The official TCU "countdown" that features former players needs to include Sherill Headrick. I got to meet him several times later in his life, and he was a wonderful person who had more than his share of Frog Factor. (His hands and fingers looked like a steam roller had run over them.)
"Headrick had a simple explanation for playing through the pain,
The Kansas City Star reported.
“Back then, we had only 33 players on the roster,” Headrick said at the time of his induction into the Chiefs Hall of Fame. “If you got hurt, someone would take your job. I had a lot of injuries, but fortunately not any I couldn’t play with.”
He said at his Chiefs Hall of Fame induction: “I’ve been a cripple for years. People ask, would you do it again? I would have liked to have made more money, but it was the most enjoyable thing in the whole world to me. Playing with all the guys, playing in the first Super Bowl, most people don’t accomplish nearly as much in sports.”
http://www.star-telegram.com/latest-news/article3824180.html
And from Wiki:
"In his book
"The American Football League – A Year-by-Year History, 1960–1969", Ed Gruver quotes Texans/Chiefs coach
Hank Stram as saying that Headrick, who refused to wear hip pads, had the highest pain threshold [he'd] ever seen in an athlete. Headrick played with a broken neck, infected gums, and a fractured thumb. When an injury left the bone in his finger protruding from the skin, Headrick popped the bones in place without missing a play."
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46719434/GettyImages-104434679.0.jpg)
