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"A congressman issued that report without even talking to any of our advisers. I don't think that's appropriate. I don't think that's the right way to do things." — NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, remarks at a news conference, May 24, 2016
The Fact Checker does not often delve into sports issues, but a colleague suggested this would be a change of pace from the 2016 presidential campaign. Besides, this issue is inherently political in that it involves congressional staff accusing the NFL of improperly attempting to influence a National Institutes of Health grant process.
At issue is a 2012 commitment by the NFL to provide NIH with $30 million in unrestricted funds for research into brain injuries. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., on May 23 released a report, written by Democratic staff on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, that says the NFL backed out of funding a $16-million study after a grant was awarded to a Boston University specialist in neurodegenerative disease who had been critical of the NFL. Moreover, it says a group of NFL officials sought to derail the grant and instead redirect the fund to researchers associated with the league's committee on brain injuries.
Without the NFL's funds, the Boston University project had to be funded by taxpayers.
Speaking to reporters, the commissioner insisted that the $30 million commitment still stood and said that the report described a "normal practice" of "discussions back and forth with the NIH." He added that "it is very important to continue to have that kind of dialogue through appropriate channels" by advisers on NFL committees — and then faulted the congressional staff for not "even talking to any of our advisers."
This is an interesting bit of spin, as we shall see. The key players were NFL officials, not outside advisers. But by keeping the focus on outside advisers, Goodell is hoping fans won't notice.
The issue at hand
There are three organizations involved — the NFL, the NIH and the Foundation for the NIH (FNIH), a nonprofit charitable organization that directs funding from public and private donors to projects initiated by the NIH. Another important role is played by the NFL's head, neck and spine (HNS) committee, made up experts who voluntarily advise team medical staffs and the League — and also receive free Super Bowl tickets.
The $30 million commitment was struck in 2012 — with grant making authority residing with NIH — and four research plans had been implemented and proceeded smoothly. The problem arose with the fifth plan, estimated to cost $17.5 million, to fund a longitudinal study in high-risk adults to collect and analyze data in individuals with a history of repetitive head impacts — specifically the progressive degenerative disease of the brain known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The NFL was supposed to provide just over $16 million.
When grant applications were reviewed by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Council, the highest ranked one was submitted by a group led by Dr. Robert Stern of Boston University. Stern, however, had once filed an objection to an NFL's settlement of a class-action lawsuit brought by its players. The grant award was about to be issued when on June 17, 2015, Dr. Elliot J. Pellman, the League's medical director, sent an email to FNIH's president, saying "there are many of us who have significant concerns re BU and their ability to be unbiased and collaborative."
Then, a day later, Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, the NFL's chief medical officer, emailed Dr. Walter Koroshetz, the NINDS director, to express her own concerns. "I hope this group is able to approach their research in an unbiased manner," she wrote, questioning the peer review process that led to the selection of the BU group. She also suggested there was a conflict of interest because members of the review board had co-written articles with members of the BU group, though that was not considered a conflict of interest under NIH rules.
The efforts by these two NFL officials is all documented by emails obtained by the congressional staff, and NIH officials found the intervention to be unprecedented. Koroshetz, the NINDS director, said that "the stipulations in funding agreements have consistently expressed that the NIH scientific process is out of bounds for donors," the report said. "Dr. Koroshetz was aware of no other instance where a donor raised objections to a grantee prior to the issuance of a notice of grant award."
Their missives had impact: the FNIH arranged for a conference call that included Jeff Miller, NFL's executive vice president for health and safety, and three members of the NFL's head, neck and spine committee.
"On the call, the HNS members raised concerns about bias in NIH's peer review process and Dr. Stern's affidavit in favor of former NFL players," the report said. "They also raised issue about balance related to money going to only one institution, given that funding under prior research grants had been divided across multiple institutions." The report said one of the outside NFL advisers on the call, Dr. Richard Ellenbogen, had been involved in a grant that had not been selected.
The call included discussion of compromise plan to have two studies funded, but ultimately that idea was rejected by the NINDS Council; it recommended funding only the BU proposal in part because none of other proposed studies scored high enough to justify funding. Once that decision was made, the NFL money faded away and NIH officials had to fund the study out of taxpayer funds.
So what we have are three NFL officials — Pellman, Nabel and Miller — intervening in a grant-making process and actually succeeding in redirecting the NFL's funds from a project overseen by an NFL critic. That's actually the first finding of the report: "The NFL improperly attempted to influence the grant selection process at NIH."
But what Goodell is focusing on is a procedural foul in developing the report's second finding: "The NFL's head, neck and spine committee members played an inappropriate role in attempting to influence the outcome of the grant selection process." That's because although the outside advisers are named — and Ellenbogen is especially criticized on page 27 of the report — the committee staff made no attempt to seek their side of the story.
"The briefings with the principals and the documents provided us more than enough information to complete our investigation, develop findings and make recommendations in the hopes of preventing something like this from happening again," said Andrew Souvall, spokesman for the Democratic staff. He acknowledged the committee had contact information for the doctors but chose not to use it.
Ellenborgen has written a letter to the committee strongly disputing he tried to influence the NIH grant process. He also told the media that he did not know his name had been submitted as part of grant application — though NIH officials say he was listed as co-investigator. An interview might have cleared up this discrepancy.
"The point he was making is the staff report leveled a series of charges about contacts between our outside advisers and the NIH, the people who raised concerns about the process, without ever bothering to contact them," said Joe Lockhart, the NFL's executive vice president for communications. "We know they knew how to reach them because we gave them their contact information as they requested. If they were genuinely trying to get to the bottom of this, it stands to reason they would have picked up the phone and put their questions directly to them. If, on the other hand, they were only trying to document a predetermined point of view, or a one-sided point of view, they would not reach out to everyone involved."
Nevertheless, the NFL's Miller was interviewed by the congressional staff on April 14. Goodell wrote a letter to Pallone on April 25. The NFL — the key instigator of this series of disturbing events — had an opportunity to respond.
Who's being honest
Goodell is playing a shell game here, trying to divert reporters' attention from the serious allegations of NFL interference in the NIH process by focusing on the committee staff's lapse in not contacting the NFL's outside advisers.
In the interest of fairness and completeness, the committee staff should have sought comment from Ellenbogen and any other doctor named in the report.
But the role of the outside advisers is a secondary finding in the report. The key finding was that NFL tried to steer impartially awarded funding away from a NFL critic. The NFL depicts this is a normal process but clearly upset NIH officials say it is anything but normal. And, contrary to Goodell's suggestion, the NFL was given an opportunity to respond to allegations concerning its own staff.