National Football League

OJ Simpson likely suffers from CTE, says 'Concussion' doctor

Published Jan. 29, 2016 12:33 p.m. ET

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Dr. Bennet Omalu's struggle to discover chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma, was chronicled in the recent Will Smith film "Concussion".

Omalu also has an interesting theory about an infamous NFL name. According to him, OJ Simpson is likely suffering from CTE.

In an interview with People Magazine via the Huffington Post, he said he would "bet [his] medical license [on] that diagnosis, based on Simpson's profile and the size of his head. The latter's head is so large that he needed custom-made helmets during his pro career.

"If you have a bigger head, that means your head is heavier," Omalu said. "That means the momentum of your impact would be bigger. It's basic physics."

Simpson himself has hinted toward this as his legal team, in its effort to get a new trial after he was sentenced to 33 years in prison in 2008 for armed robbery and kidnapping, began playing up the possibility that the Hall of Famer has brain damage.

"I was knocked out of games for such head blows repeatedly in the 1970s and other times I continued playing despite hard blows to my head during football games," Simpson said in 2012.

And while the only way to diagnose CTE is to examine the brain after death, Simpson's former business manager knows something is wrong.

Simpson was charged with the murder of his ex-wife and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994. He was later acquitted of those charges.