GibbsRules!
07-26-2005, 01:55 PM
This is an old article. May 7, 2001 to be exact. I did a google search on the lives of NFL retirees and what their quality of life is like after spending their NFL careers beating the tar out of each other. I was inspired to do this search after reading CNYSkinFans latest thread on his Sean Taylor blog entry.
Some debate ensued about whether or not the NFL should lengthen the regular season schedule or eliminate some preseaon games. I wondered how the players of today would accept this. Joe Jacoby type players are a rarity these days. He wanted to be on the field for every down and sacrificed his body to do so. The condition he is in now (and that many from his era are in as well) IMO, will deter the players in todays game from agreeing to an extension of the regular season.
They mention many other players as well. I especially like the part about Harry Carson running in to the Diesel and blacking out in the huddle. Riggo was a beast!
I cut and pasted the parts about the Skins...if you want to see the whole article (talks about Earl Campbell, Bill Stanfill and Johnny U. among others)click on the link after the quote.
The Wrecking Yard
As they limp into the sunset, retired NFL players struggle with the game's grim legacy: a lifetime of disability and pain.
For most NFL players, especially linemen, weight training is as much a part of the daily regimen as stretching exercises--and the weight room works its own form of wickedness. Hoisting iron, players rupture the patella tendons in their knees, put enormous strain on their lower backs and cause ligament injuries to the lumbar spine. They even damage their shoulders by doing something the joint was not designed to do: bench-pressing huge weights.
Joe Jacoby, a former Washington Redskins offensive lineman, was a habitue of the Skins' weight room, squat lifting his afternoons away. He dare not lift weights anymore, for fear it will accelerate the deterioration of his ankles, knees, wrists, elbows and back. Jacoby still feels the echoes of years spent snatching iron and leaning his sequoia body into snot-blowing defensive linemen who drove shuddering forces down his spine and onto his lower joints.
At 6'7", 305 pounds, Jacoby was a giant among the Hogs, a 13-year veteran who retired in 1993, the year he collapsed in his bathroom at home and could not get up. "My lower back went out," he says. "I dropped to my knees on the floor. The pain was that sharp. I crawled out of the bathroom to the bed." Like Stanfill, imbued with the ethic to play in pain, Jacoby played again later that year. Then, against the Kansas City Chiefs, his back went out again. He ended up spending three days in a hospital.
"I never wanted to go out that way," says Jacoby, 41. "I wanted to keep playing, even though I was hurting. I felt like I was letting down the team. You've been brought up that way since high school. It's ingrained in you. I had a wife. I had a family. A business I was starting. But I kept hearing those little things in the back of my mind: You're letting your team down." He was in traction, shot up with cortisone, when the thought finally struck him: I can't keep doing this. I have a life to live after this.
Jacoby had blown out his left knee earlier in his career, when his leg got wrenched in a pileup during a field goal attempt. "The kneecap was way over on the side of the knee," he recalls. "I still hear the crunching and popping." Another old wound--vintage for linemen, who are forever getting their fingers caught and dislocated in face masks and shoulder pads--is the busted knuckle on Jacoby's wedding-band finger, as gnarled as a tree root. He has won many wagers in bars, claiming he can get the ring over that knuckle. His wife, Irene, had the band made with a clasp, so he can take it off like a bracelet.
Jacoby owns an auto dealership in Warrenton, Va. He and Irene had the sinks in the kitchen and master bathroom of their house installed higher than normal, "so he doesn't have to bend down," she says. He often walks about sockless in loafers. "It's too painful for him to bend over and put on socks or lace up shoes," Irene says.
Jacoby walks stiffly on his damaged ankles, but he endures the discomforts with stoic grace. He still remembers vividly the pounding he took year after year, through 170 games, including four Super Bowls--a career that left him unable to do any exercise other than walking. "Some days the back gets unbearable," he says. "It's really deep in the lower back and goes down to my left buttock and hamstring. Sometimes it gets so bad it hurts my nuts. There's pain down my left leg now. My left foot has been numb for two months. The bone's pressing on the nerve. Too many years of abuse, using the back to block."
Like so many other hobbled former players, Jacoby says he would do it all again if he had the chance. He knew what he was getting into. "Football players know the risk and the consequences," he says. "They know they will pay for it later in life. If they don't, they are misleading themselves."
.
.
.
Former Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman and former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Steve Young, each of whom has suffered repeated bell-ringers on the field, are the players most closely associated with concussions. Carson, however, was one of the first former players to go public with the debilitating aftershocks of concussions, in an attempt to broaden understanding of the problem. Carson had his share of other injuries, but none quite as stunning as the concussion he suffered in 1985 when he crashed head-on into his favorite opponent, Redskins fullback John Riggins. "It was pretty much my power against his power," Carson says. "I remember hitting John and going back to the huddle ... everything faded to black. I was literally out on my feet."
Link (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_online/news/2002/09/11/wrecking_yard/)
Some debate ensued about whether or not the NFL should lengthen the regular season schedule or eliminate some preseaon games. I wondered how the players of today would accept this. Joe Jacoby type players are a rarity these days. He wanted to be on the field for every down and sacrificed his body to do so. The condition he is in now (and that many from his era are in as well) IMO, will deter the players in todays game from agreeing to an extension of the regular season.
They mention many other players as well. I especially like the part about Harry Carson running in to the Diesel and blacking out in the huddle. Riggo was a beast!
I cut and pasted the parts about the Skins...if you want to see the whole article (talks about Earl Campbell, Bill Stanfill and Johnny U. among others)click on the link after the quote.
The Wrecking Yard
As they limp into the sunset, retired NFL players struggle with the game's grim legacy: a lifetime of disability and pain.
For most NFL players, especially linemen, weight training is as much a part of the daily regimen as stretching exercises--and the weight room works its own form of wickedness. Hoisting iron, players rupture the patella tendons in their knees, put enormous strain on their lower backs and cause ligament injuries to the lumbar spine. They even damage their shoulders by doing something the joint was not designed to do: bench-pressing huge weights.
Joe Jacoby, a former Washington Redskins offensive lineman, was a habitue of the Skins' weight room, squat lifting his afternoons away. He dare not lift weights anymore, for fear it will accelerate the deterioration of his ankles, knees, wrists, elbows and back. Jacoby still feels the echoes of years spent snatching iron and leaning his sequoia body into snot-blowing defensive linemen who drove shuddering forces down his spine and onto his lower joints.
At 6'7", 305 pounds, Jacoby was a giant among the Hogs, a 13-year veteran who retired in 1993, the year he collapsed in his bathroom at home and could not get up. "My lower back went out," he says. "I dropped to my knees on the floor. The pain was that sharp. I crawled out of the bathroom to the bed." Like Stanfill, imbued with the ethic to play in pain, Jacoby played again later that year. Then, against the Kansas City Chiefs, his back went out again. He ended up spending three days in a hospital.
"I never wanted to go out that way," says Jacoby, 41. "I wanted to keep playing, even though I was hurting. I felt like I was letting down the team. You've been brought up that way since high school. It's ingrained in you. I had a wife. I had a family. A business I was starting. But I kept hearing those little things in the back of my mind: You're letting your team down." He was in traction, shot up with cortisone, when the thought finally struck him: I can't keep doing this. I have a life to live after this.
Jacoby had blown out his left knee earlier in his career, when his leg got wrenched in a pileup during a field goal attempt. "The kneecap was way over on the side of the knee," he recalls. "I still hear the crunching and popping." Another old wound--vintage for linemen, who are forever getting their fingers caught and dislocated in face masks and shoulder pads--is the busted knuckle on Jacoby's wedding-band finger, as gnarled as a tree root. He has won many wagers in bars, claiming he can get the ring over that knuckle. His wife, Irene, had the band made with a clasp, so he can take it off like a bracelet.
Jacoby owns an auto dealership in Warrenton, Va. He and Irene had the sinks in the kitchen and master bathroom of their house installed higher than normal, "so he doesn't have to bend down," she says. He often walks about sockless in loafers. "It's too painful for him to bend over and put on socks or lace up shoes," Irene says.
Jacoby walks stiffly on his damaged ankles, but he endures the discomforts with stoic grace. He still remembers vividly the pounding he took year after year, through 170 games, including four Super Bowls--a career that left him unable to do any exercise other than walking. "Some days the back gets unbearable," he says. "It's really deep in the lower back and goes down to my left buttock and hamstring. Sometimes it gets so bad it hurts my nuts. There's pain down my left leg now. My left foot has been numb for two months. The bone's pressing on the nerve. Too many years of abuse, using the back to block."
Like so many other hobbled former players, Jacoby says he would do it all again if he had the chance. He knew what he was getting into. "Football players know the risk and the consequences," he says. "They know they will pay for it later in life. If they don't, they are misleading themselves."
.
.
.
Former Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman and former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Steve Young, each of whom has suffered repeated bell-ringers on the field, are the players most closely associated with concussions. Carson, however, was one of the first former players to go public with the debilitating aftershocks of concussions, in an attempt to broaden understanding of the problem. Carson had his share of other injuries, but none quite as stunning as the concussion he suffered in 1985 when he crashed head-on into his favorite opponent, Redskins fullback John Riggins. "It was pretty much my power against his power," Carson says. "I remember hitting John and going back to the huddle ... everything faded to black. I was literally out on my feet."
Link (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_online/news/2002/09/11/wrecking_yard/)