Report: NFL attempted to influence study on football and brain disease

NFL officials confronted the National Institutes of Health last year after Boston University was selected to lead a major study on football and brain disease, according to an Outside the Lines report.

The development comes as a follow-up to a December report from Outside the Lines, which indicated the NFL had pulled $30 million in funding for the project over concerns about the school's lead researcher, Dr. Robert Stern.

Stern has long been critical of the league and its handling of brain injury risk.

Dr. Walter Koroshetz, director of National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke, recently told Outside the Lines that the league expressed during a June conference call that the selection process involved conflicts of interest.

"It was a fairly clear message that they transmitted," Koroshetz said.

Both the NFL and NIH publicly denied that funding had been pulled following the December report, with the NFL insisting the NIH makes its own decisions regarding such matters and that funding came without any sort of veto power.