NCAA on trial in concussion case of dead USC football player

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The widow of a former University of Southern California football player suing the NCAA for failing to protect her husband from repetitive head trauma is taking what could be a landmark case to a Los Angeles jury Friday.

Matthew Gee died in 2018 from permanent brain damage caused by countless blows to the head he took while playing linebacker for the 1990 Rose Bowl winning team, according to the wrongful death suit filed by Alana Gee.

Of the hundreds of wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits brought by college football players against the NCAA in the past decade, Gee’s is only the second to go to trial alleging that hits to the head led to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease. It could be the first to reach a jury.

“For years (the NCAA) has kept players like Matthew Gee and the public in the dark about an epidemic that was slowly killing college athletes,” the lawsuit said. “Long after they played their last game, they are left with a series of neurological conditions that could slowly strangle their brains.”

The NCAA, the governing body of college athletics in the U.S., said it wasn’t responsible for Gee’s death, which it blamed on heavy drinking, drugs and other health problems.

"Mr. Gee used alcohol and drugs to cope with a traumatic childhood, to fill in the loss of identity he felt after his football playing days ended, and to numb the chronic and increasing pain caused by numerous health issues," NCAA lawyers wrote in a filing in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The issue of concussions in sports, and football in particular, has been front and center in recent years as research has discovered more about long-term effects of repeated head trauma in problems ranging from headaches to depression and, sometimes, early onset Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s...