Super Bowl Crunch
As the Bears and Colts prepare for Sunday's Super Bowl showdown, Ron Kroichick of the San Francisco Chronicles describes what happens to players long after the big game is over. For his "Glory Has Its Price," Kroichick tracked down 30 players from the 1981 Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers. He found that 20 of these men, ranging in age from 47 to 59, now have significant physical issues including chronic back pain, arthritis and joint replacements. Two, including star quarterback Joe Montana, have had spinal fusion surgery, two others needed knee replacements and one had a shoulder replaced. Kroichick does a great job of showing us the painful lives that these ex-players live and of explaining why the game produces so many serious injuries. This is a nice example of looking at a news event and asking, "What happens next?" in order to develop a compelling enterprise story. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/21/SPG6JNM6MN1.DTL