Once Jimmie Giles was a big football star. He could catch and block and run like a tailback in a 6-3, 245-pound linebacker's body. He made four Pro Bowls. He helped redefine the position of tight end.
"He's as Hall-of-Fame worthy as Ozzie Newsome or anybody else," says Doug Williams, who was Giles' quarterback with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and now works as the team's director of pro personnel.
You can remind Jimmie Giles about his football feats, but don't look for any euphoria from him. Twenty years after his 13-year NFL career ended, he has four degenerative discs in his back, and constant pain.
He gets five epidural injections a year, needs a breathing device to sleep and has no feeling in his lower right leg. His short-term memory is so shaky that he'll leave his wife, Vivian, a message, and won't remember why an hour later. He can scarcely bend his knees, and walks as if he's 75, and none of it means anything compared with what Vivian, his wife of 33 years, is coping with.
Vivian Giles has breast cancer. She finished a five-week course of radiation treatments at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center here just four days ago.
"She's all I've got, along with our kids," Giles says. "She's my partner. We've been through everything together. We're putting all we have into what she's dealing with."
Jimmie Giles is 55 years old and never expected to be spending Christmas in Room 300 of an Extended Stay America. He never expected to have a 14-year fight with his own union, the NFL Players Association and its Retirement Board, either, trying to get a disability benefit he firmly believes is rightfully his.
Giles' lawyer, John Hogan, will soon file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Tampa, hoping to bring closure to an experience that has left Giles so exasperated and embittered that he not only doesn't watch NFL games; he regrets ever playing a down in the league.
When he graduated from Alcorn State with a degree in business administration just over 30 years ago, Giles had an offer from Sears in a management-training program. He smiles faintly at the memory, his massive body he's 100 pounds over his playing weight taking up most of a sofa, a thick gold cross hanging around his neck.
"I should've taken it," Giles says. "I'd be a lot better off than I am now."
As another NFL season moves to its conclusion, the game, on the field, throbs with its usual December excitement, tens of millions of fans watching, more than a few of them wagering, a fanatical football nation ramping up for the playoffs, and the annual midwinter orgy of excess known as the Super Bowl.....full article
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