Garrick's body was failing following years of drug abuse, which began during his BYU days.

But really his troubles began on a football field years before that.

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Garrick never saw it coming. He stood up the tight end from Springville High to stop a sweep to his side, and then a wide receiver, sprinting down the line of scrimmage, blind-sided him, crashing into the side of his left knee. When the knee snapped, it sounded like a thick branch breaking.

It was September 1977, and Garrick was a prep All-American who was being recruited by Nebraska, UCLA and Notre Dame.

One block changed all of that.

Everything in the knee was gone; the only thing holding it together was skin. Doctors said it was if someone chopped Garrick down with an ax. When Garrick lifted his head and couldn't find his foot where it was supposed to be, he thought his lower leg had been knocked off. He finally found his foot off to the side at an unnatural angle.

"I was 10 feet away from it when it happened," says Whittingham. "It was such a shame. An illegal crack-back block. It was a sweep, and I was moving to the outside when I saw this flash coming down on Craig, then Craig was lying on the ground writhing in pain. It was not hard to tell it was serious. His life was never the same after that. From then on, it was one thing after another. It was a constant uphill battle."

It might be an oversimplification, but perhaps most of his problems — the divorces, the job hopping, the narcotics and maybe even the steroids — would have been averted but for that one play. Even so, if the injury had occurred a decade later, Garrick likely would have recovered from it with only a small debilitation. As David notes, "It was a four-hour procedure, and they flayed open the knee with a big incision, which exposes it to bacteria in the air. You can do that operation now in 45 minutes through a one-inch incision using a scope, with water running through the joint the whole time washing it out. There's a much lower infection rate."

Garrick underwent knee surgery just hours after the game (nowadays doctors wait a week or longer before performing the surgery to allow bleeding and swelling to subside). Soon afterward, the wound became infected, prolonging the recovery a year.