From the Sideline — Alabama’s Medical Staff Deserves a Lot of Credit

My daughter hurt her hand at basketball practice Monday. Nothing serious. Just a sprained finger on her shooting hand. She’s fine.

It was far from the type of injuries that a few key Alabama Football players suffered last weekend at Ole Miss.

It is almost a tradition for me to tell member of the athletic medical and training staff before a game, “I hope you are incredibly bored today”.

That certainly wasn’t the case Saturday. In fact, one of the team physicians commented to me on the sideline late in the 2^nd quarter, “Is it really almost halftime? I think I’ve seen about five plays the entire game.”

Virtually the same line was repeated by another doctor with 10 minutes to go in the game.

Certainly the most notable event of Saturday was the grotesque leg injury suffered by Kenyan Drake. As I was watching the play unfold, I couldn’t see where the specific injury occurred, but I could tell from the way that the defenders were converging on him that it was likely going to be bad.

Sadly, it was.

With all of the attention on Drake’s horrific foot injury, you likely didn’t pay close attention to those who were attending to him. But the sports medicine team is an area of the Alabama Football “Organization” that should never go unnoticed, or unappreciated.

The second it became clear Drake was hurt, the UA Athletics medical staff sprinted onto the field to treat him.

I vividly remember the head trainer, Jeff Allen, getting out there almost immediately. (Jeff has a much better and well-deserved title than “head trainer”, but that’s the layman’s term for it.) He’s as good as I’ve ever been around in my 25-plus years of broadcasting.

Lyle Cain wasn’t far behind Allen in his arrival on the scene. One of the country’s most highly regarded orthopedic surgeons, Drake’s injured leg was placed delicately in Cain’s hands by Allen, once Lyle was in position to take over.

There was at least one other individual involved, whose role was every bit as vital during that traumatic time.

Ginger Gilmore has been a member of the athletic training staff at UA for well over a decade (maybe closer to two of them, by now). She is a well-educated, experienced, and highly skilled athletic trainer.

And in a moment of crisis, she also showed a level of compassion that resonates throughout the medical staff. Drake was in obvious pain, and likely in some form of shock, as he saw his foot pointing in a direction in which it was never intended.

While the rest of the medical team attended to the injury, Gilmore cradled his face in her hands. One would assume it was meant primarily to keep the running back from looking at his dislocated foot. But the gentle, loving manner in which she began to pat his face, clearly was done so to calm Drake down during what was likely the scariest moment of his career.

I’ve seen these professionals at work many times over the years. Some days they are bored. Unfortunately, most games, they are not.

Despite last weekend, I would still put Alabama’s coaching staff among the best in the country.

Because of last weekend, I’m even more convinced the same can be said for the Tide’s medical staff.