Whose career-altering/ending injury do you remember?

I still remember watching Krumrie in the Super Bowl at my grandma's when I was a little kid.

On a local level, I covered a preps game where a player had a helmet-to-helmet collision, suffered a neck injury and died a week later. It was pretty numbing.
Then, three weeks later, covering the same team, a player suffered a major neck injury in a game (though he recovered).
Unbelievably, two months later, two players on the basketball team of this same school were killed in a car wreck. Just an awful year for that school.

 

The Napoleon McCallum injury always stands out for me. That was messed up. I also remember the Wendel Davis double knee-buster. Yikes.

 

I was going to say Theismann until Columbo restated the criteria:

Ron Harper was a good example. That guy make an instant impact on the Clippers, and then in no time at all that injury. Decent career, but he could have been off the charts if not for that injury.

I wasn't old enough to follow baseball at the time, but my Dad on a few occasions has mentioned Bobby Valentine's broken leg when he ran into the fence at Anaheim. He claims Valentine would have been a big-time player for the Angels if not for that.

 

For some reason, the first guy that came to mind was Todd Lichti of Stanford. I'm not saying he would have been great or anything in the NBA, but I think he would have done some substantial damage. He was, what, 6'4,'' drove like a beast to the rim, was almost completely ambidextrous and he had the build to take the hits he would've absorbed on his drives. I could've seen him being like a Sarunas Marciulionis-type player. Too bad he wrecked his knee(s) before he got to do anything in the NBA.

 

O.K., this isn't in the same class as some of the others, but...

Sometimes, ESPN (or ESPN Classic) will show the 1978 World Strongest Man. In it, bodybuilder Franco Columbo is racing with a refrigerator on his back (in those days, they did crazy stuff)...Anyway, Columbo plants his left leg and it just snaps in half....He's writhing on the ground in pain the instant it happens...

Brent Musberger's call: "Oh, Franco's down, but he'll be allll-riiiight....." 28 years later, that guy is still clueless.

 

Not exactly an injury, but I watched on TV as Chuck Hughes collapsed. The ultimate career-ender.

John McSherry.

Travis Roy. The SI photo of him, vacant eyes looking directly into the camera lens as he was being carried off ... it haunts me to this day.

 

shottie, wasn't that roy's first shift?

God, that one haunts me too. I was watching live, for some reason.

 

Thirteen seconds, I believe, into his first collegiate shift.

 

Clark Kellogg didn't have a gruesome, arena-filling snap of his knees, but once he hurt them, he went from being his generation's Elton Brand to being out of the NBA in a big hurry. Figure that the guy has been announcing Pacers games for 17 years, and he's only 45.

 

That was the one I was going to post. I can still see it in my mind. Ewwwww. Fucking Fuckeyes.

The replays of Krumrie I saw that night, where his lower leg looked like an elbow macaroni, not good.

I hadn't seen Theismann until about six months ago, from a link on here. I could have lived the rest of my years not having seen it.

 

Shit... I thought it was the Cavs.

My head is elsewhere, I guess.

 

Death would be Hank Gathers, sitting up one last time... that deep look of fear in the eyes that you never see.

Nothing close for me.

I could barely work that night.