It was early on a Saturday morning in September 2002 whenforensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu arrived at work tofind legendary Pittsburgh Steelers lineman Mike Webster’scorpse laying atop his cold, metal autopsy table. Since re-tiring from the NFL, the Hall of Famer’s life had descended

into a dark, hopeless spiral of physical and psychological tur-moil. Omalu, who knew “practically nothing” about footballbut plenty about the brain, wanted to understand why. “I talkto my ‘patients,’ ” explains Omalu, recalling how he stood abovethe lifeless body of Webster, 50, who had lived in his truck andsuffered from dementia before dying of a heart attack. “So I

The subject of a new film starringWill Smith, DR. BENNET OMALU’S

findings on player concussions arestirring up controversy ByJOHNNY DODD

HISFIGHT

TO MAKEFOOTBALL SAFER

MIKEWEBSTER

(1952 - 2002)Omalu’s first CTE“patient” in 1980,on the PittsburghSteelers sidelines.

THE CRUSADER

Dr. BennetOmalu’s research

could changefootball forever.

TERRYLONG

(1959 - 2005)The Steelers

lineman(circa 1984)committed

suicideby drinkingantifreeze.

Photograph by CODY PICKENS

TAKINGON THE

NFL

PEOPLE January 4, 2016 57

JUNIOR SEAU(1969 - 2012)

Last with the NewEngland Patriots,

Seau (in 2008)shot himself in the

chest. He played20 seasonsin the NFL.

JUSTINSTRZELCZYK

(1968 - 2004)The Pittsburgh

Steeler (in 1991)died in a car crash,

driving againsttraffic as he tried

to elude police.

CHRIS HENRY(1983 - 2009)The CincinnatiBengals player(in 2009) diedafter he fell out

of a moving truckduring a disputewith his fiancée.

TOM McHALE(1963 - 2008)The offensive

guard (circa 1995) died of anaccidental drug overdose. His

widow, Lisa, works at theBoston University CTE Center.

DAVE DUERSON(1960 - 2011)

Before he shot himself,the Chicago Bears safety

(in 1991) asked thathis brain be donated to

CTE research.

ANDREWATERS

(1962 - 2006)A player for the

Philadelphia Eagles,Waters (in 1989)

tragically shot himself.

said, ‘Mike, I’m Dr. Bennet. I think you sufferedfrom brain damage. I think you are sick. But youneed to help me because I don’t know what I’mlooking for. You need to guide me.’ ”

The odyssey that Webster took him on—a sto-ry now being told in the feature film Concussion,starring Will Smith as Omalu—ultimately led theNigerian-born neuropathologist to become thefirst person to connect football head injuries to thedegenerative brain disease now known as chronictraumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Naturally, heassumed the NFL would have a vested interest inhow “repeated sub-concussive blows to the headcan cause microscopic injuries to the brain.” Thoseinjuries can, in turn, lead to a range of nightmarishsymptoms, including depression, drug abuse, sui-cidal behavior and mood changes.

But Omalu could not have been more wrong.Not only was the NFL not interested in what he’ddiscovered, but they spent nearly a decade attack-ing his reputation, discrediting his research effortsand demanding a retraction when his findingsfinally became public. “They went after me, themessenger,” says Omalu, the San Joaquin, Calif.,chief medical examiner and a professor at the Uni-versity of California, Davis. “But I fought back.”

Omalu grew up in civil war-torn Nigeria, one ofseven siblings in a family that “believed so muchin education.” His mother was a seamstress; his fa-ther, who studied mining engineering in England,was one of the first people in his village to attendcollege. “My last name simply means ‘Let he whoknows come forward and speak,’ ” says Omalu,

who started medical school when he was 15.Omalu arrived in America in 1994 (“I was con-

vinced it was the only place where I could be my-self”) to complete an epidemiology fellowship atthe University of Washington. Later, he went towork for the coroner’s office in Pittsburgh, wherehe also studied neuropathology, earning eight ad-vanced degrees along the way.

Three years after he had initially examinedWebster, Omalu published his first scientific pa-per citing the “deposits of abnormal proteins” he’dfound deep inside the lineman’s brain and provingthat to be the cause of Webster’s tragic decline.Omalu has since studied the brains of nearly 40

‘I was blownaway. I feltI had to be

a part of thisand Bennet’s

quest forthe truth’

—WILL SMITH

January 4, 2016 PEOPLE58

A HEALTHY BRAINIn this CT scan, there are no

signs of the destructiveprotein associated with CTE,

called tau.

BRAIN SHOWING CTEA recent brain scan from NFL Hallof Famer Joe DeLamielleure, 64,among the first living players to

undergo CTE testing.

TEAM‘CONCUSSION’

From left:Will Smith,Omalu and

director PeterLandesman

on-set inPittsburgh.

(PREVIOUS SPREAD) CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: GEORGE GOJKOVICH/GETTY IMAGES(2); GEORGE ROSE/GETTY IMAGES; GEORGE GOJKOVICH/GETTY IMAGES(2); KARL MONDON/GETTY IMAGES;ICON SPORTSWIRE/AP; LARRY FRENCH/GETTY IMAGES; (THIS PAGE) CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MELINDA SUE GORDON/SONY PICTURES; JEFF SINER/GETTY IMAGES; PHOTO RESEARCHERS/GETTY IMAGES

Where things get interesting.

10_7_TNY_7.875x10.5_Subway_People_Time.indd 110_7_TNY_7.875x10.5_Subway_People_Time.indd 1 10/26/15 3:48 PM10/26/15 3:48 PM

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NFL players. “All of them except one,” he says,have tested positive for CTE.

Not surprising, “football dad” Will Smith, whoseson, Trey, 23, was a star player at Oaks ChristianHigh School in Westlake Village, Calif., wasinitially reluctant to take a role in thecontroversial project. But after meet-ing Omalu, Smith says, “I was blownaway. . . . I felt I had to be a part ofthis and Bennet’s quest for thetruth.” Since then he and Omalu, amarried father of two, have become“very good friends.” Adds Smith,who received a Golden Globe nomi-nation for his role: “This is a man whostruggled and suffered to tell the truth.”

Thirteen years after that Saturday morningin 2002, the NFL has finally endorsed that truth.Last April the league agreed to settle a class actionlawsuit to provide up to $5 million to any retiredplayer with serious medical conditions linked torepeated head traumas. Still, their concessionhas come at a heavy price to Omalu, who says thepersonal and professional attacks by the NFL andtheir physicians left him “bruised and battered.”

“I’m not against football,” insists Omalu, whoadmittedly “recoils” whenever he watches thegame. “I just think people need to know the risksinvolved. They need to know the truth.”•

‘My last namesimply means ‘Lethe who knows comeforward and speak’—DR. BENNET OMALU

In recent weeks Dr. Omaluexpanded his conversationabout concussions in anOp-Ed piece for The NewYork Times—where hewrote that parents shouldnot get to decide whethertheir kids play football.“Our children are minorswho have not reached theage of consent,” he writes,adding that we should “waitfor our children to growup,” then provide them,as adults, with informationon the risks involvedand “let them make theirown decisions.”

In light of the 13 highschool football deathsthis school year alone,Bennet may have a point—although it’s a bittersweetone for Bob and LisaGfeller and ShamikkaCameron, whose boys werehigh school football playerswho died playing the gamethey loved. “He didn’tsuffer,” says Cameron ofher 16-year-old son Tyrell,who collided with anotherplayer during his school’sseason opener on Sept. 4in Franklin Parish, La., anddied of a broken neck and

SHOULD YOUTH FOOTBALLBE ABOLISHED?

internal bleeding.Bob Gfeller is grappling

with equally painfulmemories. “I have aslideshow in my mindof what happened,” herecalls of the horrible nightin August 2008 whenhis son Matthew, 15, wasknocked unconscious froma helmet-to-helmet hit inWinston-Salem, N.C., anddied two days later. “I cansee all the images from theminute I saw him on theground to the minute weleft the hospital. It’s terrible,and I don’t want peopleto go through this.”

Bob is working hardto ensure exactly that.Together, he and Lisacreated the MatthewGfeller Sport-RelatedTraumatic Brain ResearchCenter at the University ofNorth Carolina at ChapelHill, where top doctorsand researchers in thefield are exploring waysto make the game safer atthe high school level. “Alot of people say the workwe’re doing is going to killfootball,” says researcherDr. Christopher Whitlow.“But it’s really the work thatcould save football.”

—With Diane Herbstand Michelle Boudin

Tyrell Cameron(left), in 2015,and Matthew

Gfeller, in 2008.

Omalu withwife Prema,son Mark, 6,

and daughterAshly, 8,

at the AFIFEST 2015 in

November.

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