OSU, Oakland Raider great Jack Tatum dead at 61

"We have lost one of our greatest Buckeyes," Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel said in a statement.

Does he not remember how much of a jerk Tatum was about the whole Stingley tragedy?

And don't forget the injury was caused during a meaningless pre-season game.

It's football buddy they know the risks. If you go half a** you will get hurt bottom line. Jack Tatum would of knocked his mother's head off if she had a Michigan jersey on he was a football player not a librarian.

1970mach. There is only one way to play and that is full go-all of the time. Perhaps you never played, or only played to a certain level, but you never go less than 100%.

You may want to do some research on your claim that Tatum was a "jerk" about the incident. He was deeply affected, and many times there were meetings scheduled between the two players but they were ultimately "screwed up by Stingley's people" and their demands that Tatum pay Stingley for the photo op-among other things. He was also advised not to do anything publicly, out of fear that some legal precedent could come from his statements. Tatum could never give the appearance publicly or throughout the league that the hit affected him-to show weakness or fear, but it did affect him-significantly.

Sweatpea--with all due respect--you have NO idea what you're talking about. Read the attached story--Tatum was a jerk. Karma

http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/da...

Stingley: 'I'm sick'
Tatum meeting just a promotion

BOSTON -- After 18 years, Darryl Stingley was going to meet face-to-face with Jack Tatum, the man who ended his football career and put him in a wheelchair for life with a neck-high tackle.
Then Stingley, the former Patriots wide receiver, was told that next Tuesday's meeting with the former Oakland Raiders defensive back was a publicity stunt, not a simple reconciliation.
Stingley's agent said Tatum wanted the meeting, which was to be taped at Stingley's Chicago home for airing by Fox-TV, to promote his new book. No thanks, Stingley said.
"I'm numb now," he told The Boston Globe "I have a headache. I knew nothing about a book. They told me nobody was making money off this. I'm sick."

"This is one of the lowest things I have ever heard of," said Stingley's agent, Jack Sands, who canceled the meeting.
Stingley said he didn't think anyone at Fox knew of the book or that Tatum might use the meeting to promote it.
Tatum, who could not be reached for comment, wrote about the possibility of meeting Stingley in his new book, "Final Confessions of NFL Assassin Jack Tatum."
"Maybe someday Darryl Stingley and I will get together and talk," Tatum wrote.
Writing of the Aug. 12, 1978 collision which left Stingley a paraplegic, Tatum wrote, "I understand why Darryl is considered the victim. But I'll never understand why some people look to me as the villain."
Tatum's first book, "They Call Me Assassin," was published in 1980.
"Here Jack Tatum is, still getting money off me after 18 years for destroying my life," Stingley said. "No, he didn't destroy my life. For altering my life."
Even before the revelation about the book, Stingley's friends had warned him not to meet with Tatum, because "if Tatum couldn't even once come to see me in 18 years, that he even couldn't lift a phone once in those 18 years and call me, what could he want now?"
But Stingley had planned to go through with the meeting, which was to be shown the following Sunday at halftime of the Miami-Dallas game.
He said he insisted that Sands have Fox put an 800 phone number on the screen through which viewers could donate to the Darryl Stingley Foundation, which helps Chicago teenagers.
"Here I was trying to find all the good that'd come out of this, and now it's just another negative," Stingley said. "My friends were all telling me this and they were all saying about Tatum, `A leopard can't really change his spots,' and they're right. This leopard can't change his spots."