Friday, a Los Angeles jury will hear a potentially momentous case brought by the widow of a former University of Southern California football player who claims the NCAA failed to safeguard her husband from repetitive brain injuries.
According to Alana Gee’s wrongful death claim, Matthew Gee died in 2018 due to chronic brain damage caused by numerous knocks to the head he sustained while playing linebacker for the 1990 Rose Bowl champions.
Of the hundreds of wrongful death and personal injury claims filed against the NCAA by college football players over the past decade, Gee’s is just the second to go to trial alleging that head trauma caused chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain illness. It may be the initial case to reach a jury.
The lawsuit said that for years the NCAA kept players like Matthew Gee and the general public in the dark about an epidemic that was steadily murdering collegiate sports. Long after their final game, they are left with a range of neurological diseases that could slowly suffocate their brains.
The NCAA, the regulatory body for college athletics in the United States, stated that it was not responsible for Gee’s death, which it attributed to excessive drinking, drug use, and other health issues.
“Mr. Gee utilized alcohol and drugs to cope with a terrible background, to compensate for the loss of identity he suffered when his football career ended, and to dull the chronic and rising agony caused by various health conditions,” NCAA attorneys stated in a court filing in Los Angeles Superior Court.
In recent years, the subject of concussions in sports, and football in particular, has been front and center as researchers have learned more about the long-term repercussions of repeated head trauma, such as migraines, depression, and occasionally early onset Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease.
After many days of testimony by witnesses for the widow of Greg Ploetz, who played defense for Texas in the late 1960s, a 2018 trial in Texas resulted in a fast settlement.
The NCAA settled a class-action concussion lawsuit in 2016, agreeing to pay $70 million to monitor the medical health of former collegiate athletes, $5 million for medical research, and up to $5,000 per injured participant.
Similar lawsuits were filed against the NFL, which eventually reached a settlement covering 20,000 former players and paid up to $4 million for a death involving chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is identified in athletes and military veterans with recurrent brain traumas. It is anticipated that compensation will surpass $1.4 billion over 65 years for six qualifying conditions.
After years of denial, the NFL recognized in 2016 that studies conducted by the Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center at Boston University demonstrated a link between football and CTE, which is associated with memory loss, depression, and progressive dementia.
According to a research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, CTE was discovered in the brains of 110 of 111 deceased former NFL players and 48 of 53 former college players.
Ken Stabler, Mike Webster, and Junior Seau, Gee’s teammate at USC, are among the posthumously diagnosed Hall of Famers.
Gee, age 49, was one of five linebackers on the 1989 Trojans team who passed away before reaching age 50. As with Seau, who committed suicide in 2012, Gee’s brain was posthumously analyzed at BU and found to contain CTE.
The defense has sought to exclude any testimony regarding Gee’s teammates, and the NCAA has stated that there is no medical evidence that Gee suffered from concussions while attending USC.
However, two ex-teammates testified at depositions that they often received hits when instructed to hit with their heads.
Mike Salmon, who went on to play for the San Francisco 49ers and Buffalo Bills of the National Football League, recalls Gee and other linebackers being “out of it” after intense sessions.
“Matt hit like a truck,” Salmon added. “I observed him frequently returning to the huddle. It was evident that he was not really present.”
In the 1980s, it was our responsibility to make helmet-to-helmet contact, as former nose tackle Gene Fruge said. “There was absolutely no doubt. It was your responsibility to blow up the man in front of you.”
The NCAA, which mandated that colleges maintain a concussion protocol in 2010, stated that the long-term ramifications of brain injuries were not fully understood when Gee played.
According to Gee’s lawsuit, the debilitating effects of concussions and other traumatic brain hits have been known for about a century, initially from studies of “punch drunk” boxers and subsequently from football and other contact sports.
“For decades, the NCAA was aware of the negative impacts… on athletes, but they ignored these facts and refused to implement any meaningful ways of warning and/or safeguarding the athletes,” the lawsuit states. The sustained expansion and operation of collegiate football was simply too lucrative for the NCAA to put at risk.
Gee was team captain and led USC in tackles, forced fumbles, and recovered fumbles during his senior season.
Gee, who graduated in 1992, was released by the Los Angeles Raiders during training camp. He married his undergraduate sweetheart, Alana, and together they had three children while he managed his own insurance business in Southern California. According to the lawsuit, he led a “relatively normal” existence for twenty years.
In 2013, he started to lose control of his emotions, according to the lawsuit. He developed anger, confusion, and depression. He drank excessively. He informed the physician that days would pass without him being able to recall what occurred.
When he passed away on New Year’s Eve 2018, the preliminary cause of death was described as the toxic consequences of alcohol and cocaine, along with cardiovascular disease, cirrhosis, and obesity.
Joseph Low, a Los Angeles-based attorney for clients with traumatic brain injury who is not involved in the case, stated that drug and alcohol misuse can be an indication of brain damage in those who attempt to self-medicate with substances. Low stated that blaming Gee’s death on substance usage would not protect the NCAA from evidence that he had CTE, which is not caused by substance abuse.
“That is a diversion,” Low remarked. “It is a truly horrible method of character assassination. It is the elementary level of defense strategy.” Attorney Dan Lost told Front Office Athletics (FOS) that the NCAA’s trial loss “may be a turning point for college sports.”
“This trial will begin to shed light on the NCAA’s wrongdoing, and we believe that light will only become brighter when hundreds more former NCAA football players receive their day in court,” Todd Logan, a prosecution attorney, told FOS.