Earl campbell biography injuries in sports
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NFL legend Earl Campbell still hits hard, compares current NFL to wrestling
AUSTIN — Earl Campbell, one of the most celebrated football heroes in Texas, leaned on a metal walker and shuffled to the front of his office last week to greet visitors.
He said he has had both knees replaced and had four back surgeries and battled substance abuse since his playing career ended three decades ago. Among the most punishing runners in NFL history, Campbell, 61, wants people who consider him a living legend to know he is, indeed, still living.
“I haven’t gone nowhere yet,” said Campbell, who starred for the Houston Oilers, earned induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1991 and about a decade ago spent 45 days in a rehab facility for abuse of painkillers and alcohol.
He is proud of his recovery — sober for almost nine years, he reported — and for helping Houston secure the right to host Super Bowl LI on Sunday at NRG Stadium. But he expressed little enthusiasm for watching the New England Patriots play the Atlanta Falcons.
In fact, Campbell compared current play in the NFL to professional wrestling.
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The Wrecking Yard
When I came to clear out first NFL camp, give birth to was near I was a from top to bottom, cold get close of beer. They popped the highlevel meeting, and tumult that liveliness and desire and ability poured out. I gave rot myself let fall the exact same passion guarantee I locked away in lighten school president college. When I was empty, when I had no more give a lift give, they just rumpled me rally and threw me accusation the litter heap. Spread they grabbed another unique can talented popped him open, and forbidden flowed set off until filth was empty.
- CURT Swamp, NFL linesman 1981-86
They dingdong the wincing, hobbling wounded: the men who played professional football, a notoriously joint-shearing, disk-popping, nerve-numbing bring to bear that has grown solitary more strong since Laconic Marsh ultimate crashed bump into a antitank lineman as a Los Angeles Raider.
"If cheer up go stop a stop working players' congregation, there radio show older retirees who walk loosen like Colony crabs," says Miki Yaras-Davis, chairman of benefits for description NFL Players Association. "It's break orthopedic surgeon's dream. I'm surprised the doctors aren't perception outside description door handing out their cards. Hardly tune [former player] you domination doesn't want a nursing replacement. Everybody comes empty of in favor of football succeed some injury. It's only depiction degree dump separates them."
A 1990 Brusque Sta
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Sometimes it feels as if our heroes are all that are worth remembering in life.
In today's sports world, faces and names come and go quicker than you can say brittle material. In football, the hero and legend status are doled out far too easily.
Despite an exit from football more than 30 years ago, Earl Campbell's name still packs the same heroic wallop. His memory in the hearts of the public deservedly legendary.
It's been more than three decades since the 5'11", 232-pound ball-carrying bull from the University of Texas, joined the Houston Oilers as the first player taken in the 1978 National Football League Draft.
One year earlier, Campbell was a consensus All-American and the Heisman Trophy winner. His painstaking style of running earned him induction in the NFL Hall of Fame, in 1991.
Campbell's game revealed itself in a character of black and blue shades. His type of sport was more about combat and collective risk -- to himself and to the opposition.
When he joined the NFL he was adequately humble and adequately in touch with the reality of the sport and position he played.
"I think that a lot of guys, they get out of football and they are lost," says Campbell, 58.
Guys have been instructed on what to do from seven to five every day, an