By David A. Sylvester
In 1972, I watched the great Miami Dolphins win the Superbowl after a 14-0 record, the only perfect season in NFL history. And I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in time to watch Joe Montana and the 49ers win Superbowls in 1984 and 1989 under coach Bill Walsh and later in 1990 and 1995 with Steve Young under George Seifert
But nothing has been more thrilling than to see the promising underdog, the Indiana University’s Hoosiers, win a perfect 16-0 season, defeating the historic college teams of Penn State, Alabama, Ohio State and Miami. As improbable as it sounds, these wins revolved around IU’s star quarterback, Fernando Mendoza, who became IU’s first quarterback ever to win the Heisman trophy. In five games, Mendoza had more touchdown passes than incompletions, the best record in 25 years.
Yet, in one moment, all the euphoria popped, like a soap bubble, the emotion no more than passing clouds over the mind. And the ugly naked face inherent in this game of tackle football revealed itself.
On the first play of the Big Ten Championship game, Ohio State defensive end Caden Curry slammed into Mendoza, directly in the chest, a hit that Mendoza said later was like getting “hit by a freight train with no brakes.”
It left this 22-year-old kid with his whole life ahead of him lying face down on the grass. For a few agonizing seconds, no one knew how bad it was. Was Mendoza unconscious the way Joe Montana was unconscious after getting hit by the Giants’ Jim Burt a 1987 playoff game?
Or had he suffered a concussion like the Buffalo Bills’ quarterback Jim Kelly in the 1992 Super Bowl against the Washington Redskins? Would Mendoza lose any memory of the 4th quarter of the game, or wonder around afterwards not knowing which hotel he was staying in, or suffer “horrible headaches” for months, the way Jim Kelly did his Superbowl concussion? Four years later, Kelly had another severe concussion in a 1996 playoff game against the Jaguars, had to be carted off the field and never played football again.
These aren’t the worst injuries for the star players in NFL football, either. I was living in New England when the Oakland Raiders safety Jack Tatum hit the Patriots’ wide receiver Darryl Stingley in a preseason game in 1978 at the Oakland Coliseum. Tatum drove into Stingley, who was in the midst of reaching for a pass, and Tatum’s shoulder pads smacked into Stingley’s helmet.
Before Stingley landed backward on the Coliseum’s natural blue grass a split second later, his neck was already broken and his spinal cord severely compressed. Stingley lay on the field, motionless for 10 minutes, a quadriplegic for the rest of his life. He died at the age of 57 from medical complications.
By most accounts, the incident haunted Tatum afterwards, but he apparently never apologized and wrote about the incident a year later in his book, “They Call Me Assassin.” Many years later, I lived within blocks of the Oakland Coliseum and even though I loved Oakland, I detested the Raiders, the so-called “Raider Nation,” and their demented owner Al Davis. The worse they played, the more exaggerated their “outlaw” and “bad boy” reputation became.
All this flashed into my mind as I saw Mendoza lying on the field, face down, motionless, then slowly get up and limp over to the benches. It turns out he only had the air knocked out of his lungs. He only missed one play, returned and led the Hoosiers to a 13-10 win over Ohio State.
He was fine.
This time.
And the next time?
Where will all the ecstatic fans be if Fernando Mendoza winds up suffering from months of “horrible headaches” after a
NFl playoff game, as Jim Kelly did in 1992? Who will the cheerleaders shout and dance for if he is knocked unconscious like Joe Montana and can’t deliver the next miracle pass?
And the millions of dollars? The toasts of the alumni? The microphones thrust into his face? Who will be the next young “star” they all rush to worship?
After every game, Fernando points up to heaven with his two forefingers and says he “gives all the glory to God”?
Really?
In all these thrills, nightmares and tragedies, where is God, really?
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