Rutgers Football Player Eric LeGrand Paralyzed and Tragic Football Injuries

News that Rutgers player Eric LeGrand was paralyzed has shocked the football community.

The defensive tackle suffered a spinal cord injury in the team's game against Army on Saturday and has no movement below the neck.

The Scarlet Knights won the game, but that didn't matter.

The team lost more than it won. The team lost a promising young athlete to a devastating injury.

It was one of the rare times when the fantasy world of sports and the reality of life collide at full speed. 

LeGrand's injury has been felt most throughout New Jersey, but resounds across the entire country.

Injuries are a part of the game. We all know that. But one word sums up a life-altering injury: tragic.

LeGrand is just the latest athlete whose promising career took a horrific turn.

Let's take a look at some of the most tragic injuries in football history.

Marc Buoniconti

Twenty five years ago, Marc Buoniconti made a tackle while playing for the Citadel against East Tennessee State.

Upon impact, Buoniconti instantly fell to the ground. His entire body went limp. He knew he was paralyzed.

In fact, to this day Buoniconti is confined to a wheelchair. But in the aftermath of his injury, Buoniconti has turned a negative into a positive.

Buoniconti's high-profile injury has helped other people who have suffered similar injuries. His work with the Miami Project has helped raise roughly $300 million for research and the treatment of disabling spinal-cord injuries.

Mike Utley

In just his third NFL season, Mike Utley had started every game at right guard for the Detroit Lions.

But on a routine block on Nov. 17, 1991 against the Los Angeles Rams, something he'd probably done thousands of times before, Utley suffered an injury to his sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae that left him paralyzed from the chest down.

As he was being taken off the field, Utley gave the crowd a "thumbs up," which would later become the symbol for the Mike Utley Foundation, an organization created to find a cure for paralysis.

To this day, Utley has almost complete functional use of his upper extremities. 

Darryl Stingley

On Aug. 12, 1978, New England Patriot wide eceiver Darryl Stingley's life changed in an instant.

In an exhibition game against the Oakland Raiders, Stingley collided with Jack Tatum and suffered a broken neck that left him a quadriplegic.

It was one of the--if not the--first truly traumatic injuries in football history.

Stingley remained confined to a wheelchair with only limited movement in his right arm until complications from the injury ended Stingley's life at age 55 in 2007.

Stingley died from a combination of bronchial pneumonia, quadriplegia, a spinal cord injury and coronary atherosclerosis.

Eric LeGrand

On Saturday, Rutgers defensive tackle Eric LeGrand made a nice, open-field tackle in a tied game against Army late in the fourth quarter.

The video is painful to watch, as you see LeGrand's body go limp the instant he makes the tackle. He lays motionless for several minutes before being transported to Hackensack University Medical Center, where it was discovered that he had suffered injuries to his C3 and C4 vertebrae.

Emergency surgery was performed to stabilize his spine, and he is currently in the intensive care unit, where he is expected to remain for the foreseeable future.

Adam Taliaferro

In 2000, Adam Taliaferro was a freshman cornerback at Penn State, who saw his promising career cut short in a flash.

In a Big Ten rivalry game against Ohio State, Taliaferro made what was seemingly a standard tackle, but his went a bit too low, and Taliaferro suffered a spinal cord injury that required surgery to fuse his C5 vertebrae.

Taliaferro endured a brutal rehabilitation program at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia, and stunned everyone when he was walking just eight months after the incident.

He led the Nittany Lions onto the field-- amazingly by skipping and jogging--for the team's first game of the 2001 season in front of a record 105,000 fans at Beaver Stadium.

Kevin Everett

On Sept. 9, 2007, Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett made a tackle on Denver's Domenik Hixon that resulted in a fracture and dislocation of his cervical spine.

The day after suffering the injury, Everett's doctors classified the injury as "life-threatening" and said that Everett would likely never walk again.

But the next day, Everett showed significant movement in all of his extremities. He walked for the first time in public at the team's home finale against the Giants less than four months after the catastrophic accident.

The Bills kept Everett on the active roster until May of 2008 to ensure that he would qualify for the NFL's full pension policy.

Napoleon McCallum

On Sept. 5, 1994, Raiders running back Napoleon McCallum suffered one of the most gruesome injuries in NFL history.

Unlike most of the others on this list, this wasn't a head, neck, or spine injury, but it doesn't change the fact that it was disastrous and career-ending.

After being hit by San Francisco's Ken Norton Jr., McCallum's cleat got stuck in the crowd and twisted his leg in horrible fashion.

McCallum suffered a complete hyperextension of his left knee, a ruptured artery and tore three of the four major knee ligaments, among other issues.

He never play football again.

Tyrone Prothro

On Oct. 1, 2005, the career of promising Alabama's Tyrone Prothro came to a crashing halt. 

In an SEC game against Florida, the junior wide receiver landed awkwardly on his left leg. He suffered a double fracture, snapping both his tibia and fibula. 

Prothro underwent multiple surgeries and an extensive rehabilitation program, but his football career was done.
In August, he was placed on a medical hardship scholarship and removed from the Crimson Tide roster.

Ken Kunken

On Oct. 30, 1970, Cornell football player Ken Kunken broke his neck, an injury that severed his spinal cord and left him almost totally paralyzed from the shoulders down.

His football career was finished, but the 20-year-old didn't let the life-altering injury keep him down.

After nine months of rehabilitation, Kunken returned to Cornell, where he earned his undergraduate degree, two Master's degrees and a doctorate.

The Ken Kunken Most Valuable Player Award is presented annually by the Adirondack Trust Allegiance Bowl in Kunken's honor.

Joe Theismann

On Nov. 18, 1985, Joe Theismann was apart of what was voted the NFL's "Most Shocking Moment in History."

The Washington Redskins quarterback suffered a a compound fracture of his tibia after a hit by Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor. Following the hit, Taylor waived frantically for medical personnel after realizing how significant Theisman's injury was.

The injury ended Theismann's playing career and led to insufficient bone growth, leaving his right leg shorter than his left.

Theismann says he has yet to see footage of the video and never will.