February 4, 2016

  • Greg GarberSenior Writer

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      Greg Garber joined ESPN in 1991 and provides reports for NFL Inaugural and SportsCenter. He is also a regular correspondent to Exterior the Lines and a senior author for ESPN.com.

IT'Southward April 14, 2006, Good Friday in Columbus, Ohio. A rite of jump unspools at Ohio Country, a spirited intrasquad scrimmage at clangorous Ohio Stadium.

Kurt Coleman, who will start at safe for the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl l, is just 17 years old at the time, an early on high school graduate hoping to get a jump on impressing the Buckeyes coaches. Tyson Gentry, 20, is a redshirt freshman walk-on, a punter turned scout team wide receiver.

The ii Ohio natives had never formally met before the collision that would paralyze Gentry permanently below the waist, irresolute both of their lives forever.

When Coleman takes the field for the Super Basin on Sunday, Gentry and his married woman Megan will be rooting hard for the Panthers from their home in Tampa, Florida. Coleman, in part, is playing for Gentry and hopes to "bring him back something." This is the story of a remarkable human relationship that sprung from that horrific accident x years ago.

"Patently," Coleman said last calendar week at the Panthers' training facility, "yous can never brace yourself for the impact of severely hurting somebody and paralyzing them for the rest of their lives. He'southward ane of the greatest men that I've known through what he's washed and the person that he's become."

Said Gentry: "I cannot honestly put myself in his shoes equally far every bit what he felt after that play, just I think it continued us forever."

THE COACHES' TAPE of the play, at first glance, seems almost innocuous, something approaching incidental contact. Gentry will subsequently say he had been hit harder many times -- and walked away.

Information technology'southward a high-angle shot, and a little blurry, but y'all can run across the lanky 6-foot-3 Gentry line up on the right side and run a 10-thou dig route, with Coleman guarding him.

"I juked to the outside, and Kurt kind of bit on that," Gentry recalls, "so, that gave me the opening. Quarterback threw me the ball, and as the brawl got there, Kurt caught upward to me, reached over to tackle me and collection me downward to the ground."

"I broke on the ball, tackled him from behind, [he] fumbled information technology," Coleman says.

Gentry, equally the brawl came out, seemed to tilt his head down slightly before he hit the turf. Information technology appeared to be, Coleman said, a perfect play from the defence force's perspective.

"We scooped it up, we scored," Coleman says, "defense supposedly wins the scrimmage, and so yous look back and he's lying at that place motionless."

Gentry felt the feeling leak out of his body.

"Probably the showtime three seconds," he says, "I was hoping that it was just something temporary, mayhap a stinger or whatever. Merely I could not feel or move a thing beneath my cervix. My torso just disappeared."

Gentry'south parents, Bob and Gloria, were in the stands that mean solar day. Bob played defensive dorsum for the Buckeyes in the 1970s; Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin was a teammate. Gloria made the trip to the infirmary in the ambulance with her son.

"I can't watch the video, only I remember exactly what happened," Bob said from his domicile in Columbus. "Having been in that environment, you're totally divorced from a stupor standpoint. We both realized something was wrong and walked out on the field and tried to communicate with him.

"Looking back, if someone said, 'This is what's going to happen,' I don't call up I could have fathomed it. From that day forward, we were all part of Tyson's journey."

Upwards TO THAT POINT, the extent of Gentry'south noesis of paralysis consisted of the harrowing, very public experience of thespian Christopher Reeve, who had instantly become a quadriplegic in 1995 when thrown from a horse.

Even every bit his trunk lay still in the hospital, Gentry's heed raced.

"I was questioning everything," he says now. "Whether I would e'er walk once again, whether I would ever play football again, whether I would ever be able to feel my body again. Would I always be a father? Would I ever be a husband? When you lot can't move anything, all you have fourth dimension for is merely questions."

The doctors told him he had fractured his fourth cervical vertebra, literally cleaved his neck. Yous can see that interruption in the black and white of the X-ray. The predictable but crushing news: He probably would never walk over again.

Coleman, meanwhile, was experiencing his own form of paralysis.

"I'1000 responsible for information technology, and information technology'due south a lot of guilt," he explained. "I play the game difficult, just I've never played the game to physically injure somebody in that manner. I contemplated and so many different things, whether I even wanted to play football."

For two weeks, Coleman couldn't bring himself to go to the hospital. Only after Gentry had undergone ii surgeries to stabilize his spinal column, Coleman finally summoned the courage for their second-ever face-to-face coming together. Nervous, he brought a friend for moral support.

"I'm distressing for everything that you've gone through," Coleman told Gentry.

"I could see it in his eyes that he was lamentable," Gentry says.

"I was hoping that information technology was just something temporary, perchance a stinger or whatever. But I could not feel or motility a thing below my neck. My torso just disappeared." Tyson Gentry

As Coleman remembers it, Gentry apace reassured him that information technology wasn't his fault.

"Those words simply kind of changed my perspective," Coleman says. "He gave me the comfortability knowing that he's going to fight this, he's going to boxing whatever he has to continue, and that I can alive with myself for having to be the person that inflicted the pain.

"I don't know if I could accept ever reacted the same manner Tyson has, and that's why I'chiliad so grateful and blessed to have him in my life."

Bob and Gloria, devout Christians, moved speedily to hug Coleman.

"I'm sure information technology was very difficult for him," Bob says. "Information technology speaks to his compassion that he came frontwards the way he did. He needed some emotional support and we were able to lessen the blow, if yous will.

"We embraced what nosotros were confronted with. I won't prevarication to you and tell y'all at that place weren't moments that we wondered why our son was in that situation. Just we were grateful we nevertheless had our son. Information technology could have been worse."

Going forwards, this would go a theme.

"Information technology afflicted both Tyson and Kurt very deeply," Gloria says. "If their roles had been reversed, nosotros would have wanted Kurt to give the same thing to Ty. Things happen and sometimes information technology'southward no one's fault."

GENTRY'South UNNATURAL BUT UNDENIABLE positivity did not come quickly -- or easily.

"People give me a lot of credit, but I had tons of bad days," he says. "There were enough of days when I laid in my bed and cried, felt sorry for myself. Information technology'due south part of the grieving process. I think I was grieving about the loss of the person I was.

"Waking up and not being able to go out of bed and go about your routine. It was wake up, stretch, have somebody get you dressed, take somebody help feed you and help castor your teeth. The biggest frustration early on was, 'Am I going to have to do this every day? Is this going to be my routine every day for the balance of my life?'"

During an exhaustive rehabilitation process, Coleman often offered encouragement, visiting him at Dodd Hall and lifting weights together at the athletic eye.

Ohio State put Gentry on scholarship, and he remained role of the football squad. Under head bus Jim Tressel, the Buckeyes were enormously successful, winning or sharing the Big 10 Conference championship for 4 of Gentry's v seasons. From 2004-08, Gentry's graduating class was the kickoff one to defeat Michigan five straight times. Twice over that bridge, Ohio State played in the BCS Championship game, losing to Florida and LSU.

Before the concluding game confronting Michigan, in 2008, Tressel asked Gentry if he would accost the team.

"I merely considered information technology a really nice gesture to be able to talk to the guys," Gentry says. "To give them some words of encouragement, and just kind of bring everybody together and become out with this last game and make information technology memorable."

His senior speech was all of that.

"Moving, selfless," Coleman remembers. "He described how much of a family unit we were and how much nosotros meant to him. And then he finished the speech by saying if it wasn't for that incident he wouldn't exist the man he was today.

"And he thanked me. He thanked me for putting him through this situation."

Gentry thanked Coleman for paralyzing him.

"Information technology fabricated me who I was, who I am," Gentry says with confidence. "A lot of people don't realize that the adversities nosotros face and the tribulations and trials that we get through make us who we are.

"I wouldn't alter a unmarried thing every bit far equally my career at Ohio Country. Would y'all ever take anything dorsum that made you a better person?"

THAT SENTIMENT IS hard to understand -- until y'all spend a day with Gentry and his wife.

As Gentry says, "You lot tin have two people who are going through the exact same situation, and i person chooses to look at information technology as a negative and the other person chooses to await at it as a positive. It doesn't accept long for you to figure out who'south going to come out a better person considering of it."

While Gentry was in the infirmary, he was struck by the plight of a patient across the hall, who had suffered a traumatic encephalon injury when he skied into a tree without a helmet.

"All he could do, really, was kind of moan and mumble," Gentry says. "What I was going through, I had a difficult fourth dimension, but at the same time I was so thankful that I could talk with my family, could laugh and still feed myself. I really don't have much to complain near, considering it could be so much worse."

And while that'south true, there's likewise no escaping the side effects Gentry deals with daily. During a protracted television interview, Gentry experienced some tremors in his arms and then, violently, in his legs. Seeing the stricken looks on the faces of the camera crew, he tried to smile through a grimace. He explained that involuntary spasms visit him when he sits withal too long. It looked frightening, until Megan moved in to identify her hands on his legs and cease the shaking. Simply it was normal, he said -- his normal.

Given football's history of concussion damage, Gentry believes he's ahead of the game. Indeed, his agile, sometimes mischievous encephalon is his most valuable nugget. Gentry bears more than a passing resemblance to actor Luke Wilson and shares some of his personality traits. Megan admits he can exist a fleck of a smart-donkey.

About one week afterward the accident, the feeling began to come dorsum to his shoulders and later, critically, his biceps. Although Gentry doesn't have control of his fingers, wrists or triceps, he tin can movement his arms effectively plenty do things like eat and castor his teeth. Wearing heavy braces permanently curled his fingers and so he can now operate his wheelchair and even an iPad. He can pick upwards a phone with two easily, grip a bottle of soda and bring it to his oral cavity.

"Football, they say, is a game of inches," Gentry says. "So are spinal cord injuries. If I had broken my neck a little bit higher, I might non have the employ of my arms."

COLEMAN, THE PANTHERS' starting free safety, played the game of his life in the NFC Title, intercepting Arizona Cardinals QB Carson Palmer twice, which helped send Carolina to San Francisco for Super Bowl fifty.

His 6-season journeying also has featured its share of obstacles. He was drafted in the 7th round in 2010 by the Philadelphia Eagles, condign a starter earlier struggling to find playing time nether new coach Scrap Kelly. After his contract wasn't renewed in Philly in 2013, he bounced around -- from the Minnesota Vikings to the Kansas City Chiefs to the Panthers, who signed him to a two-year contract worth $2.eight meg before the 2015 flavour.

It has been, by any measure, a deal for Carolina. Coleman led the Panthers with 7 interceptions (and one touchdown) in the regular season and finished with 90 tackles, third on the squad behind linebackers Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis. With those two postseason interceptions, Coleman now has nine picks in 18 games this season.

Along the way, his friendship with Gentry, subsequently that halting start, has blossomed. They text occasionally and last summer they defenseless up at the wedding of a former teammate'southward sister. Since and so, Megan and Coleman's wife Laura text frequently.

"I wouldn't alter a unmarried thing every bit far equally my career at Ohio Country. Would y'all ever take anything back that fabricated y'all a better person?" Tyson Gentry

"Astonishing game," Megan says of Carolina's NFC title win. "Every time [Kurt] got an interception we would scream and I was texting his wife. It's crawly to see him finally feel like he fits and has a squad he feels he'due south really a function of. We're hoping they can pull information technology out and Kurt can come abode with a Super Bowl ring.

"We take met other [victims of] spinal cord injuries that don't take that state of affairs, and are angry and vengeful nigh at the person that did that to them."

Gentry has instead focused his efforts on making the lives of others ameliorate. His New Perspective Foundation is a nonprofit arrangement that assists families in Ohio and Florida struggling with the devastating effects of spinal string injuries. Every bit Gentry explains, "Our focus is that the family unit and friends should be there by the person's side and not have to worry most whether or not they can afford to be there. So nosotros will assistance with gas money, lodging expenses or airfare, so they can travel to be by their side."

Coleman understands Gentry's passion. Later his father, Ron, was diagnosed with male person breast cancer in 2006, Coleman co-founded the Ohio State chapter of Uplifting Athletes, which helps raise sensation of rare diseases.

"Now [Tyson] is able to take his situation and make it much bigger," Coleman says. "He has a platform and he'south doing some groovy and wonderful things for families all effectually the U.S."

DURING HIS SENIOR YEAR at Ohio State, Gentry registered for linguistics at Independence Hall. He was tardily for the kickoff class and rolled into the back of the lecture hall. Megan, who also was late, already had found a spot at the handicapped desk. They didn't talk that first day, merely both returned to the same identify for the 2d class.

Information technology quickly became obvious to Megan that Tyson, a speech and hearing major, knew the subject intimately. Similarly, Tyson sensed Megan might be in over her caput and offered, altruistically of form, to help her review the notes.

Both of them consider this a happy outcome of the blow.

"If Ty didn't interruption his neck, nosotros wouldn't have met, wouldn't have gotten married," Megan says. "We're huge believers in everything happens for a reason."

They're expecting a baby boy in mid-March. His name volition be Adam Cole Gentry -- Cole for Coleman.

When Tyson told Coleman, for in one case, the loquacious defender was speechless.

"We idea information technology would be a pretty cool gesture and a neat nod to Kurt," Gentry explains. "Nosotros wanted to go with Cole considering we were thankful that he was a function of this and we wouldn't be here without him."

Says Coleman, "I remember he wants his son to know who he is as a human."

Coleman, who has two young daughters, says he is already looking forward to family vacations with the Gentrys. Disney World, he pointed out, would be a home game for Tyson. And he already has told Gentry about the joys of fatherhood.

"I think he was worried near some of the things that information technology would entail being a father," Coleman says. "And I said, 'Don't worry, you're going to be a cracking male parent, considering I know who you are.'

"I hope his son volition have every characteristic that he has."