Sport: Weak in the Knees

In any contact sport, the danger of injury is always present. In football, sooner or later, everyone gets hurt—and more often than not, he gets hurt in the knee. Obviously, the football player’s knee is crucial. It must function perfectly to permit all the feinting, cutting, spinning, twisting, blocking, running and tackling that are the basic elements of his increasingly violent trade.

But the knee is also one of the weakest and most vulnerable joints in the human body—as two of football’s most talented practitioners discovered this month. Notre Dame Quarterback Terry Hanratty tried to take the ball around end on an option play, and ran head-on into two tacklers. One hit him high, while the other pinioned his left leg. Snap went a ligament in Hanratty’s left knee, and that was the end of his season. Four days later, the Chicago Bears’ breakaway halfback, Gale Sayers, hit similar trouble when he tried to turn the corner on an end run. He planted his right foot to cut downfield, and was hit from the side by San Francisco Cornerback Kermit Alexander. Sayers was carried off the field with three ruptured ligaments and a torn cartilage in his right knee. With him probably went the Bears’ hopes of winning a divisional championship.

During a recent symposium at Manhattan’s Hospital for Special Surgery, doctors predicted that one out of every eight football players in the U.S., from the pros down to high school, will suffer a more or less serious knee injury this season. With 1,000,000 players in the U.S., said the doctors, this means “something like 125,000 knee injuries, at least 40,000 of which will require corrective surgery.

Never the Same. And they will require it fast; damaged knee ligaments deteriorate rapidly. When he operated on Sayers, Dr. Theodore Fox, the Bears’ team physician, took the “duck’s foot” muscles, normally located slightly above the inside of the knee, and bound them around the ligaments for added support; Hanratty’s injury did not require such drastic measures. But both men look forward to a long convalescence. Six weeks in a cast is standard, followed by months of tedious exercise. Eventually, Hanratty and Sayers will be able to play again—but how well?

“The knee is never the same, technically speaking,” says Dr. Robert Ker-lan, a well-known Los Angeles orthopedist. “There will be a little more play in the knee, a slight feeling of instability. Your thigh will tend to keep going after your foot stops. It’s a weird sensation.” At best, the doctors can restore only 60% of a player’s former prowess; the other 40% is up to the player himself. Not everybody can or wants to play football on a knee that is inherently weaker and susceptible to further injury. Halfbacks Johnny Roland of the St. Louis Cardinals and Tucker Frederickson of the New York Giants were spectacular pro runners before they suffered knee injuries. Neither has yet recaptured his form.

One way or another, the injury is permanent. Even the most expertly reconstructed knee will loosen in time. And with age, arthritis is likely. The obvious answer is to avoid such injuries in the first place. Protective knee braces are available, but they dramatically restrict a player’s mobility. Replacing stadium turf with artificial grass in which cleats are less likely to catch also promises help. So do shorter cleats. Some doctors insist that the knees of all youngsters who turn out for football in high school should be examined so that the weak and injury-prone can be weeded out. But the prescription of choice is one the patient is not likely to take. The only reliable way to avoid knee injuries, say the doctors, is to avoid the game. Why not try touch?