Mar 1, 2016Hazing Secrets Revealed
Throughout his career, football legend Bart Starr dealt with back pain severe enough to require frequent chiropractic adjustments and epidural injections. Long-accepted as the result of a punting exercise, Starr’s wife is shedding new light on the injury.
According to an article on AL.com, Cherry Starr says the injury was the result of hazing. As a ritual, the A-Club for varsity letterman’s members beat initiates with a paddle. Cherry Starr says her husband never disclosed the source of his injury because he didn’t want to look bad.
“But his back was never right after that,” Cherry Starr told AL.com. “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.”
Along with derailing his college career, Starr’s back injury kept him from military service. However, it didn’t keep him from playing for 16 years with the Green Bay Packers, and earning MVP in two Super Bowl wins.
After dealing with constant back spasms, pain, and epidurals for about 30 years, Starr had back surgery in the 1980s to take out a chip when a doctor found a small fissure in a vertebrae. After suffering two strokes in 2014, Starr, now 82, is not able to discuss the injury.
