A Joint For Next Season

There was only one thing for Surgeon Nicholas to do: cut the whole thing out. Orthopedists have learned recently that if any part of the meniscus is left in, far from serving any useful function as a shock absorber, it becomes a growth site for unnatural tissue or causes erosion of normal bone, and the whole thing has to be cut out later on. Surprisingly, leaving the meniscus space empty, to be filled with air and fluid, causes no discomfort or appreciable imbalance. Checking other structures in the exposed joint, Dr. Nicholas found that one ligament had been stretched. To tighten it, he folded it back on itself in a pleat, and put in a few stitches. He made a shorter (1�-inch) incision on the outer side of the knee, to check on the lateral side, and found it undamaged. The two incisions and removal of the cyst—which probably had not bothered Namath much anyway, but was better out—prolonged the operation to an hour and 13 minutes.

As soon as Joe Namath emerged from the wooziness of anesthesia, he found Dr. Nicholas at the foot of his bed in the recovery room, grabbing his ankle, and telling him to lift that right leg and keep it straight. This proved even tougher than playing on the injured knee had been. It hurt—plenty. But surgeons who treat these and similar injuries insist that retraining by exercise (they prefer this term to "rehabilitation") must begin without so much as an hour's delay. Joe had to lift that extended leg, no matter how much it hurt at first, 50 times a day. He also had to contract his quadriceps muscle forcefully (as in a strong twitch) 400 times a day. These exercises will continue. In three or four weeks, he will have a weight put on his foot, and he will have to lift that, both with his knee bent and with his leg extended, to get back full strength in the upper part of his quadriceps.

Joe Namath is due to leave the hospital this week, but before him are some three to four months of retraining back on campus at Tuscaloosa. That right leg, the doctors are determined, is going to be stronger than the uninjured left before he goes back to athletics. It has to be, so that he won't be tempted to favor it. But if all goes as well as the doctors now expect, Joe Namath will be playing for the Jets this fall and running as well as before.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Namath's injury is that he was able to play as much and as well as he did for more than two months. And this is involved with what orthopedists and other athletics physicians are most concerned about for all players. There is, they protest, far too little care taken in deciding at what age a boy shall begin to play football, too little attention given to training him in how to avoid injuries and far too great a tendency to send him back into the game if he says he can make it. Joe Namath is an exceptional athlete by any standard: at 21, he is physically mature and yet very limber, and he knows how to take care of himself. He and Coach Paul Bryant worked out plays for the end of last season that took some strain off Joe's knee. Having had surgery within little more than three months, he has probably not aggravated the trouble appreciably.

Doctors who specialize in the treatment of athletes' injuries say that if this sort of thing happens to a 17-year-old in high school—as it does, all too often—the boy is not likely to get expert orthopedic attention soon enough, if at all. A second or third injury may then do major and irreparable damage to the knee. Many a man in his 40s or 50s who now brags of having a "trick knee" dating from some famous college game has actually developed arthritis and is in for a lot more handicapping pain.

In football, it seems, a certain number of knee injuries cannot be prevented. The Giants have had at least a dozen cases this season, half of them requiring surgery. But if the injuries cannot be prevented, they can be treated in time to minimize damage and the risk of disablement. Joe Namath's right knee just happens to be the one with the highest price tag on it.