Injuries expose NFL’s harsh realities

When actual people - not video game characters - are hurt, football's personal side is displayed

The first thought that crossed my mind when I saw Tommy Maddox lying on the ground was, “Get up, man, you’re the starter on my fantasy team.”

Then reality crept in.

Maddox wasn’t getting up. Maddox wasn’t moving. Players from both teams knelt on the field, crying, praying.

This is when you realize it’s not fantasy football. It’s not a video game. Those are real men under those helmets. They have real bones and spinal cords and lives and families.

“Sometimes, I think fans have this mentality like they’re watching John Madden’s computer football,” says Darryl Stingley, the former New England Patriots receiver who has been a quadriplegic for nearly 25 years since that infamous hit in 1978, when Oakland head-hunter Jack Tatum crashed into him and severed two of his vertebrae.

“Fans want to see heads explode. But what you need to remember is that those are real heads in those uniforms – human heads.”

It’s easy to forget that in football, the most impersonal and incognito of all sports. Players are little more than anonymous action figures under helmets and behind facemasks. They are the daredevils put on the field for our violent, voyeuristic viewing pleasure.

We look them more as faceless numbers than as living beings. We scan the injury report every week wondering who will play and who won’t. And we forget that behind every knee, ankle and shoulder listed in agate type is some gnarled, mangled body part.

“Football is a game ruled by pain,” Tampa Bay Bucs defensive end Simeon Rice says.

The danger of the sport escapes us until we see someone like Maddox, the quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers, laying face down on the turf Sunday, motionless.

Fortunately, after being carried from the field on a stretcher and transported to a nearby hospital, Maddox appears to be OK, just as Seahawks wide receiver Darrell Jackson turned out to be OK a few weeks ago.

Jackson was leveled on a helmet-to-helmet hit by Dallas safety Darren Woodson. It was one of those violent hits we all stand up and cheer for:quot;and the NFL ducks down and profits from. Officially, the league has cracked down on such violent collisions, but unofficially and hypocritically, it glorifies them in highlight videos and computer games.

After Jackson was knocked out for several minutes and suffered a concussion-related seizure in the locker room, Seattle coach Mike Holmgren said, “Darrell could have died. Now, is anything worth that?”

Think about that next time you criticize an NFL player who holds out for more money. Think about that the next time you refer to an NFL player as a “pampered professional athlete.”

We all talk big about how we’d love to get paid for doing what these guys do but, really, how many of us would have the guts to do what these guys do? Baseball, yes. Basketball, yes. But you couldn’t pay me enough to go over the middle in the NFL.

Football players are always just one play away-from paydirt, from paralysis. We love watching them from our reclining chairs, never thinking how many of them could end up in wheelchairs.

“One hit can change your life forever,” Stingley says.