PITTSBURGH As Willis McGahee lay motionless, as Ray Lewis and other players knelt to pray, as the cart with the stretcher motored out and a concerned hush fell over Heinz Field, nothing mattered anymore.
All the mano-a-mano buildup, the hyperbole centering on two violent teams competing for a Super Bowl berth, ceased. For a few frightening minutes, it was preempted by the thought that an NFL player might be paralyzed on the field of the AFC championship game.
Looking on as medical personnel surrounded the fallen player, the Baltimore Ravens weren’t worried about losing the seminal game of their season as much as possibly losing a teammate — McGahee, a victim of the same kind of pad-popping hit glorified by a league, its network partners and, yes, us — the game-day-obsessed nation.
washingtonpost.com
1/19/09
