tonight on "nightline," risky plays, injured college football players being injected with potentially dangerous prescription painkillers to keep them on the field, but the warning labels say it could be deadly. tonight one former usc star speaks out in a "nightline" investigation. school tunes. how khan academy is igniting a controversial online education revolution, thanks to one man, youtube channel, and tens of millions of students around the world. and the power of 20. a record 20 female senators are sworn in today and they tell diane sawyer how they're planning to make history in an

abc exclusive. from the global resources of abc news, with terry moran, cynthia mcfadden, and bill weir in new york city, this is "nightline," january 3rd, 2013. good evening. i'm bill weir. and it is the dream of countless american families. a knock on the door from a big-time college football scout and a spot on a team that fills coliseums on saturday. but tonight comes a revelation from a former star about the pain and pressure that exists inside the nation's football factories and the injectable risks some young men take in order to stay on the field. abc news's chief investigative correspondent brian ross brings us this "nightline investigates." >> reporter: game day at usc in los angeles. part of the huge college sports industry. with lucrative tv contracts,

millionaire coaches and avid fans all dependent on their star players giving everything on the field, even when hurt. >> there's really no other option because i want to play, they wanted me to play, they needed me to play. >> reporter: but now abc news has found that behind the scenes of that drive to win at usc and other major colleges, in tucked away training rooms underneath the stadium is the closely held secret of team doctors using powerful prescription painkillers to get student athletes on the field, despite painful injuries. >> no discussion. just go in. give me the shot, i'll be on my way. >> reporter: it's clearly not something the ncaa want to talk about. when we went to the usc stadium to get answers, we were escorted off the premises. >> you guys are obviously making them uncomfortable. >> reporter: the questions about the use of painkillers arise now as a former usc starting player is coming forward.

>> on third and 7. >> reporter: number 94, defensive lineman armen armistead, he says, to help lift the veil of secrecy. talking for the first time on "nightline," armistead, a picture of health with no family history of heart problems, says the painkiller shots he got over the season as a usc player led to a heart attack he suffered at the age of 20. >> i thought, you know, can't be me. this doesn't happen to kids like me. >> reporter: but you're in great shape. >> yeah. >> reporter: and you had a heart attack? >> yeah. i had a heart attack. >> reporter: now with the backing of his parents christa and gus, who once thought of themselves as part of the usc family, armistead is suing the school and the team doctor, accusing them of putting football ahead of his health. >> he was a racehorse, a prize racehorse that, you know, needed to be on that field no matter

what. and whether that was a risk to him or not. >> reporter: in the lawsuit, armistead alleges the doctor and the school ignored the risk from the painkiller being used, a generic version treated for post operative patients in hospitals. the manufacturers warn it should only be used short-term and that potential side effects include an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, which can be fatal. >> as a mom, that was an atrocity. because how many other kids are going to take these shots to get on that field not knowing this could kill you? >> reporter: armen armistead says the shots allowed him to play in key big gayes despite first ankle and then later shoulder pain. could you have gone on the field for the notre dame and ucla games without the shots? >> no. the pain was -- at this point, the pain was very bad. >> reporter: but the shots changed everything. and how did it make you feel? >> i felt super human.

you can't feel any pain. made me feel amazing. >> reporter: armistead says it was in the training room, known as the shot room, that he and many other usc players got the shot, administered both before the game and again at halfti. but armistead says he was never told the name of drug, nor the possible risk of heart attack. >> no. >> reporter: at no point. >> no point. >> reporter: medical records show most of armistead's painkiller injections were administered by usc team doctor james taboney, a highly regarded medical sports physician and a big part of the usc program. but still under an ethical requirement to reveal the risks, according to professor arthur kaplan of new york university. >> even if you were the team physician, you still have to follow the standard of care and inform consent. you better be disclosing all risk. >> reporter: brian ross from abc news. outside his office, the doctor said he could not talk about the allegations in armistead's lawsuit.

they say you never told him about the side effects. >> i can't comment on that, because it's a lawsuit and stuff. >> reporter: do you feel it's appropriate to use -- >> these are young, healthy people. we still use it. >> reporter: when we finally caught up with the usc coach lane kiffin, he told us he had no idea when or if it was used on his players or of its risks. >> well, if that was the case, i did not know that until you just told me that. if that is accurate information, i would want to know that. as i said later, i'm not very educated in this field. >> reporter: do you think you might be now? >> you educated me. thank you. >> reporter: this seems to be a collective ignorance about the painkillers used in college football. the governing body, the ncaa, told us it does not regulate nor even keep track of the use of toridol and other painkillers on college athletes. >> if we keep track of what happens to horses in horseracing, don't we owe it to the athletes to keep track of what's going on in college sports? >> reporter: of the top 25 college football programs

contacted by abc news, 16 of them refused to say whether they use toridol. only four including usc admitted they did. armen armistead says he is now fully recovered, and to prove that to nfl scouts, he played in the canadian football league where his team, toronto, won that country's version of the super bowl, and he was named to the all-star team as a rookie, all done without any toridol, a drug armistead says he would like now to see banned. >> if you can't play through the pain, maybe you should just sit out and rest and let your body heal. >> reporter: in our investigation, six of top college football programs told us they do not use toridol, including oklahoma and nebraska, which said they stopped using the painkiller last season following growing concerns about the risks, which by the way, bill, in addition to heart attacks, also include internal bleeding and kidney failure. bill? >> brian ross, our thanks to you. just ahead, a youtube

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"nightline" continues from new york city with bill weir. >> first the record stores, then crowds at the lie brabrary, and you have to wonder if physical classrooms could become another casualty of the internet age. if kahn academy is any indication that the old schoolhouse will survive, but the way kids spend their time inside it could change forever. why are millions logging on to get lessons from one man? could your kids benefit? my co-anchor terry moran went to find out. >> reporter: no matter how old you are, you can probably still

remember what the bell sounded like in your school. you can still remember pushing your way through the hallways to your next class, or the minute hand on the clock in your math class that you score ran slower than every other clock in the building. but that was then. this is now. >> eight meters. and the same thing along the side. >> reporter: welcome to the kahn academy. online learning on steroids. a one-world schoolhouse that is skyrocketing to popularity, sparking controversy and fundamentally challenging the very notion of education in the 21st century. >> what we're tackling right now is the learning side. how can we democratize is information, the knowledge, so that anyone can get to whatever level they want to. >> reporter: sal kahn founded the kahn academy kind of by accident. more on that in a minute. first the sheer scale of this thing. seven million students around the world are attending the kahn academy online every month, and that number is growing by 400%

per year. the thousands of lessons, everything from algebra to medieval history to the fiscal cliff, they've been viewed more than 200 million times. and all for free. are you out to dismantle our educational system? >> i'm not an education radical. a lot of what i'm doing and we're doing is really bringing back very, very old ideas that have been proven, but somehow got lost in the fray. >> reporter: sal kahn is an unlikely education reformer. he's a former hedge fund analyst, m.i.t. undergrad, harvard mba, who just stumbled upon his revolution when he tried to help a young cousin with her algebra homework back in 2004. >> i started tutoring her remotely. i was in boston, she was in new orleans. after that, i started tutoring other family members and eventually put the stuff on youtube. >> reporter: in a few weeks, kahn noticed that the stuff he was making for his relatives was going viral, requests from strangers for more, more, more.

visually, they aren't the kind of videos you'd expect to go viral. they're more of a virtual blackboard. but they work. and education reformers all over the world have noticed, including some heavy hitters. >> there's a website that i've just been using with my kids recently called kahn academy. just one guy doing some unbelievable 15-minute tutorials. >> reporter: bill gates did more than look at the kahn academy videos. he helped to bankroll the project. so in 2009, kahn finally quit his day job and partnered with the gates foundation and google to form the kahn academy. here's how it works. students watch the videos and then work on a problem set based on the lesson on the website. if you pass, you move on to the next lesson. if it looks like you don't understand the concept, the site takes you back through what you are missing. the goal is not to replace the traditional classroom. the goal is to liberate it.

>> the idea of students being grouped in age-based cohorts and then going at a set pace, this is the school we all grew up in. this is actually not the way students were educated for most of history. >> reporter: instead, kahn and his allies seek classrooms tluming with creative activity, spurred by the fact that kids will have already engaged the subject matter through the online lessons. what is your ideal classroom look like? >> it won't be a bunch of chairs all positioned looking at someone in the front of the classroom. it will be a much more collaborative pace. it's not one size fits all anymore. the teacher will be doing focused interventions with them, they'll be inspiring them, they won't be lecturing at them. >> reporter: about 25 to 30 schools have started simp eed implementing the kahn academy, exploring how it might change teaching and learning. there are plenty of critics but one big group of supporters. >> the single biggest thing that

happened, and it wasn't obvious to us at first, the teachers and the principal told us, is that the students started to take ownership of their learning. they started to not say i'm passive, tell me what to do next. they started to say these are my goals, i'm going to seek out the information, teacher, you are my coach, you're my mentor, help me do it. >> reporter: they're already online, maybe at least in some ways, that's where their classrooms can be, too. and kahn's book "the one world schoolhouse" is in stores now. when we come back, the u.s. senate welcomed a record 20 women today. diane sawyer talks with them about getting stuff done in the new term. mr. clean magic eraser extra power was three times faster on permanent marker. elsewhere against dirt, it was a sweep, with scuffed sports equipment... had it coming. grungy phones... oh! super dirty! and grimy car rims... wow! that really works! ...all taking losses. it looks like mr. clean has won everything. the cleaning games are finished? and so are we. okay, but i just took a mortgage out on the cabinet.

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it was a rare parade of optimism and cuteness on capitol hill today as new congress was sworn in, many with kids. that is new york's kirsten gildebrand. diane sawyer met with all but one of them to talk about busted glass ceilings and a vision for the future. >> they are living, breathing history climbing the stairs and sending a signal. they are 20 senators, republican and democrat, who say they have had it with gridlock and the way congress works. >> if they can delay a problem, pick an argument, and wait until next year, they'll do it. we don't believe in the culture

of delay. >> i don't want people who watch this show to think that we're some kind of a sorority, because we're not. we all march to the sound of different drummers, to some extent. >> senator dianne feinstein says women can be independent lawmakers and still work together. >> you know, we're less on testosterone. we don't have that need to always be confrontational. and i think we're problem solvers. and i think that's what this country needs. >> when i saw president obama a few weeks ago, i told him about our quarterly dinners. i said mr. president, if you want to see bipartisanship in washington, invite the women senators to get it done, and he loved the idea. >> so they say they're ready to tackle big issues like jobs, transportation, immigration, but it's their male counterparts who keep reopening roe v. wade and contraception. >> i think most of us would agree that the government doesn't have a place in that. it's really individual families

who should make those decisions. >> i think those issues should be settled and should not be the main focus of debate. >> i don't think they are entirely settled. that's the problem. is that there were amendments introduced to say that women wouldn't have access to health insurance coverage for birth control. and boy, if that's the case, then we better stand up and we better speak out. >> but if congress was 51% women, you can bet your bottom dollar we would not be debating contraception. >> we think we should be talking about transportation, infrastructure, or economic development. and we keep facing these amendments on abortion. it's like can't you just leave that alone? >> always brought up by men. >> and these new female arrivals signal a modern era, the first openly gaye senator tammy baldwin of wisconsin, who was in college when she was inspired by

geraldine ferraro. >> i said to myself, i can do anything. the sky is the limit. >> is there a president in this room? >> you know, i think the thing is that every man wakes up in the morning and looks in the mirror and says i can be president. i think every woman looks in the mirror and says what can i get done for my country today? >> wait a minute, not one of you in this room looks in the mirror and says i can be president? >> doubtful. >> you may think it from time to time. [ laughter ] >> senator kelly ayot tells the story of her 8-year-old daughter. >> she said to me, mom, i don't want you to run for president. i looked at her and said kate, i'm not running for president. why do you ask me that? she says mom, because i want to be the first woman president. [ laughter ] >> break the news to her, we're not waiting that long. >> our thanks to diane and the senators and we thank you for watching abc news. "good morning america" are working now and will be there for you in the