Texan4Ever
All Pro
Interesting article at SI.com about former Pro Bowl linemen Dave Pear, check it out at: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/jeff_pearlman/12/18/pear/index.html?cnn=yes.
I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like to play football in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s without the medical advances we have today, not to mention the dirity plays back in those days and the overall physicallity of the sport back then.
Dave Pear has a message for you. "Don't let your kids play football," he says. "Never."
He is, in basic terms, a train wreck -- a football-inflicted train wreck. Pear walks with a cane and, often, simply doesn't walk at all. He suffers from vertigo and memory loss. Over the past 18 years, he has undergone eight surgeries, beginning with a Posterior Cervical Laminectomy on his neck in 1981, and including disc removal and rod fusion in his back (1987), arthroplasty in his left hip (2008) and, earlier this year, four screws removed from his lower back.
I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like to play football in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s without the medical advances we have today, not to mention the dirity plays back in those days and the overall physicallity of the sport back then.