According to the lawyers representing his wife, Matthew Gee, a linebacker on the 1990 Rose Bowl-winning team, took almost 6,000 hits while playing college football. They said that these effects led to long-term brain damage, cocaine and alcohol misuse, and his eventual death at age 49.
The NCAA, which is in charge of overseeing collegiate athletics in the US, denied any involvement in Gee’s death, which it claimed was the result of a sudden cardiac arrest brought on by untreated hypertension and acute cocaine intoxication. According to an NCAA attorney, Gee had several additional medical conditions unrelated to football, such as liver cirrhosis, which would have eventually killed him.
