Life after football: No game, still pain
By Greg Bishop
Seattle Times staff reporter
Curt Marsh wears his Super Bowl ring to an Everett restaurant. He
carries mementos from life after football - his book, his scars, and
a piece of paper with his surgical history, a full page, single-spaced.
The last entry, a right hip replacement in November, makes 30
surgeries, 22 since the former Washington Husky played his last NFL
game in 1986. Doctors have amputated his right leg below the knee,
replaced both hips, fixed three hernias, scoped both knees and worked
on his back, neck, right arm, left hand, stomach and tonsils.
"It's like I'm the poster child for injured players," Marsh says.
HE'S NOT ALONE. Offensive linemen know the averages - careers lasting
less than four years, almost all in anonymity, lives lucky to extend
past 60, salaries among the lowest in professional sports.
The idea: Talk to 35 offensive linemen with local connections or
national perspective. Then tell their stories, which are stitched by
surgeries, connected by joint replacements and marred with pain
experienced long after the pads are put away.
They agree on two themes, almost unanimously. That everybody who plays
long enough exits pro football with some type of injury, separated only
by severity. And that they would do it all again, even if they knew the
consequences.
Norm Evans played tackle on the last undefeated team in the NFL, the
1972 Miami Dolphins, and later with the Seahawks. He slept in traction
one season after colliding headfirst with a linebacker and lived with
"never-ending" neck pain for 30 years until an operation in 2000.
He has an achy back and a sore Achilles tendon and mangled hands he
used to throw in the air to avoid contact when his kids ran toward him.
Sometimes he wonders: What am I going to be like in 10 years?
"I retired for health reasons," Evans, 64, says.
So it was an easy decision?
"Very easy," Evans quips. "I retired when I still had my health."
Reggie McKenzie played with the Buffalo Bills and the Seahawks, the
team he later worked for. One hit splintered the bone off his left
femur, and sometimes when he moves, he can feel where it settled in his
leg. The knee is bone on bone.
"You don't play 13 years and not have pain," says McKenzie, 56. "I can
tell you when it's going to rain before it rains. But that's show
business."
Ed Cunningham, a Washington grad, a one-season Seahawk and now an ABC
broadcaster, went to a doctor after his five-year career ended in 1996.
After examining an X-ray of his neck, the doctor said Cunningham looked
like a 55-year-old man who suffered whiplash 15 times. He's 37 and
struggles turning his head to the right.
"You just don't know at 22 what you're doing to your body," Cunningham
says. "You get so used to pain."
Bill Curry spent his whole life in football, playing and coaching and
analyzing ever since. An All-Pro center, he splintered bones in his
tibia, shredded ligaments and almost lost a leg. Since he retired from
playing, both shoulders have been replaced with titanium and plastic.
One has been replaced twice. And still, he would return tomorrow.
They all would.
"In a heartbeat," Curry says. "Which just proves that you got to be
crazy in the first place."
Curt Marsh lugged familiar lower-back spasms into his last game in the
NFL. His body sensed something he refused to admit out loud - the end
was near.
Blisters the size of quarters ripped open on both feet. Each step felt
like running on hot coals. Pain shot through his left knee and right
ankle, the result of two 300-pound men that landed there.
A syringe drew bloody fluid from the ankle, then shot both his ankle
and his back with shots to numb the pain. Tough skin covered the
blisters. A tough man endured the rest.
Marsh heard his right ring finger snap in the fourth quarter, thought
about coming out and started laughing, embarrassed. All the pain -
back, knee, ankle, feet - and here he was, worried about a broken
finger? He yanked the bone back into place, finished the game and never
played again.
"That's just the way it was," Marsh says. "We all knew it. We all
understood it. We all expected it."
WHEN BOB NEWTON played for the Chicago Bears, he smacked his head into
a defender's thigh at full speed. The impact knocked him cold. When he
wobbled back to the huddle, he thought he was playing in a high-school
football game. With the help of smelling salts, reality crept back.
This was Soldier Field.
Newton, a Seahawks lineman from 1976 to 1981, played hurt, same as all
the linemen. Then he carried that into retirement, living hurt, buoyed
by a high tolerance for pain. Now 47, his left foot needs an operation,
forcing him to limp. He has arthritis in his hands.
Pain becomes a constant companion. Some even refer to pain as a friend,
having put off surgery 10, 20, 30 years, either hoping for medical
improvements or too stubborn to admit how much they hurt.
"You wear that as a badge of courage until you get to be in your 60s,"
says Curry, 64. "Then you wear it as a badge of dumb. I was able to
destroy most all of my joints because of my tolerance for pain. I never
even grimaced. I took the shots and kept playing."
They all did. Five retired offensive linemen admitted getting hooked on
painkillers. Nearly all were injected with numbing shots. Marsh
estimates he took more than 100 shots during his career, not counting
dentist visits.
Marsh broke his hand one season playing for the Raiders and told the
doctors not to tell the coaches. During one game against Atlanta, the
shot wore off.
"And the doctor got a bunch of people around me, and reached into the
pocket of his raincoat, and pulled out a syringe," Marsh says. "He had
them, like six-shooters, in his pockets. The needle went all the way
through my hand and squirted out the other side."
The levels of pain tolerance for retired NFL players "far exceed" the
levels a normal man can live with, according to Kevin Guskiewicz,
director of The Center for the Study of Retired Athletes at the
University of North Carolina.
"Some of the guys, you look at their medical records and think they
would come walking in with a cane," Guskiewicz says. "But they tolerate
it."
That mindset carries over to physical therapy. At the clinic Brent
George runs in Northgate, G2 Sports Therapy, former players don't
always complete medical forms. They have aches they consider too normal
to list.
"I'm like every other 45-year-old man, middle-aged and balding," says
Bryan Millard, former Seahawks lineman. "I guess I just don't know the
difference in how I should feel versus how I feel now. What's normal to
me might be horrific to somebody else."
Normal: Kerry Jenkins, 33, once played for Tampa Bay with a fractured
leg, and it takes him 30 minutes to roll out of bed in the morning.
Normal: Former Seahawk Art Kuehn, 53, lived with back pain for 20 years
and still considers himself "lucky as hell" to have only had one
surgery.
Normal: Grant Feasel, 46 and also a former Seahawk, tore the anterior
cruciate ligament and the medial collateral ligament in his left knee
and the calf muscle in the same leg. On the last day of training camp.
During the last five minutes of practice. It required seven operations.
He can ride the exercise bike but can't run.
"I never liked running anyway," Feasel says.
The way doctors fixed Marsh in the NFL reminded him of the way he fixed
his old car in college. He started on the surface, hoping to find
something minor, and only investigated further if temporary solutions
didn't work. Even if major problems loomed, a working car went back out
on the road.
Marsh went on to become world-champion disabled weightlifter, a
published author, an accomplished speaker, owner of a vending-machine
business and a supervisor of 100 or so employees in the Everett Parks
Department.
But there remains one certainty with old cars: They break down. Marsh
couldn't be the father or the husband or the employee that he wanted.
He missed about one-third of his work days while with the city of
Everett. He couldn't run with his children.
"Players are making a lot of money now, but money isn't everything,"
Marsh says. "You can have all the money in the world, but if you can't
walk, if you have headaches the rest of your life, if you can't stand
up because your back hurts, if you're in so much pain that you can't
enjoy your children, the money is worthless."
INDESTRUCTIBLE AND immediate. That's how retired offensive linemen view
life in the NFL. All thought they would beat the odds by concentrating
on the next assignment, the next play, the next game. Only after they
retire do consequences enter the equation.
That's where the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes comes in.
Started in 2000, it is run by Guskiewicz, who once worked for the
Pittsburgh Steelers, and connected to the NFL Players Association,
which wanted independent data.
Of the 2,800 retired players the center collected data on, 86 percent
agreed to come to North Carolina to be studied, interested in learning
why the pain wouldn't go away. When compared to the general population
in a screening test, they were considered normal on the mental
component of the score and physically "significantly worse."
Guskiewicz says offensive linemen have higher incidences of
osteoarthritis, depression, hypertension and diabetes than other
football players - linked, in large part, to their playing weight.
Compared to other positions, even their defensive counterparts,
offensive linemen are the beefiest players on the field.
"I'm always careful about generalizing," he says, "but they tend to be
the ones we have to worry the most about."
The Center found a high relationship between arthritis and the
likelihood of developing depression. Same with concussions. It also
found snowball effects - knees that didn't get repaired caused hip
pain, which caused back pain, which led to depression.
Evans went to North Carolina for a back study. He met with a
nutritionist, an orthopedic surgeon and the trainers. Three weeks
later, his back already felt better.
"Many of these guys have aged well beyond what their age would say they
should look and be like," Guskiewicz says. "They're struggling."
Struggling with weight, more than any other problem.
The inability to remain active kept Marsh's weight so high he
practically gave up walking, even driving to his mailbox. Now 6 feet 5
and weighing 375 pounds, he hopes to lose 80 pounds with the new hip,
the key for the health of all linemen in retirement.
The Raiders forced Marsh to lose weight early in his career, and he
traces much of his injury problems to starving himself to 7 percent
body fat. You won't hear that talk these days. Not with linemen less
than 300 pounds considered undersized.
"The concern for me is these guys who are weighing 350 pounds," Evans
says. "And it's obvious it ain't all muscle. And what it does for your
heart to be carrying all that weight around is unbelievable. It's a
death trap."
Former linemen worry about the current bunch. Evans runs "Pro Athletes
Outreach," an organization that teaches athletes how to become role
models, and he knows one player who considered himself fortunate
because he didn't have surgery in the sixth offseason as he did in each
of the first five.
Former Seahawks center Blair Bush notes the improvements in medical
care since the 1980s, and others point to improved equipment and
facilities. And yet, when George treats offensive linemen in his
Northgate office, the more recent retirees are the most banged up.
Why? The size and speed of today's game.
"There's no question that the field, the turf, the shoe wear, bracing,
are all improvements from past years," George says. "But the injuries
are worse. And the injuries are becoming more complex. Many involve
multiple joints."
Curt Marsh points to a picture of his ankles in the book he wrote,
taken before the amputation. The right ankle triples the size of the
left.
"Isn't it nasty?" he asks. "I look like the elephant man."
Marsh applied for total and permanent disability through the NFL. He
had no hip, no leg and a back and neck held together by rods and
plates. He could barely move his head.
The disability panel consists of six people (three owner reps and three
player reps). Each time Marsh went to see a doctor, he heard, "You're
the worst case I've ever seen." And each time the vote came back tied
3-3. Finally, the panel sent him to a binding arbitration doctor, and
Marsh won, allowing him to concentrate on his family and public
speaking.
Every six months, Marsh is required to see his doctor to prove he's
disabled. Each time, they enjoy a laugh, joking about how his hips,
legs, back and neck won't grow back anytime soon.
Marsh can sympathize with the late Hall of Fame center Mike Webster,
whose estate won more than $1.5 million in disability benefits last
week in what might be a landmark lawsuit against the NFL. At issue:
whether Webster, who died of a heart attack four years ago when he was
50, was disabled when he retired or whether his condition was
degenerative. The board voted unanimously for degenerative. The 4th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously disagreed.
Also at issue: how real post-football injuries are. Even Marsh
encountered skepticism.
A few years back, the Players Association asked him to testify before
the state senate in California, where politicians were attempting to
pass a law to limit workman's compensation claims for professional
athletes. The thinking being it's dangerous to begin with, and they
make too much money already.
One politician cut Marsh off, said he was sick of whiny, professional
athletes talking about injuries that don't exist or didn't come from
football. Marsh lost it. He reached down, popped off his right leg and
slammed it on the table.
"You tell me this injury doesn't freaking exist, buddy!" Marsh
screamed. "This happened to me in football! These injuries are real!"
WILL GRANT, 52, played center for 10 seasons in the NFL, with the
Seahawks and the Buffalo Bills, and he needs 10 seconds to count his
surgeries. One ... two ... seven. He has arthritis in a knee that
swings like a loose gate. He can't walk without limping.
Fred Hoaglin, 62, played center for three teams before he joined the
original Seahawks in 1976. He had both knees replaced in 2002 and has
undergone 10 total surgeries, including an angioplasty and a bypass
surgery.
"We die," Hoaglin says. "We die off."
They know the averages, the short career lengths and reduced life
spans. But they don't ask for sympathy, only understanding. Even after
detailing 30 years of neck pain and other assorted aches, Evans makes
it clear he has no issues. His advice to current players? Play until
they tear your jersey off. Such is life for offensive linemen, both
active and retired.
They played hurt. They live hurt. And they would do it all again.
"I tore my ACL, MCL and meniscus in one shot," former Seahawk John
Yarno says. "Now I have two artificial knees. But I wanted to play.
They didn't hold a gun to my head. I knew what the consequences would
be."
People ask Curt Marsh all the time why he didn't sue his doctors or the
Raiders. And there was a point when anger nearly overwhelmed him.
Someone offered Marsh a Rolex for his Super Bowl ring. He almost traded
it. And now, 30 surgeries later, he would do a few things differently,
but he wouldn't trade anything at all.
"I didn't take care of myself or listen to my body," Marsh says. "I
take responsibility."
