Jury: NCAA not to blame in ex-USC football player's death

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Los Angeles jury on Tuesday rejected a claim by the widow of a former USC football player who said the NCAA failed to protect him from repeated head trauma that led to his death.

Matthew Gee, a linebacker on the 1990 Rose Bowl-winning squad, endured an estimated 6,000 hits that caused permanent brain damage and led to cocaine and alcohol abuse that eventually killed him at age 49, lawyers for his widow alleged.

The NCAA said it had nothing to do with Gee's death, which it said was a sudden cardiac arrest brought on by untreated hypertension and acute cocaine toxicity. A lawyer for the governing body of U.S. college sports said Gee suffered from many other health problems not related to football, such as liver cirrhosis, that would have eventually killed him.

The verdict could have broad ramifications for college athletes who blame the NCAA for head injuries.

Hundreds of wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits have been brought by college football players against the NCAA in the past decade, but Gee’s is the first one to reach a jury alleging that hits to the head led to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease known by its acronym, CTE.

Alana Gee had testified that the college sweethearts had 20 good years of marriage before her husband's mental health began to deteriorate and he became angry, depressed and impulsive, and began overeating and abusing drugs and alcohol.

Attorneys for Gee said CTE, which is found in athletes and military veterans who suffered repetitive brain injuries, was an indirect cause of death because head trauma has been shown to promote substance abuse.

The NCAA said the case hinged on what it knew at the time Gee played, from 1988-92, and not about CTE, which was first discovered in the brain of a...