This Time of Year, It’s Grimace and Bear It

By this point in the football season, Bobby DeMars has dislocated his fingers and thumbs more times than he can recall. The USC defensive lineman winces a little whenever he is introduced to someone.

“They think I’m some big tough guy so they try to shake my hand really hard,” he said. “It hurts.”

And by this point in the season, fullback Charlie Landrigan isn’t all that eager to look in the mirror after a game.

“You get all these cuts ... you’re bleeding all over,” he said. “You look like hell.”

By early November, like every other college football team in the nation, the Trojans are a mass of scrapes and bruises, sore muscles and aching joints, the sorts of things football people don’t even consider injuries.

In fact, everything that hurts is an injury. But not everything requires a player to be sidelined or have surgery. There is a universe of pain involving physical ailments that can be bandaged, taped, braced or ignored. Sometimes players need a pain-killing injection to get back onto the field. Most of the time, they simply bear it.

“The adrenaline is letting you play,” defensive end Lonnie Ford said. “You’re thinking about getting off your blocks. You’re not thinking about anything else.”

Pain is an accepted part of a game that involves continual, violent collisions. In some sports, such as track and field, athletes need to feel in optimal condition, or close to it, to compete effectively. Football players grow accustomed to performing while hobbled.

Adrenaline and the endorphins produced under duress are only part of the equation. Pain tolerance is a relative experience, researchers say, influenced by memories, attitudes and emotions. It could be that some people are born with a higher threshold.

In most cases, a young athlete with low tolerance will be weeded out long before he reaches the level of major college football.

“It’s the nature of the game,” USC athletic trainer Russ Romano said. “To come out every day and feel the aches and pains that they feel is amazing.”

Consider the common “stinger,” a relatively minor injury whose name makes it sound like stubbing a toe or biting your tongue.

In fact, it involves getting hit so hard that one of the nerves along the neck is either pinched between vertebrae or stretched like a laundry line.

First comes a burning jolt. Then all or part of one arm goes temporarily numb. Safety Troy Polamalu suffered two stingers in one drive against Oregon earlier this season and never left the game.

“You just learn to play with it,” he said.

Players are motivated by their own determination and an element of peer pressure. On the practice field earlier this season, freshman tailback Darryl Poston was chided by older teammates who thought he was being overly cautious with a sore back.

Experience plays a role too. A sophomore who tweaks his ankle and panics, thinking he has been badly injured, becomes a junior who realizes he can have that ankle retaped and return to the field without causing additional damage to the ligament.

Call it the school of hard knocks.

DeMars says, “You can be playing and get your hand smashed between two helmets and you’re just mad. But when they blow the whistle and you’re walking back to the huddle, you think about it. That’s when you have to try and block it out.”

Ignoring pain can be easier in the heat of the moment, players say. It’s a different story a few hours later, when the rush of the game subsides.

DeMars finds it puzzling that he can play hard for three hours but can’t get comfortable on the couch when he gets back to his apartment, his body hurting all over.

Last season, Ford battled a sore lower back that would stiffen at night. After games or tough practices, he took pain pills and slept face-down with a pillow under his stomach to keep the muscles from locking up. The next morning he hobbled to the trainer’s room for treatment.

And it only gets worse with each passing game.

“The beginning of the season, my shoulder really hurt,” Landrigan said. “Then my ankle was killing me and I thought, oh, the shoulder isn’t so bad.”

The frightening aspect to this wear and tear--the part that doesn’t get talked about much--is the potential long-term effects. Medical research cannot promise these players they won’t suffer from arthritis because of what they have put themselves through. There could be other problems.

“I’ve got loose knees and I’m sure when I’m older I’ll have to watch my step,” DeMars said. “I mean, I feel like I’ve aged 20 years in the last five so, yeah, I worry about the future.”

But, in the same breath, he says he has never considered quitting. Athletic trainers and team physicians say they try to monitor even minor ailments such as finger dislocations, vigilant for signs of deformity, not wanting any player to end up with a crooked finger, like USC Coach Pete Carroll.

There have also been advancements in conditioning. When a player limps into the weight room, strength coach Chris Carlisle starts him on a high-repetition, low-weight routine designed to increase flexibility and saturate the sore areas with oxygenated blood, all the better to promote healing.

In the off-season, Carlisle has the team on a regimen that strengthens muscles at critical points, such as around joints. This, he hopes, will help their bodies withstand the pounding.

“We’re smarter when we train now,” he said. “We want a kid to walk away from this game and live a full life without constant pain.”

Yet he adds this disclaimer: “He’ll be as healthy as he can be, having played this game.”

Last winter, after suffering through aching, sleepless nights, Ford went to Carlisle for help. The defensive end stopped doing traditional squats and worked his muscles from different angles.

“Yeah, it motivates you,” Ford said. “You know the pain and you don’t want to go through it again.”

His back has not given him any trouble this season.

Now, he says, his shoulder hurts.