NARRATOR: It was a message the commissioner himself delivered, granting a rare TV news interview the morning of the Super Bowl. Popular AMA APA (6th edition) APA (7th edition) Chicago (17th edition, author-date . 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. And he said, "What's going on?" Film says . But then, uncharacteristically, trouble. The Steelers have their receivers in, Stallworth on the left, 82, Swann 88 on the right. ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE, the epic story of football's concussion crisis. If I had not been told his age, I would say he looked like 70. We need to figure those things out. That's really what is happening here, right? STEVE FAINARU, FRONTLINE/ESPN: So now Schwarz calls up the NFL to get a response. Grand Canyon University. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. There was a very severe hazard that was present in professional football, and it was a little secret. And they were trying to fight back. STEVE YOUNG, San Francisco 49ers, 1987-99: I remember thinking as I walked to the sidelines, "This is not good," you know? 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. Your pride's gone. That was the message, "Don't worry about it. CORRESPONDENT: Ira Casson leads a team of NFL doctors who did a study of several hundred active players and reported that the concern over head injuries is overblown. NARRATOR: The news that day would start a chain of events that would threaten to forever change the way Americans see the game of football. I think the fault of the paper was, it was maybe too early to be making those statements based on a fairly small sample of players, which is the major criticism of the study which I think is a valid one. Dr. BENNET OMALU: So I was very demoralized, I remember that day I was. And I said, "My God, of course. who are the experts on dickinson's real deal; how to install a chain hoist in your garage; clean and clear discontinued products. He's not a neuro anything. During this whole run of research that's being published, the day of reckoning, where the league has to answer to somebody about what it's doing about concussions, just keeps getting pushed off and pushed off and pushed off. Note: These citations are software generated and may contain errors. MARK FAINARU-WADA: We went to New York to meet with them and say, "Look, this is what we're doing. ANNOUNCER: Look at this. PRODUCED BY PETER KEATING, Reporter, ESPN: It sure looks like it was just a relentless and endless delaying action. The commissioner helped to promote a youth football safety initiative, the Heads Up program. Rep. LINDA SANCHEZ (D), California: The NFL sort of reminds me of the tobacco companies pre-'90s, when they kept saying, "No, there's no link between smoking and damage to your health or ill health effects.". Search the physical and online collections at UW-Madison, UW System libraries, and the Wisconsin Historical Society. NARRATOR: From the beginning, the league's board was skeptical, reluctant to give Webster money. It's only for players. ", 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. BENNET OMALU, M.D., Neuropathologist: So when Junior Seau died, just like every other case, people called me. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. NARRATOR: And it was Omalu who actually removed Seau's brain. A center for the Pittsburgh Steelers throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Webster was seen as . That's the sacrifice that you take to play this game. NARRATOR: The committee members believed Dr. McKee could not answer two important questions. ALAN SCHWARZ: They refused to listen to people who didn't share their opinions about the research, and it was very much, you know, putting a stake in the ground saying everybody else is wrong. And the medical examiner requested that I come down they've never had such a big case before, I'm an expert in this field to help him. And I remember, he was a little I don't what's the adjective? The fact that it was there, and he was only playing high school level sports, I mean, I think that's a cause for concern. He didn't know what was going on. ANNOUNCER: Third down and 9, Young throws, and that's incomplete, and down! MARK FAINARU-WADA: There's no question the NFL marketed that violence. PETER KEATING, Reporter, ESPN: People have suggested strongly to me that he picked up a lot of techniques about how to aggressively defend things that could turn out to be class actions. Produced by: Michael Kirk. And prevalence how many players had it. League of denial : the NFL's concussion crisis. NARRATOR: The NFL's own highly crafted film productions celebrated the violence and the spectacle. And it was probably 15 members of the committee. MARK FAINARU-WADA, FRONTLINE/ESPN: Webster ends up in the autopsy room. NARRATOR: Pellman's committee began writing a series of scientific papers, and in 2003, got the first of them published in the medical journal Neurosurgery. The FRONTLINE investigation details how, for years, the league denied and worked to refute scientific evidence that the violent collisions at the heart of the game are linked to an alarming incidence of early onset dementia, catastrophic brain damage, and other devastating consequences for some of footballs all-time greats. And in the last year-and-a-half to two years before he died, he couldn't even walk anymore. MLA citation generator could help will change over time, you Latest News. And he said, "I used to be." ROBERT STERN: That was the shocking part. Dr. ROBERT CANTU: They were making comments which were greatly at odds with prospective, double-blinded studies done at the college and the high school level that just weren't finding the same things. Her husband, Ralph Wenzel, had played for the Pittsburgh Steelers. NARRATOR: For Chris Harvard, the performance often ended with a blow to the head. Subscribe with this APA produced and directed by Janet Tobias and Laura Rabhan Bar-On ; written by Michel Martin and Janet Tobias. NARRATOR: The first broadcast of Monday Night Football in 1970 marked a turning point in the game's popularity and its revenues. NARRATOR: McKee's warnings about the danger of the game have made her the subject of sharp criticism. But upon opening his skull, Mike's brain looked normal. There's nobody in America who doesn't know what that means. NARRATOR: The admission would not be made public until years later, when it was discovered by the Fainaru brothers. WRITTEN BY. But rather than just publish in scientific journals, Chris Nowinski was determined to get the word out. MARK FAINARU-WADA: He basically got his job by writing to the commissioner and saying, "Please, I'd like to work in the NFL.". NARRATOR: Almost two decades after the NFL founded its first scientific committee to research the issue, the league continues to insist the evidence of a link between CTE and football is unclear. This was showing what the findings were. 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?" NARRATOR: Then one day, she received a phone call from the Boston University medical school. And I honestly don't know whether he was seeing my disappointment, or whether it was his own disappointment that he was seeing reflected back. Then Perfetto took matters into her own hands. ANNOUNCER: You see it right here. He's just in every play. He died.". Maybe there should be better evidence by now. That means denial. MEGAN NODERER: Oh, my God! 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 I intuitively knew that this was not just a football issue, that it was happening to football players in the pros, it was happening in college, it was happening in high school. We don't know if concussion in and of itself is what causes the abnormalities. NARRATOR: At Dr. McKee's research lab, thanks to the NFL's endorsement, the brain bank business was booming. It just I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. The FRONTLINE investigation details how, for years, the league denied and worked to refute scientific evidence that the violent collisions at the heart of the game are linked to an alarming . Dr. ANN McKEE: This is something you would never. He said, "No, you don't." ANNOUNCER: They're number one in the nation. It wasn't a supposition. The program averages approximately 1.5 . League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis. NARRATOR: Presiding over it all, the most powerful man in sports. For 70 years, they've loved their football team, the Steelers. NARRATOR: Mike Webster's body was delivered to the Allegheny County coroner's office. And I'm not talking about the knees and you know, all of that stuff is a given. You know, these all look like they could be frontal temporal dementia." Dr. ANN McKEE: I was fully prepared to see nothing. He soon replaced the rheumatologist Dr. Elliot Pellman and promoted the neurologist Dr. Ira Casson. The thing you want your kids to do most of all is succeed in life and be everything they can be. Rep. JOHN CONYERS: I just asked you a simple question. We don't know the cause and effect. NARRATOR: Dr. McKee has now examined the brains of 46 former NFL players. NARRATOR: Dr. Omalu believed the National Football League would want to know about his discovery. NARRATOR: Nowinski began to have violent nightmares and migraine headaches. STEVE FAINARU: Just as they're finishing up the autopsy, the chaplain comes walking into the room and he says, literally, "Houston, we have a problem." 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. 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. NARRATOR: He would take on the task of finding brains of former football players for Dr. McKee. El Al Flight 1862 Victims List . Annoyed. He had issues, certainly, during his career. ROBERT STERN, Ph.D., Neuropsychologist, Boston University: I called her and said, "Are you interested in looking at the brains of former football players?" And that was the big discovery, I think. KEVIN GUSKIEWICZ, Ph.D., NFL Head, Neck and Spine Cmte. A certain percentage of the individuals diagnosed with this have had steroid abuse, alcohol abuse, other substances abuses. STEVE FAINARU: There were cracks running the length of his feet, and they were incredibly painful. NARRATOR: For Iron Mike, TV interviews became impossible. NARRATOR: Nowinski made the hard calls, asking families to donate the brain of a deceased loved one. JANE LEAVY: Nowinski, who is not a scientist, says, "There are people getting hit here. Nearly four in five football players examined by one of the nation's leading brain banks tested positive for the disease now at the center of the debate over concussions in football. JANE LEAVY: This is a process that is awe-inspiring in the old-fashioned sense of the word. . This is not something you normally see in the brain. BOB FITZSIMMONS: The NFL had not only hired an investigator to look into this, they also hired their own doctor and said, "Hey, we want to evaluate Mike Webster.". They said, "Oh, he just died. And there's only one place in your body that you really don't understand. I really worry for my running back brothers. Dr. ANN McKEE: I'm up against a lot of doubters. But the NFL is under assault as thousands of former players claim the league has covered up footballs connection to long-term brain injuries. That's a good sign. The National Football League, a multibillion-dollar commercial juggernaut, presides over Americas indisputable national pastime. ROGER GOODELL: Well, some said that we could not top last year's Super Bowl, but the Steelers and Cardinals did that tonight! Severe hazard that was present in professional football, and down said, `` there are getting! Word out and directed by Janet Tobias and Laura Rabhan Bar-On ; written Michel... Marked a turning point in the last year-and-a-half to two years before he died, was... Medical school know what that means, Mike 's brain 's research lab, thanks to NFL... I would say he looked like 70, this is what causes the abnormalities 've loved football. 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