Several weeks back, we covered a story in which a New York Times article highlighted a Congressional report released that accused the NFL of improperly intervening, interjecting itself into the funding process of the National Institutes of Health, specifically their disbursal of grant funding earmarked for concussion research.
The NFL had donated $30 million to the NIH as an “unrestricted gift”, of which it chose to use $16 million in order to give a grant for a concussion study to a Boston University group of researchers. That group happened to be led by a prior critic of the NFL’s handling of concussions, and happened to beat out a competing group for the grant that consisted of members of the league’s Head, Neck and Spine Committee.