League of Denial (32 page)

Webster played 17 seasons, winning four Super Bowls, becoming the strongest man in the NFL, and going six years without missing a single offensive play. But his struggles with mental illness would define his legacy as much as his Hall of Fame career. (
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Merril Hoge retired at 29 after a concussion that left him unable to recall his daughter’s name and briefly caused him to go blind. He sued the Chicago Bears doctor for negligence. (
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When confronted with the first cases of football-related brain damage, Joe Maroon, longtime neurological consultant to the Pittsburgh Steelers and a competitive triathlete, said, “If only 10 percent of mothers in America begin to conceive of football as dangerous, that is the end of football.” (
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Mark Lovell, a neuropsychologist, cofounded ImPACT, a hugely popular concussion test, and was a charter member of the NFL’s Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee. He later disavowed the committee’s major findings. (
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Steve Young insisted he was the “vanilla guy” whose concussions were routine, but his retirement after numerous head injuries forced the NFL to confront the growing crisis. (
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Superagent Leigh Steinberg represented practically every starting quarterback in the NFL; he ultimately became concerned that football might destroy the men who helped build his empire. (
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When he retired as NFL commissioner in 2006, Paul Tagliabue (right) dumped a health crisis and a public relations disaster in the lap of his former right-hand man, Roger Goodell (left). (
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As head of the journal
Neurosurgery
, USC professor and New York Giants consultant Michael Apuzzo rubber-stamped the NFL’s concussion research over the objections of peer reviewers, according to one of his editors. (
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As Jets team doctor, Elliot Pellman (left), who also headed the NFL’s research arm, sent severely concussed players back into games, sometimes under pressure from head coach Bill Parcells (right), according to former players. (
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Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian pathologist who documented the first case of football-related brain damage, often conducted research on the porch or dining-room table of his Pittsburgh condominium. (
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Five years after Ira Casson (right) and his colleagues sought to discredit Bennet Omalu and his research on football and neurodegenerative disease, the two men met for the first time at a 2010 congressional hearing in Detroit. (
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Former Pittsburgh Steelers doctor Julian Bailes presented evidence linking football and brain disease to NFL officials, including Commissioner Roger Goodell, only to face mocking skepticism from the cochair of the league’s concussion committee. (
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