The most famous hip injury of this sporting generation is unquestionably the one suffered by Bo Jackson in 1991. The injury curtailed the career of one of the most gifted two-sport stars of all-time and forever left his fans thinking about what might have been. Now, over a dozen years later, Bo still knows a thing or two about hip injuries. Jackson doesn't follow pro sports and therefore has no idea who Rosevelt Colvin is or what happened to him 10 days ago in Philadelphia. But Jackson still knows the key to any hip recovery boils down to two words:
Blood flow.
Jackson lost that flow after going down on an awkward tackle against the Cincinnati Bengals in a January playoff game in Los Angeles. Jackson suffered a subluxation (partial dislocation), and the loss of blood to the area led to degeneration of his hip joint (avascular necrosis). The net result was hip replacement surgery and the end of his athletic career.
According to Jackson, it's a simple equation. If Colvin has gotten proper blood flow into his hip, then he can make it back. If not . . . well, don't even go there. "If the blood supply is cut off to the area there's nothing really you can do about it. But if that happened to him or not I have no idea," Jackson said from his Chicago-area home. "Whenever you lose blood flow to your hip you're going to develop avascular necrosis. The blood acts to keep the cartilage (in the hip joint) alive, which acts as a cushion. It's like a shoe sole. When you lose that, you get bone-on-bone contact and that's when AVN occurs." Colvin and his agent, Kennard McGuire, were vague about the Patriots linebacker's injury in a conference call yesterday. McGuire did say that a simple break was found in Colvin's hip socket (acetabular fracture) during exploratory surgery last Friday and that no evidence of AVN was found.
"That's not an issue," said McGuire.
According to Dr. Claude T. Moorman, who recently headed a Duke study into football-related hip injuries, AVN can typically set in anytime within the first six weeks of the injury. That means Colvin will likely be checked more than once via MRI before he begins his rehab. Moorman said it's not yet fully known why some hip patients develop AVN and others don't.
The key difference between the injuries of Jackson and Colvin could be the nature of their broken hip bones. Jackson suffered a severe break in the back of the hip socket near the pelvic bone. Colvin's does not sound nearly as severe. Colvin wouldn't say whether it was the result of a subluxation. In Philadelphia, he reported feeling a "pop" in his hip.
"Everyone that has a hip injury doesn't need a replacement or need to end their careers," Jackson said. "I know a lot of people who've dislocated their hips and come back and been fine. One of my teammates, (running back) Lionel James, dislocated his hip his sophomore year in college (at Auburn) and kept playing. . . . (Colvin) should see what happens. For everybody to say his career is over, that's not fair to him or the team or anybody." James said yesterday from his Birmingham, Ala., home that he did suffer from AVN but was able to build up the muscles around the hip and continue playing (with the Chargers from 1984-88). But there were terrible side effects, as the pain medication he took over the years led to a serious attack of pancreatitis that nearly cost him his life. James received an artificial hip last year.
"Not to be the bearer of bad news," said James. "But (AVN) is going to set in sooner or later if you have a subluxation. It's a matter of time. I was able to play through it for a few years, but it's going to happen." Jackson was able to return to baseball and play a few seasons with his artificial hip. And while the injury eliminated any chance of his coming back to the NFL, the little-known truth is Jackson never even rehabbed his injury with football in mind. He was quitting the sport anyway.
"Four days prior to that game, I was lying in bed talking with my wife," Jackson recalled. "We had a child who we had in school in Kansas City who would come with us to (Los Angeles). And all that moving around wasn't good for him. So my wife and I came to the agreement that it was going to be my last year. I was going to retire from football. "I rehabbed not for the NFL, but to live a normal life with my family and my kids," he added. "And it just so happens that I rehabbed well enough to play baseball for three or four years."
Jackson said his new titanium-based artificial hip affords him a fairly normal life. "The only drawback I have is going through the freaking airport," he said. "I have to strip naked every time. The women at security love me." Jackson is currently involved in several business ventures, including selling protein-based food to the military. He runs a company called N'Genuity, which can be found on the web at
www.ngenuity.net.
