Injury is part of the college game, a hazard that everyone who has ever buckled a chinstrap and slid on shoulder pads understands from the start.
The truth is, if you play football long enough, you will be injured. The only questions are, when and how bad it's going to be.
Throughout the SEC football season, the answers have been frequently and pretty bad.
Particularly in the East, the SEC has become less about showcasing skill and more about surviving to play another day. Last week saw Missouri jump into the division lead with an upset win over an injury-plagued Georgia team; but in the process, the Tigers lost their star quarterback, James Franklin, to a separated shoulder.
Franklin will be out 3-6 weeks, a stretch that will, at a minimum, include home games against Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee.
The Georgia locker room has been like an infirmary for the last month, with starting running backs Todd Gurley and Keith Marshall down with injuries — the former with an ankle sprain that has been slow to heal, and the latter with a torn ACL (done for the season).
On Tuesday, coach Mark Richt said Gurley is "real close" to returning. But the Dawgs are still missing three of their best receivers — Malcolm Mitchell, Michael Bennett and Justin Scott-Wesley. Mitchell and Scott-Wesley are out for the rest of the year, while Bennett is day to day.
"It might be who can handle the adversity the best," said Richt, when asked about how injuries are likely to affect the conference race. "Who can find a way to win? Who can fight and scratch and figure out a way? That's probably what it’s going to come down to."
Or it might come down to who has the best luck.
Robert Nkemdiche, the Ole Miss freshman defensive end who has started every game and racked up 15 tackles, injured his hamstring during the Rebels' 41-38 loss to Texas A&M last week.
According to Hugh Freeze, Nkemdiche will likely miss three games, including Saturday’s home matchup against LSU.
The Nkemdiche injury looked benign. He wasn't cut-blocked or blindsided. He wasn’t even touched. He pulled up lame on a simple pursuit play where Nkemdiche, along with the rest of the Rebel defense, chased Johnny Manziel up the left sideline.
That sort of fluke injury has been normal this year. Franklin's separated shoulder came on a routine play-action pass, where he was shoved out of bounds and fell on the Georgia sideline — nothing dirty or vicious or even noteworthy.
The play was unremarkable in every way other than the end result — the potential end of the senior's injury-plagued career. "I'm not trying to be hard-line here, but it's part of the game," said Florida head coach Will Muschamp, four days after his Gators lost to LSU without starting quarterback Jeff Driskel (broken ankle), running back Matt Jones (knee injury), defensive tackle Dominique Easley (knee) and offensive lineman Chaz Green (shoulder).
All four Gators are out for the remainder of the season.
"It's unfortunate," Muschamp said. "More than anything, I hate it for the young men. They put a lot of time and effort into playing, and for that to happen, I'm disappointed for them. That's what hurts the most, to see guys go through the struggle and having to make that phone call and tell them what's going on or having to walk them into the training room to tell them what’s happening.
"That's very frustrating for a young man. ... But (it's) man down, man up. We'll get the next guy up."
That is easier said than done in some cases. When Manziel went down and grabbed his left knee after a sideline run against the Rebels, fans across the country took notice. Manziel came back one series later and rushed for 124 yards, while throwing for 346.
Nobody thinks the next guy up for the Aggies could have done that.
"It's a tough conference," South Carolina linebacker Sharrod Golightly said on Tuesday. The Gamecocks have been injured at the tight end position for much of the year. They've also seen star defensive end Jadeveon Clowney play hurt the last several weeks.
But as Golightly said in his media appearance before the Tennessee game: "You gotta bring your game every week (in the SEC). There’s no mercy."
