TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The only foolproof way to avoid being injured playing football is to not play at all.
Alabama star Tua Tagovailoa started Saturday at Mississippi State, a week after he looked gimpy on a surgically repaired ankle but played great against LSU. The junior quarterback seemed done for the day with the Crimson Tide up 28 points late in the first half, but Tagovailoa lobbied for one more series and Tide coach Nick Saban gave it to him.
“We can second-guess ourselves all we want,” Saban said. “We told Mac (Jones) to warm up and we were going to go 2-minute before the half. Tua wanted to play in the game and so I don’t really make a lot of decisions worrying if a guy is going to get hurt.”
That final series ended with Tagovailoa seriously injured. Alabama announced hours after it had beaten Mississippi State 38-7 that Tagovailoa had suffered a dislocated right hip and would miss the remainder of the season.
The quarterback who was a national championship game MVP and Heisman Trophy candidate before he ever started a game at Alabama will probably never take another snap for the Tide. A player who had a real chance of being the first pick in April’s NFL draft is now facing an uncertain future. When a football player gets a hip injury the first name that comes to mind is Bo Jackson, whose career was ended by a dislocated hip in 1990. Hopefully, advancements in medicine will produce a better outcome for Tagovailoa.
In 33 games with Alabama, Tagovailoa has thrown 87 touchdown passes and 11 interceptions.
Some might question why Tagovailoa, a little less than a month after suffering a high ankle sprain, was playing. At that point in the game? Against a team Alabama could have handled without him?
Saban’s comment sums it up: If the player can play (cleared by doctors) and wants to play (with the blessing of his family), he plays. It is a dangerous game. Tagovailoa’s injury is awful for Alabama, college football and for him. He has a multimillion-dollar arm and was about six months away cashing in.
“You cannot blame Coach Saban for that,” former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer said during Fox’s postgame show, which included a smart discussion about the injury with former players Brady Quinn, Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart.
“Every time you step on the football field and put your pads on you’re at risk of being injured every single play,” Leinart said.
It is moments like this when this becomes so obvious: Between NCAA amateurism rules and NFL rules prohibiting players from being drafted until they are three years out of high school, elite football players are being forced into a system that does not properly value or protect them. In a sane world, the NFL would be developing its own players, and paying them in the process.
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