NORMAN, Okla. -- As flashbacks go, it was your basic nauseating mind-melter. You don't have your brain scrambled and live to tell a cheery tale.
"I remember waking up the next morning and having the biggest headache of my life," Sam Bradford said. "I was still sensitive to light. I kind of knew if he did have a concussion ... there's no way he could play."
The reigning Heisman Trophy winner sat in the lobby of Oklahoma's football facility this week, recounting not his painful memory from two years ago but also the life and times of his friend Blake Griffin. Before they are linked by national honors, they already share the same serious injury.
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This is what we usually see from double-double machine Blake Griffin ... (US Presswire) |
Both have been concussed, badly. Bradford suffered his injury in 2007 at Texas Tech while trying to make a tackle after a fumble. Griffin's concussion currently is the most famous -- and possibly most mysterious -- in sports. Similar to Bradford's injury, there was no apparent hard hit Saturday when Oklahoma's sophomore forward lasted only 11 minutes in a loss to Texas.
That made Griffin a superstar bystander Monday against Kansas. At times, he looked in distress, plugging his ears with his fingers when it appeared the crowd would roar. At other times, he rubbed his temples. His return is open-ended. Fortunately, the Sooners don't play again until Saturday, which could put his recovery time roughly the same as Bradford's was -- one week.
"I don't think I started practicing until Wednesday of that week," Bradford said. "That's four days after my concussion. I still remember going out there Wednesday and my headache came back from doing that. From my experience, it doesn't take the hardest hit."
There was enough of a blow Saturday to make Griffin eerily channel Bradford from 15 months previous in Lubbock. Viewers saw the same clueless look on the bench, the same 1,000-yard stare from Griffin as they did from Bradford.
"You're trying to so hard to get it back together and you can't," recalled OU football coach Bob Stoops. "You keep trying. I know the frustration. You don't even remember you asked somebody (something). The doctors are half-smiling, 'In 10 seconds he's going to ask me again.'"
Rare pair
Before Saturday, the Sooners were on track to become the second athletes from the same major college to be their sports' national players of the year in the same academic year. UCLA's Lew Alcindor won the U.S. Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) national player of the year award in 1967-68. Bruins' quarterback Gary Beban won the Heisman after the 1967 season.
So much has changed, though, even since Saturday. Oklahoma has lost two in a row. Griffin remains day to day. A No. 1 seed and the conference title hang precariously in the balance.
But how strange that it got to this point. Concussions are so rare in men's college basketball that they barely register in a significant NCAA study that ended in 2004. Over a 16-year period the NCAA recorded 151 concussions, or 9.4 per year. That accounted for only 3.6 percent of all injuries in the sport.
In football, concussions are almost a rite of passage. In the same study, concussions were 14 times more common (130.31 per year).
"None," Oklahoma coach Jeff Capel said when asked how many concussions he has dealt with. "I've never had it. It's crazy."
Marked man
Tommy Griffin has another theory as to why his son is on the sideline. From his seat a few rows from the Lloyd Noble Arena floor, Blake's father was acting like, well, a father. He has seen his son dole out punishment this season in leading the country in rebounds, but to him the scales aren't exactly balanced.
"There's a lot intentional ...," he said. "It's very difficult for a guy who is just 19 years old to continue taking abuse after abuse after abuse and nobody recognizes it."
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| 'He was the guy I had to get,' Jeff Capel (left) says of recruiting Blake Griffin. (Getty Images) |
"I don't think anyone in our league has been dirty with what they've done," Capel said. "With the exception of maybe one team, (no one) has been malicious. You're talking about someone's career, someone's future. I think it would be a pretty crappy person, coach or player who would do that. You have to continue to play hard but I don't think anyone in our league would go out of their way to inflict more damage."
How the concussion at Texas came about is still a mystery. The most popular opinion is that Texas' Dogus Balbay struck Griffin inadvertently with an arm or elbow. But observers say there were two or three occasions where Griffin might have been bumped enough to suffer the injury.
"I think his mentality started back when he was a sophomore in high school," Tommy Griffin said. "His brother Taylor was a senior and was normally taking all kinds of abuse. I told Blake, 'The most important thing to understand is people are trying to get you out of the game. If you retaliate they achieved what they wanted to achieve.'"
Bradford followed a conga line of Heisman winners at OU. Griffin is at a trailhead, perhaps showing the way for Capel to stay and win in Norman. The third-year Sooners coach comes from back East, from basketball royalty, Duke. That doesn't seem to add up to a long-term stay in Norman, but if you can get the national player of the year to come to Oklahoma, anything is possible.
"I knew he (Griffin) was special," Capel said. "I knew he was the guy I had to get. Sometimes when you take over a program, sometimes all it takes is to get one really good player. I've heard Coach K talk about so much why his love for Johnny Dawkins is what it is. Johnny was the guy. Johnny is like the Godfather to us. He's the guy that made it cool to go to Duke."
Dawkins was one of the first Duke stars under Mike Krzyzewski. Bradford and Griffin are two Oklahoma City-area kids who made it cool to stay at home, too. Bradford is the Heisman winner who could have played anything -- hockey, hoops, golf. Griffin was the hulking forward who was trapped in a tight end's body.
"I don't see anyone in the country who could cover him," Bradford said. "You throw the ball up at 12 feet and he'd go get it."
Bradford shook off his concussion to lead the country in pass efficiency as a freshman. His Heisman season in 2008 was aided by a big offensive line. It wouldn't be too far of a stretch to suggest that Bradford barely was touched last season.
Athletes, first
"Can you believe I coached a Heisman Trophy winner?" a close friend gushed over the phone last week.
Kermit Holmes has been drinking it all in from his home base in Beaumont, Texas. The former OU basketball player under Billy Tubbs is an assistant at Lamar University, and he coached both Bradford and Griffin with the Athletes First AAU team in Oklahoma City.
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| Sam Bradford will take aim at that elusive national title next season. (Getty Images) |
"No high school coach can say they had both at the same time. No one but me. Bob Stoops nor Jeff Capel can say that."
Under Holmes, a bond developed between the players that exists to this day. Griffin practiced his impersonations on Bradford ("We used to ride to practice together. I don't think either of us would stop laughing the whole time," the quarterback said). Once at a camp, Holmes' young son Jakaree took a bag of doughnuts and slapped Bradford across the face with it. Now when the quarterback appears on television he is "The Doughnut Man" to 9-year-old Jakaree.
Bradford had honed his skills as a shooting guard and small forward who could average 20 points and 10 rebounds per game. Griffin surpassed everyone.
"You watch him and he's so dominant in every aspect of the game," Bradford said. "There are times when the other team tries everything they can but there's absolutely nothing they can do to stop him."
When their time together on the court ended in July 2005 after a tournament in Las Vegas, Bradford allowed teammates in Holmes' hotel room to clear out.
"I said, 'Sam what's wrong?'" Holmes said. "He was emotional a little bit. He couldn't believe that was his last Athletes First game."
"When you've done something every summer since you were 10 years old and it finally comes to an end," Bradford said, "in the end you'd be crazy if you didn't get a little upset."
At one point that team featured Bradford, Griffin, current OU tight end Jermaine Gresham and cornerback Dominique Franks. Bradford and Franks had played together since grade school. Three played in a national championship game. One was the sport's player of the year.
When the cobwebs clear -- if the elbows ever clear -- Griffin is hoping for a mixture of both: That title game and the national hardware.
