Well, this is quite something. Former Alabama Crimson Tide and NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr, whose career in Tuscaloosa began to fade after his junior year after suffering a back injury, may have been hiding a secret for decades about what really caused the injury.
Starr's back injury reportedly came during a punting drill in practice, and it caused the QB to struggle with back pain throughout his NFL career with the Green Bay Packers. Starr's wife Cherry recently gave a potential bombshell interview to AL.com claiming that Starr's injury was caused by brutal hazing at the University of Alabama. Cherry told the website that her husband was hazed so badly in 1954 during an A-Club initiation event that's performed on every varsity letterman that he was placed into the hospital.
"He was hospitalized at one point in traction," Cherry told AL.com. "That was in the days when they were initiated into the A-Club, and they had severe beatings and paddling. From all the members of the A-Club, they lined up with a big paddle with holes drilled in it, and it actually injured his back."
Various news reports from 1954 don't site too many details as to how exactly Bart injured his back, and in the five biographies about his life and career, even an autobiography published in 1987, craft a narrative about his back injury around a punting exercise. Cherry added that Starr never disclosed this to anyone because the quarterback thought it might 'make him look bad.'
"But his back was never right after that," Cherry Starr said in the interview. "It was horrible. It was not a football injury. It was an injury sustained from hazing. His whole back all the way up to his rib cage looked like a piece of raw meat. The bruising went all the way up his back. It was red and black and awful looking. It was so brutal."
Starr rarely played due to the injury, which was classified as a back sprain. After the 1954 season, Alabama made a coaching change to bring in J.B. Whitworth, who opted to go with more youth on the roster. This limited Starr's playing time significantly.
Starr, now 82, would go on to have a legendary 16-year career with the Green Bay Packers, winning the Super Bowl in 1966 and 1967 and being elected to the Hall of Fame in 1977. But he constantly dealt with back pain. According to his wife, Starr was flown regularly to Madison, Wis., for back adjustments by a chiropractor.
