Three of the NFL's top health and safety officers confronted the National Institutes of Health last June after the NIH selected a Boston University researcher to lead a major study on football and brain disease, Outside the Lines has learned.
The new information contradicts denials by the NFL and a foundation it partners with that the league had any involvement or input in the fate of a $16 million study to find methods to diagnose -- in living patients -- chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease found in dozens of deceased NFL players.
Outside the Lines reported in December that the NFL, which in 2012 promised an "unrestricted" $30 million gift to the NIH for brain research, backed out of funding the new study over concerns about the lead researcher, Boston University's Robert Stern, who has been critical of the league.