Shawne Merriman will shut it down and have season ending knee surgery after just one regular season game. I know, huge shocker. Doctors told Merriman throughout the preseason that he needed major reconstructive knee surgery and couldn’t and shouldn’t play during the 2008 NFL season. Determined to play, Merriman went on a doctor-shopping spree looking for one doctor to clear him to play. No such luck. Despite every opinion he sought telling him no dice, Lights Out, as he’s known, elected to forgo surgery and tough it out. While his choice seemed inane, it’s what athletes do. They are just wired differently and that’s part of what drives them to succeed. You see it on every level of sport.
Yours truly ignored early symptoms of the disease that ultimately shot down my football career early in my freshman year. In retrospect it was stupid, but I was fighting not to get red-shirted and most of all, just wanted to ball. Chalk it up to stupidity or meatiness, but athletes have tunnel vision. Most of them don’t know anything but their sport and are lost without it.
A close friend went to the ends of the Earth to keep playing football. After not assimilating with a I-AA program out of high school, he transferred to my beloved wolfpack and walked on. A neck injury derailed his playing career early in training camp and he pulled the doctor shop until he found one that cleared him so he could finish his career at a small school, despite the warnings of paralysis. Terrell Owens defied doctors orders to play in Super Bowl XXXIX after having a plate and several screws inserted into his ankle. While minor compared to Merriman, Kobe played through a finger injury in the NBA finals, then helped lead Team USA to gold at the summer Olympics. The list goes on and on.
Merriman is at the extreme end of the spectrum with every doctor he consulted telling him to shut it down, but you can’t really blame him for trying and you obviously couldn’t have stopped him.
