by Diane Vacca

Instantly noticeable among the dark suits at the House Judiciary Committee hearing two weeks ago, Gay Culverhouse stood out in her purple dress, but even more for what she said. She hammered the National Football League and its doctors relentlessly, charging that they treat individual football players as “a disposable commodity." I confess, I don’t follow football. I don’t even like it. But watching a woman defying a roomful of men, challenging the established wisdom and fighting for a cause she believes in, is a blood sport I can enjoy.

The grandmother of six, who has several homes and raises thoroughbred horses, has clearly benefitted from her connection to the N.F.L. Culverhouse is the daughter of the former owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and was president of the team in the early '90s. But now that she’s learned how much and how many of her former players are suffering from the long-term effects of their football injuries, she is pressuring the N.F.L to take better of its players. In the room, right next to Culverhouse, were the head of the N.F.L. and numerous team doctors, only some of whom stuck to the party line.

Football, Culverhouse declared, “is a cutthroat business.” The goals scored on the playing field enable the real goal, she added, which “is for the franchise to make money.” The congressional hearing was convened in response to a series of articles in The New York Times that focused attention on the unusually high incidence of Alzheimer’s, dementia and other cognitive disorders among retired football players, attributable to what experts call chronic traumatic encelopathy (CTE). Despite the mounting evidence in recent studies, the N.F.L. has consistently denied any link between cognitive impairment and playing football (which often means suffering repeated concussions, and even without concussions involves frequent jolts to the system).

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