The brain doctor popularized by actor Will Smith in the movie “Concussion,” speaking in San Diego last Friday, blamed football fans and society at large, rather than the NFL, for the brain trauma-related ills of ex-football players.
“We are responsible for these players who are suffering, we as a society, because of our conformational thinking,” pathologist Bennet Omalu said at a Scripps Health-sponsored seminar, the 11th annual Brain Injury Rehabilitation Conference.
Dozens of experts from across the country attended the two-day event, which concluded Saturday at Liberty Station.
In his 65-minute keynote talk that detailed his upbringing in Nigeria and interspersed New Testament quotations, Omalu recounted how he discovered and identified chronic brain damage as a major factor in the deaths of former NFL players.