No knee should bend the way Marcus Lattimore’s did on Saturday.
The top running back in college football was on his way to another big game and season for South Carolina when he took a routine handoff in the second quarter. After scampering a few yards downfield, two Tennessee defenders launched toward Lattimore from both sides. With one tackler draped around his back, the other dove toward Lattimore’s leg.
The hard plastic helmet hit the knee and the knee gave way. Replays showed Lattimore’s kneecap was clearly displaced, rotated 90 degrees to the right; the bottom half of the leg was limp, seemingly attached to the top by skin only.
That many were relieved by the official diagnosis — a dislocated kneecap and right knee hyperextension causing undisclosed “injury to several ligaments,” according to the South Carolina athletic department — is testament to just how bad the injury looked.
The grisliness of the injury was only magnified by ESPN’s repeated replays of the incident. But even worse was the look in Lattimore’s eyes, one that indicated not just the ungodly pain but obvious terror, too. By the time Lattimore was driven away from the field, a towel barely concealed his sobbing face, surely just one of many in Williams-Brice Stadium.
You could tell that he knew. He knew that he’d suffered a serious, season-ending knee injury for the second year in a row (he’d just come back from a torn ACL in his left knee). He knew he wouldn’t play the game he loved for a long while, if ever again, and, if so, likely as a severely diminished version of his old self. He knew that his seeming birthright to make millions by dominating on Sundays was now hardly a sure thing.
Like any business, the National Football League has a right, within reason, to restrict its employment pool how it sees fit. It currently requires potential players to be three years removed from high school before becoming draft eligible. Some have argued that the rule violates anti-trust laws, but judges have dismissed all court challenges.
In most cases, the age requirement makes sense. The vast majority of youngsters aren’t physically or mentally ready for the rigors of the NFL. But each year college football produces a few physical freaks that, if eligible, would get picked in the first round as freshmen.
Lattimore, who rushed for 1,197 yards and 17 touchdowns in college football’s most rugged conference in his first year, was one of them. In any other sport, the 19-year-old Lattimore could have cashed in on his talents. Instead, he had to toil two more years for tuition, room and board, giving two knees to his school in the process.
When you consider that football careers are shorter and more likely to end in catastrophic injury than those in any other sport — especially for running backs, maybe the most punishing position in the game — there’s something incredibly immoral about the age limit, however practical it may normally be.
All hope is not lost for Lattimore. He’s stated his desire to come back, and his coaches and trainers believe he’ll be able to do so.
And there’s precedent for this optimism. Willis McGahee of the Denver Broncos tore three knee ligaments in a similarly gruesome injury during Miami’s national championship game. Though he dropped from a projected high first-round pick to 23rd overall and had to sit out the entire season after the draft, he’s come back to have a long and productive career.
But there’s also a good chance that when Lattimore does return, likely in 2014 after redshirting next year, he won’t look like his old, hard-charging self. After last season’s injury, many already thought he’d lost a step. It’s likely that the freshman Marcus Lattimore of 2010 is the best we’ll ever see.
Everyone hopes these fears are proven wrong, that Lattimore will return to full speed reclaim and the dazzling, lucrative professional career he was meant to have. But, no matter what happens, seeing one of Earth’s strongest physical specimens leave the field in helpless agony, his brilliant career suddenly halted and very much in doubt, is about as depressing as sports get.