Eric the Red
Team HuskerBoard
Austin pushes through the pain
BY ROBIN WASHUT
LINCOLN - At the end of practice, Greg Austin has to remind himself why he keeps going.
With braces on both knees, the Nebraska senior offensive guard spends more than an hour a day treating a knee injury that would have ended the career of a lesser man. He undergoes treatments three times a day, more than an hour total, for an injury suffered as a freshman in 2003.
So why, after four years of near constant pain, does Austin still punish himself in the name of football?
"I always tell myself that I've got to finish the practice, because if I go down, I feel like I'm letting my teammates down," said the 6-foot-1, 300-pound Austin. "I'm not working a miracle. There are guys out there that go through the same thing as me. I'm just trying to do my job and make sure I do whatever I can for this team and the guys next to me."
A regular in Nebraska's offensive line rotation as a freshman, Austin played in four games in 2003. In the week of the fifth game he suffered what appeared to be a career-ending injury when his knee locked during a drill in practice.
He felt and heard a crunch, which he later recounted in a newspaper story was "cartilage getting removed by the bone on the back of my kneecap."
It wasn't the first time he was faced with battling back from injury. Austin missed the latter half of his senior season at Cypress-Fairbanks (Texas) High because of a broken foot.
While everyone else assumed he had played his last game, Austin was determined to make a comeback. The next season, he played in all 11 games for the Huskers.
After playing in 17 consecutive games since 2005, Austin suffered a near setback two weeks ago in Nebraska's 28-14 win over Iowa State when his left knee was hit from the side.
The knee joint slipped and Austin thought he might be done. When he went to the sideline, trainers found that the damage was not as serious as first expected. Though he left the game on crutches, Austin has practiced the past two weeks and is expected to play in Saturday's Texas game.
Through his persistence, Austin has earned the respect from his teammates and coaches.
"It's uncanny," coach Bill Callahan said. "It's a situation where a lot of players wouldn't even be playing. It's encouraging, it's inspiring to watch a guy of his caliber and his makeup go through what he goes through every day and just overcome a deficiency is phenomenal."
Austin is aware of how continuing to play could affect him down the road.
He knows there's a chance his mobility will be limited, at the least. He also knows the pain he's felt the past three years will probably never go away fully.
But for Austin, none of that seems to matter. He says there's too much to be done today to worry about what will happen tomorrow.
"You got to live, player," he said. "I don't know if I'll even be around 15 years from now. You can't live for tomorrow. If I'm living for today, tomorrow will work itself out."
BY ROBIN WASHUT
LINCOLN - At the end of practice, Greg Austin has to remind himself why he keeps going.
With braces on both knees, the Nebraska senior offensive guard spends more than an hour a day treating a knee injury that would have ended the career of a lesser man. He undergoes treatments three times a day, more than an hour total, for an injury suffered as a freshman in 2003.
So why, after four years of near constant pain, does Austin still punish himself in the name of football?
"I always tell myself that I've got to finish the practice, because if I go down, I feel like I'm letting my teammates down," said the 6-foot-1, 300-pound Austin. "I'm not working a miracle. There are guys out there that go through the same thing as me. I'm just trying to do my job and make sure I do whatever I can for this team and the guys next to me."
A regular in Nebraska's offensive line rotation as a freshman, Austin played in four games in 2003. In the week of the fifth game he suffered what appeared to be a career-ending injury when his knee locked during a drill in practice.
He felt and heard a crunch, which he later recounted in a newspaper story was "cartilage getting removed by the bone on the back of my kneecap."
It wasn't the first time he was faced with battling back from injury. Austin missed the latter half of his senior season at Cypress-Fairbanks (Texas) High because of a broken foot.
While everyone else assumed he had played his last game, Austin was determined to make a comeback. The next season, he played in all 11 games for the Huskers.
After playing in 17 consecutive games since 2005, Austin suffered a near setback two weeks ago in Nebraska's 28-14 win over Iowa State when his left knee was hit from the side.
The knee joint slipped and Austin thought he might be done. When he went to the sideline, trainers found that the damage was not as serious as first expected. Though he left the game on crutches, Austin has practiced the past two weeks and is expected to play in Saturday's Texas game.
Through his persistence, Austin has earned the respect from his teammates and coaches.
"It's uncanny," coach Bill Callahan said. "It's a situation where a lot of players wouldn't even be playing. It's encouraging, it's inspiring to watch a guy of his caliber and his makeup go through what he goes through every day and just overcome a deficiency is phenomenal."
Austin is aware of how continuing to play could affect him down the road.
He knows there's a chance his mobility will be limited, at the least. He also knows the pain he's felt the past three years will probably never go away fully.
But for Austin, none of that seems to matter. He says there's too much to be done today to worry about what will happen tomorrow.
"You got to live, player," he said. "I don't know if I'll even be around 15 years from now. You can't live for tomorrow. If I'm living for today, tomorrow will work itself out."