Study: It Pays to Undergo Orthopedic Surgery (Literally)
The jokes began well before the Big Reveal. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams—of all people—led the lampooning, making light of his high school football career during a mid-July visit to “The Late Show with David Letterman.” The habitually straitlaced journalist facetiously recounted his ill-fated stint with the Mater Dei High School Seraphs in Middletown, N.J., more than three decades ago, calling himself “110 pounds of steaming Irish Catholic fury.”
Williams was an offensive end/defensive outside linebacker for the Seraphs—a position he intended to reform à la New York Giants legend Lawrence Taylor’s “standing approach to the edge of the line.” Williams, however, lacked the future Hall of Famer’s constitution—he looked more like Olive Oil than Bluto, and had a neck size to match (“rail-thin buddy, rail thin,” Letterman observed after sharing a 1976 Seraphs team photo with his Late Show audience).
Clearly, Williams was prime intervention fodder, but he was too bullheaded and fearless at the time to recognize his physical shortcomings. Fearless, that is, until the day an opposing offensive back charged head-first into hi...
