By JOHN E. HOOVER World Sports Columnist on Sep 17, 2013, at 2:25 AM Updated on 9/17/13 at 3:19 AM
Artrell Woods smiles during happier times at OSU media day in August 2008. In the fifth installment of the Sports Illustrated series, Woods details his health struggles and resentment toward the Cowboy football program. THE OKLAHOMAN FILE
How can one not have sympathy for Artrell Woods?
Woods suffered a spinal cord injury in a weightlifting accident during an offseason workout in 2007 when he was a football player at Oklahoma State University.
Now, Woods tells Sports Illustrated, his life is an aimless and destitute wreck.
That kind of tragedy tears at the heart.
That could be anyone's son or daughter, going off to college full of life and hope and youthful promise, only to be injured and left feeling abandoned and forgotten by those he or she trusted and descending into a dark, hand-to-mouth existence fueled by drugs and alcohol.
But in Monday's final SI installment of its five-part series on OSU football, titled "The Dirty Game" - this chapter is called "The Fallout" - Woods somehow does not come off as a sympathetic figure.
In fact, few former Cowboys that allege to have been chewed up and spit out by an uncaring football factory engender true sympathy.
All the opportunities that college football players are given, all the privilege and perks and benefits and admiration they enjoy, they are indeed a rare prize.
But college students are adults. The decisions they make, good or bad, are theirs alone. Guidance should be welcomed and valued, but it can't be forced upon youths, and it is never required - even for the most petulant and puerile.
The resources that big schools make available to student-athletes are abundant, but particularly so for football players. Just ask any non-football player.
And that's OK. Football players at major colleges bring in the big money - the money that often funds full stadiums and fancy locker rooms and plush housing and state-of-the-art weight rooms and bustling academic centers that other athletes enjoy.
But, back to Woods.
Even in his poignant discourse - the ones published in Sports Illustrated, not the profane diatribes attributed to him in an interview with Daily O'Collegian reporter Kieran Steckley, or on Facebook, wherein Woods screams for someone to pay him - it's hard to feel sorry for Woods.
For instance, he tells the SI reporter that he hasn't eaten for nearly two days, presumably because his menial job waiting tables doesn't pay him enough despite a 50 percent employee discount, but still "concedes that he drinks too much and smokes marijuana too much."
Maybe the pot and booze are freebies, provided to Woods.
But the whole thing reeks of Woods - and, to be fair, too many others - absolving himself of his own poor decisions and expecting welfare from someone else to fix his problems.
After Woods' injury, he successfully returned to the team but was hindered by the lasting effects of nerve damage and pain, so much so that he was unable to regain full strength and explosive quickness. It was something of a feel-good story, coming back from a broken back to play college football again, but the tragic fact is Woods no longer had the athletic skills needed by a Division I football player.
OSU sources tell the Tulsa World that Woods was on a permanent medical scholarship (which doesn't count against the team's 85-scholarship limit) that would pay for the rest of his college education but would eliminate the possibility of him playing football again at OSU.
It's a fairly common occurrence in college football. The University of Oklahoma has had three such football players forced onto a medical scholarship just in the last two years. And it's not uncommon in other sports, either. University of Tulsa basketball player Kodi Maduka was forced out of the game just last year after a heart ailment.
Injuries and medical maladies are simply part of the game, and they can be debilitating to the point where the abilities required to compete are too severely diminished.
Schools actually have funds set aside specifically to pay for these athletes to finish their degree as part of the regular student body. Some even choose to stay with the team in an auxiliary role.
But, according to the SI report, Woods declined to remain at OSU on non-athletic scholarship. Instead, he left so he could play Division II football at the University of Central Oklahoma. Woods went to UCO but suffered another injury and, according to SI, never finished his degree.
A sad string of events, to be sure.
But OSU gave Woods a choice, and Woods chose to leave. It's cold, but that absolved OSU of any responsibility toward Woods' future - scholastically, financially, medically or otherwise - and now Woods says he wants someone, anyone at OSU, to pay him.
"Bottom line. That's all," he told the Tulsa World. "For pain and suffering. For me taking a whole semester off after breaking my back and me ending up with a General Studies degree ... Can somebody please tell me what the (expletive) that is?"
Like every football player that has come through Stillwater, Woods had high hopes. And like every football player, he had every avenue toward a successful life placed before him.
The weightlifting accident changed everything for him, of course, and it's heartbreaking. But he still had choices.
Cynics predictably will deride college athletics as a corrupt and callous business, but its participants nonetheless control their own futures and determine their own destinies, injury or no.
The value of a college degree goes incalculably beyond the cost of tuition.
So many of the former Oklahoma State University football players featured in "The Dirty Game" unfortunately have learned that the hard way.
Original Print Headline: Players are adults making choices
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Game Point: Click here to read John E. Hoover's blog.
OSU football investigation
On Monday, Oklahoma State announced the hiring of Charles E. Smrt to lead an independent review of alleged misconduct in the OSU football program.
In the final chapter of "The Dirty Game," Sports Illustrated said so many players have been jettisoned from the Oklahoma State football program and wound up in bad situations that this question should be asked: "How much did the program really care?"
