FOR ALL YOU JOCKS OUT THERE, HERE’S A WARNING…..
HERE IS A POST FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE THIS MORNING, ATTESTING TO THE PRICE PAID BY SUPER-ATHLETES FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO 49er FOOTBALL TEAMS OF THE GREAT GLORY DAYS TWO DECADES AGO, WHEN NAMES LIKE MONTANA AND CLARK AND CRAIG GAVE THE BAY ITS FIRST DYNASTY SINCE FISHERMAN’S WHARF AND CRAB…..
WHAT HAPPENS TO JOCKS WHO HAVE PLAYED IN THE NFL IN THE LONG RUN, AFTER THEY HANG UP THEIR CLEATS AND OTHER ITEMS, AFTER THE CHEERING STOPS…CHECK OUT A THOUGHTFUL ARTICLE…..
Sunday, January 21, 2007 (SF Chronicle)
Glory has its price/25 years later, the heroes of the 49ers’ first Super Bowl championship team weigh the costs of playing a brutal game
Ron Kroichick, Chronicle Staff Writer
On the most famous play in 49ers history, amid the din at raucous
Candlestick Park, Joe Montana raced to his right and hurriedly scanned the
field. He backpedaled to elude three onrushing Dallas players, twice
pumped his arm to throw and floated an off-balance pass into the back of
the end zone.
[Podcast: The Price of Glory - Chronicling the premature medical problems
of first Super Niners. ]
Dwight Clark had cut to the middle before abruptly reversing direction.
Clark sprinted toward the corner, leaped high, reached both arms above his
head and made The Catch, forever cementing his place in 49ers lore.
Twenty-five years later, Montana’s left knee is essentially shredded. His
right eye occasionally sags from nerve damage. His neck is so stiff, he
could not turn his head to look at a reporter asking him questions while
he signed memorabilia. Montana, 50, turned both shoulders instead.
Clark, also 50, endures sharp pain every time he lifts his arms above his
head — the exact motion he effortlessly completed on The Catch — because
of a bent screw in his left shoulder and arthritis in his right shoulder.
The simple act of turning his head also is a chore, thanks to all those
jarring hits on crossing patterns over the middle.
“I hurt,” Clark said, “from getting my head squashed down into my neck.”
The 49ers turned around their franchise in 1981: Two years removed from a
second-consecutive 2-14 season, they steamed to the Super Bowl
championship two weeks after Clark’s epic catch in the NFC title game.
Wednesday marks the 25th anniversary of San Francisco’s 26-21 victory over
Cincinnati in Pontiac, Mich., a watershed achievement in many ways. It
launched a dynasty in which the 49ers won five titles in 14 seasons, and
it connected them to local sports fans more deeply than any other team in
the Bay Area.
But glory came with a steep price, as many players on the ’81 team have
learned since they carried coach Bill Walsh off the field at the
Silverdome. Professional football’s primitive core — enormous men running
swiftly and colliding violently — can exact a lifelong physical toll.
The Chronicle interviewed 30 players from the 1981 team in recent months,
ranging in age from 47 to 59. Twenty of those players cope with
significant physical issues today, from arthritis to chronic back pain to
joint replacements. Two (including Montana) have had spinal fusion
surgery, two have had knee replacements and one has had a shoulder
replacement.
Nine players said their doctors told them they eventually will need a
joint replacement. The scorecard: seven knees, one shoulder, one hip.
This snapshot of one championship team reflects the harsh reality for most
former NFL players. Stand on the sideline during a game and you might
wonder why the toll isn’t worse. Television does not begin to convey the
extraordinary size of pro football players, the freakish speed at which
they move and the bone-rattling brutality of their collisions.
“When you’re on the sideline, and these guys go past you, it’s almost like
a herd of horses,” said Marc Safran, director of sports medicine at UCSF.
“You feel like the ground really shakes.”
And the chances of future health problems rise. Dr. James Andrews, a noted
Birmingham, Ala., orthopedist who has treated many professional athletes,
said a young athlete who sustains trauma to a major joint is five to six
times more likely to develop degenerative arthritis later in life.
The onset of such arthritis often leads to joint replacements — or, at
the least, awkward and painful movement.
“If you watch former players walking into a room full of other players and
press, they will put on their best gait,” said Miki Yaras-Davis, longtime
director of benefits for the NFL Players Association. “If you saw them
isolated, walking down the hallway with their back to you, you would see
something akin to a Neanderthal man broken down.”
Or, as former 49ers wide receiver Mike Shumann said, “Football is a great
game until you turn 45.”
Jim Stuckey hardly resembled a broken-down man on Jan. 10, 1982. Soon
after The Catch, Stuckey — then a spry, curly-haired, 23-year-old
defensive end — pounced on Cowboys quarterback Danny White’s fumble to
preserve San Francisco’s 28-27 triumph in the NFC Championship Game.
Stuckey once went on injured reserve with a sprained knee, but he had no
surgeries during his seven-year NFL career. He was not as fortunate once
he retired from the game — his left knee steadily deteriorated because of
degenerative joint disorder, leading to three operations.
Before long, Stuckey could not bend down to pick up his 2-year-old
daughter or lift his left leg high enough to pedal a bike. Stuckey’s
doctor tried to persuade him to wait on knee-replacement surgery (an
artificial knee typically lasts 10-to-20 years), but Stuckey insisted.
He had the operation in October 2000, at age 42. The doctor who performed
the surgery said Stuckey had the equivalent of an 85-year-old knee.
“I was 42 and I couldn’t do anything,” he said. “Hopefully, by the time
this (artificial knee) wears out, they’ll invent some way to replace
integral parts of the knee rather than the whole knee.”
Keith Fahnhorst has a more fundamental wish: standing up straight.
Fahnhorst, a mainstay on the 49ers’ offensive line in the 1970s and ’80s,
stood tall at 6-foot-6 in 1981, but now he walks hunched over because of
spinal stenosis and degeneration of the disks in his neck and back.
Fahnhorst, 54, also totes routine baggage for a longtime offensive
lineman: worn, bent hands from years of grappling along the line of
scrimmage. Fahnhorst said his left thumb and forefinger remain numb to
this day, as they remind him every time he tries to button his shirt.
At least Freddie Solomon gleans meteorological insight from his old
football injuries. Solomon, a swift wide receiver who led the 49ers in
touchdown catches in ’81, nurses painful arthritis in both knees and one
shoulder, the remnants of several surgeries during his career. The knee
operations caused atrophy in Solomon’s quadriceps and calf muscles.
His arthritis becomes impossible to ignore when the weather turns in
Tampa, Fla., where Solomon, 54, now lives.
“When a hurricane is forming, my body tells a story,” he said. “I hurt
something awful. The seasons change and I ache.”
Then there’s Montana, the 49ers’ quarterback and leading man during their
heyday. He was a master of mobility and athletic improvisation, and his
boyish face made him look like a teenager in 1981, when he was 25.
Today, even with the same magnetic smile, Montana’s body is every bit of
50 years old. He estimated he has had 11 or 12 surgeries, including back
surgery during the 1986 season, plus six or seven concussions. The damage
in his right eye resulted from repeated blows to the head during Montana’s
career.
He had spinal fusion surgery in February 2005, when doctors cut near his
throat, moved his voice box, removed a bulging disk and used two titanium
rods to fuse vertebrae in his spine. That procedure still causes
occasional numbness in his arm.
Montana’s aching back and painful knee — he eventually will need
knee-replacement surgery — significantly affect his day-to-day life, and
that frustrates him because his two teenage sons, Nathaniel and Nicholas,
are so active. Montana can play catch with them, but that’s about it.
“We’ve had (49ers) events over the years where some of the older guys were
there,” he said. “You watch them having trouble getting around, but you
never think, ‘Wow, that’ll be me someday.’ ”
That day clearly has arrived for Montana and many of his former teammates.
Guy Benjamin, the backup quarterback in ’81, cannot navigate stairs
because of chronic knee and back problems. He also had spinal fusion
surgery in 1998 and twice needed operations on his left knee.
Former linebacker Craig Puki’s knees are so damaged, he said, “If someone
left me standing at Costco, on concrete, I’d probably start crying.”
It required some prodding for these men to acknowledge their discomfort;
most of them, still proud and defiant, downplayed their injuries and
insisted other former players have it worse. They long ago accepted
lingering pain as the price for competing on football’s grandest stage.
Hall-of-Fame defensive back Ronnie Lott paid an extreme price, when he had
the tip of his left pinky cut off in 1986, after it was severely injured
late the previous season. Lott, who delivered fearsome hits during his
playing days, also spoke of ongoing numbness in his right thumb and
stiffness in his right knee during a July 2000 interview with The
Chronicle, but he insisted he felt great. (Lott declined interview
requests for this story.)
Former linebacker Jack “Hacksaw” Reynolds similarly minimized the impact
of football on his life today.
“If I don’t ache, I don’t feel right,” said Reynolds, at 59 the oldest
member of the ’81 team. “I’m just so used to the pain and stiffness.
People say, ‘You walk terrible.’ I say, ‘I’m still walking, right?’ ”
Paul Hofer tore up his right knee on Oct. 12, 1980. His shoe planted in
the turf at Texas Stadium and several Dallas players twisted him backward,
launching the running back on a long and debilitating odyssey.
Hofer resumed playing in 1981, even as the knee worsened, because he
suspected it was his last shot. He appeared in 15 games and carried the
ball 60 times before another crushing hit ended his career. Hofer watched
the postseason in street clothes, from the sideline.
He later filed a lawsuit against the 49ers and then-team physician Fred
Behling. Hofer testified that injections to reduce swelling, and allow him
to play, aggravated the problem. The case was settled out of court, but
Hofer’s long-ago fears — that his injury was permanent — proved
prophetic.
He has not run in 25 years, and in the spring of 2006, after two
reconstructive surgeries and several arthroscopic procedures, Hofer had a
total knee replacement. That permitted him to walk without pain, though it
did not retrieve more than two decades without routine recreational
activities.
“I missed out on lots of stuff,” said Hofer, now 54 and living outside
Memphis. “I’ve accepted it. It was my decision, I was the one out there
running. You just really don’t think about it when you’re young. Now I
feel stupid.”
Hofer’s story offers a window into the NFL of 1981: much smaller salaries,
huge pressure to play with injuries and fewer protections for players
under the collective-bargaining agreement. The players association was
just starting in its modern form, soon to be pushed forward by the strike
of ’82.
For decades, players who got hurt often got cut, without any recourse.
That created a culture in which they ignored injuries or accepted playing
in pain, no matter the consequences to their bodies. It became stitched
into the game’s macho ethic: missing a game because of injury was a sign
of weakness.
“In this day and age, you get a concussion and they keep you out a while,”
said Lawrence Pillers, a defensive end on the ’81 49ers. “In our day and
age, you get a concussion, they show you two or three fingers and you go
back in the game.”
And the league in ’81 barely resembled the league of today in another
central respect: money. The NFLPA did not keep official records of player
salaries 25 years ago, but two former 49ers players estimated the typical
salary in 1981 at about $60,000.
In 2005, the average salary reached nearly $1.4 million. The average
salary for a starter was $2.26 million.
This naturally breeds resentment among former players who came along
before free agency and lucrative television contracts led to the enormous
growth in money. The NFL’s pension and medical benefits fuel the
resentment, according to players on the ’81 49ers (see sidebar story).
Randy Cross, the longtime offensive lineman now working as a television
analyst for CBS, accused the league of pretending former players’ health
problems are not related to their NFL careers. He also said the players
association, worried about its own survival, doesn’t push the league on
the issue.
“Our pension and medical assistance is an embarrassment to the NFL,” Cross
said. “It’s the sort of thing they choose to ignore. As long as the head
of the union (former Raiders guard Gene Upshaw) is making his millions,
it’s probably not a huge priority.”
Keena Turner made it through most of his career without a major injury.
Then, in his eighth season as a 49ers linebacker, Turner tore the anterior
cruciate ligament in his right knee. He struggled through three more years
before retiring after the 1990 season.
The knee still bothers Turner, now 48. He abandoned pickup basketball, and
he occasionally hobbles around his house in Tracy, complaining about the
condition of his once-robust body. Doctors have told Turner he probably
will need knee-replacement surgery.
The sight of him hobbling, and sound of his frustration, made an
impression on Turner’s 6-year-old son, Miles, who often has said, “I don’t
want to play football because I don’t want a knee like my dad’s.”
Miles recently began wavering on this vow, but the words still resonated
with his dad.
“I wonder what kind of effect that will have on him when he’s older,”
Keena Turner said. “I wonder if that will be a lasting memory, to see his
dad struggle.”
Miles Turner is not the only 49ers offspring influenced by first-hand
knowledge of football’s physical toll. Former linebacker Milt McColl’s
son, Kellen, plays football and baseball at Los Altos High, but when it
came time to choose one sport, he decided to set aside his helmet and
shoulder pads.
Kellen plans to play baseball next year at Stanford, partly because “he
knows baseball players don’t take the physical abuse football players do,”
Milt McColl said.
McColl emerged from his NFL career with modest damage: eye surgery during
his playing days and one knee operation (unrelated to football) since
then. He and other members of the ’81 49ers who came away without
significant problems count themselves as fortunate.
Some traced their sound health to shortened careers. Running back Earl
Cooper battled migraine headaches, feared the long-term effects and left
the NFL at age 29. Defensive back Carlton Williamson retired at 30 when he
began having knee trouble. Running back Bill Ring also left the game at
30, “because it was important to retire with my body intact.”
They are the exception among former NFL players, and the problems could
grow as another, heftier generation lurches into retirement. Most players
on the ’81 49ers are dealing with orthopedic issues, but Andrews, the
Birmingham doctor, and his colleague, Dr. John Richardson, are studying
the long-term cardiovascular risks facing former NFL players.
These risks, Richardson said, are linked in many ways to the widespread
orthopedic problems. The injuries often prevent former players from
exercising after their football careers, leading to weight gain and
increased risk of type-2 diabetes and heart disease. Richardson put the
risk of a 300-pound man dying from cardiovascular disease at three times
higher than the general population; he cited the 2005 death of 49ers
offensive lineman Thomas Herrion as a frightening example.
The NFL said there were 354 players listed at 300 pounds or more on
opening day of the 2006 season. “So it’s just going to get worse,”
Richardson said.
Twenty-five years later, the players on San Francisco’s first Super Bowl
champions wholeheartedly agreed: They have zero regrets. Nearly all 30
players interviewed for this story said they would play their NFL careers
all over again, despite the pain they now endure in middle age.
Benjamin, the backup quarterback, was the only one to hedge. He doesn’t
really think playing pro football was worth the physical price, given his
condition today and the realization he’s “another person in another life.”
But Benjamin also did not hesitate to say he would do it again, as a
fearless, carefree athlete in his early 20s.
Football’s weekly adrenaline rush exerted a strong hold on the ’81 49ers.
“Unless it causes me to get some disease that takes me out, then I’ll
never regret it,” Clark said. “It was too much of an unbelievable
experience.”
Said Montana: “I wouldn’t trade it for anything — the excitement, the
fun, the friendships. There’s nothing like a Sunday afternoon.”
Terms of impairment
Degenerative arthritis: A type of arthritis caused by inflammation,
breakdown and eventual loss of the cartilage of the joints. Also called
osteoarthritis.
Total knee replacement: A surgical procedure in which damaged parts of the
knee joint are replaced with artificial parts. The surgery is done by
separating the muscles and ligaments around the knee to expose the inside
of the joint. The ends of the thigh bone (femur) and the shin bone (tibia)
are removed, as is often the underside of the kneecap (patella). The
artificial parts are then cemented into place.
Cortisone: Synthetic cortisone, after converted by the body to cortisol,
acts to exert its powerful anti-inflammatory effects. Its many uses
include relieving pain.
Bent screw: Literally a bent screw. It is a sign of postoperative
recurrent dislocation, a complication following surgical treatment of
prior dislocation, especially in the shoulder.
Spinal fusion surgery: A technique in which one or more of the vertebrae
of the spine are fused so motion no longer occurs between them. Bone
grafts are placed around the spine during surgery. The body then heals the
grafts over several months, similar to healing a fracture. That joins, or
“welds,” the vertebrae together.
Concussion: A traumatic injury to tissues of the body such as the brain as
a result of a violent blow, shaking or spinning.
Sources: medterms.com, other online medical sites
30 Number of players from the 1981 team reached by The Chronicle for this
story
20 Number of those 30 who said they live with persistent pain
9 Number of those 30 who have been told they eventually will need a joint
replacement
3 Number of those 30 who have already had joint replacement surgery (two
knees, one shoulder)
2 Number of those 30, including Joe Montana, who have had spinal fusion
surgery
E-mail Ron Kroichick at rkroichick@sfchronicle.com. ———————————————————————-
Copyright 2007 SF Chronicle