Get better, OJ!

No, not that OJ. This is about former Rice linebacker OJ Brigance, who had an outstanding career in the Canadian Football League before coming to the NFL and winning a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens, and who was recently diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The body that allowed Brigance to compete at football’s highest level is betraying him.

Brigance needs to be driven to work because he can’t lift his arms. He needs to sit on the bed to put on his pants because he loses his balance. And he needs his wife to button his shirt because he doesn’t have the same dexterity with his hands.

“I can see where you can fold up the tent,” said Brigance, the Ravens’ director of player development. “To be totally honest, I’m not always upbeat. It’s tough. But I’ve always believed that we’re able to overcome more than what we think.”

Brigance will be honored tomorrow at the Ed Block Courage Awards, receiving the Johnny Unitas Tops in Courage Award for battling the disease with the same willpower he used to fight his way into the NFL. In 1996, he was rejected by 28 of 30 NFL teams when he called for a tryout, but ultimately had a seven-year career.

About 5,600 people in the United States are diagnosed with ALS each year, a disease that generally paralyzes muscles and the lungs, often causing suffocation, but doesn’t impair the brain or any of the senses. There is no known cure, and most die within five years of being diagnosed.

Brigance could have chosen to walk away from his job and handle his ordeal privately. A former special teams standout who prided himself on outworking current Ravens in the weight room, Brigance knows he is a shadow of the overachieving player who played on winning teams in the 2001 Super Bowl and the Canadian Football League’s 1995 Grey Cup in Baltimore.

His rippled muscles have disintegrated and his arms sag to the side of his body. His fingers can no longer wrap around a football, much less give a firm handshake.

But Brigance has dedicated himself to be a guiding hand to the Ravens’ players, preaching to them that adversity makes you stronger.

“No one has beaten this thing, but I am going to be the one who does,” Brigance told the players before the season began. “They’re going to find a cure.”

If anyone can do this, he can. My very best wishes to OJ Brigance and his family as they face this great challenge. More information, and a way you can help, is on the Rice Owls fan forum.

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