settle lawsuits brought by some 4,500 players alleging that the organization ignored the dangers of head trauma.
It’s clearly a p.r. problem the NFL would rather not deal with. According to Omalu, a team physician once told him that if Omalu continued with his work, and if 10 percent of mothers began to perceive football as dangerous, “that is the end of football.”
“I’m not anti-football, anti-NFL, anti-sports,” Omalu says. “I stand by the truth.”