Lawyers for the widow of Matthew Gee, a linebacker on the 1990 Rose Bowl-winning USC football team, were seeking nearly $55 million in damages from the NCAA last month in the first case to go to trial seeking to hold the organization liable for concussion-related injuries. 

Lawyers claimed Gee endured 6,000 blows to the head during his college playing days, and attempted to tie his death to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease.