Bennet Omalu, MD, MBA, MPH, who gave the spotlight event speech at CAP ’15 earlier this month, says he met retired Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster before conducting the 2002 autopsy that would lead to the first diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in a National Football League player.

“I met him on TV,” Dr. Omalu says. “All the channels were talking about this great NFL player who died suddenly, and talking about him in very derogatory ways. Many NFL players, when they retire, they don’t handle their money well. They become destitute and bankrupt.”

To the Nigerian-born Dr. Omalu, fresh from completing his neuropathology fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, football players scrambling across the field in headgear “looked like extraterrestrials.”

The lead item in this month’s “Put It on the Board.” Read the whole shebang.