Word: waldrep
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...days ago in Birmingham, Ala., 20-year-old running back Kent Waldrep of Texas Christian University lay on the ground before 63,000 spectators, unable to move. Moments before, he had been toting the pigskin, trying to gain yardage for his team. Yet there he lay, the victim of a jarring tackle which landed him upside down. The result: a damaged spinal cord and instant paralysis from the neck down...
...maudlin response to such a personal tragedy is uncalled for. But Waldrep's story gives us pause. For he represents that occasional, unwanted intrusion of reality into the restricted domain of the sports page...
Thus does Waldrep's accident, and others like it, gain a special poignancy. The unsuspecting reader of the sports page is momentarily jarred from his cliched patterns of thought. Tragedy has found him out, even amid the daily barrage of sports scores. The hoopla that surrounds so much of modern sport seems even more contrived than usual...