Seventeen years ago, Damien Richardson stood on a sideline in Houston, usually near John Fox, the head coach of the Carolina Panthers.
“I got a lot of air time,” Richardson said.
Richardson got no game time because he was on crutches. His knee was hurt, and his neck was already questionable from his days as a special-teams super-collider.
But he got to see everything but Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction at halftime. He watched the Panthers and Patriots retreat and advance, and he saw Tom Brady gather himself and pull out a 32-29 win.
Now Richardson is a surgeon at the Newport Orthopedic Institute in Newport Beach. It takes a while to get there. He got a master’s degree in public health at Harvard, went to UC San Francisco med school and did his residency at University of Arizona hospital. That’s on top of a biochemistry degree at Arizona State, where Richardson played with Pat Tillman and was drafted by Carolina in the seventh round.
