Never give up: A football injury cost him his leg, but he vowed to return anyway

June 14, 2024

Twenty years later, the memories remain almost frozen in time for Neil Parry.

When San Jose State hosted UTEP on Oct. 14, 2000, it was a first-place battle in the Western Athletic Conference, no small feat for a San Jose State program that hadn’t had a winning season in eight years or a bowl appearance in 10.

“For us to be in that position, it was a big week,” Parry said in an interview last month, “and those kinds of things as a player, you remember those big weeks.”

“That was the first time in a while we were competing for that WAC championship, so that was fun,” said Josh Parry, then a Spartans captain, senior linebacker and Neil’s older brother. “And to do it together with a family member, and then my teammates, is just a special time, man. It was a great year, it was a lot of fun.”

Little did the Parrys know that first place in the WAC would be the last thing on their mind by the end of the night.

While Josh would go on to an NFL career as a fullback with the Philadelphia Eagles and Seattle Seahawks, Neil was a walk-on whose impact came in the kicking game. He went to San Jose State with no expectations beyond playing Division I football.

“Just tenacious, man,” Josh said of Neil. “Whatever it takes, he’d play.”

“He was a real gritty player, but he was lankier (than Josh),” then-San Jose State coach Dave Baldwin said. “He would’ve played, he would’ve been a starter at outside linebacker.”

Would have, if not for that fateful kickoff.

The cruel thing about what happened to Parry 20 years ago today is that he loved nothing more than being on the kickoff team. Running down the field at full speed, looking to make a play, was what brought him joy. Until it delivered him pain few people can ever understand.

San Jose State kicked off with 11:46 left in the third quarter that evening, having just pulled ahead 30-27 on a 44-yard touchdown by Deonce Whitaker.

“We had just scored and we were coming out to get a stop and, let’s put the game away,” Josh Parry said.

Neil Parry, as usual in his wedge-buster role, raced down the field, one of the first Spartans to get within range of the UTEP returner, Sam Singleton. The ball was fielded at the 14-yard line and Parry disengaged with two blockers at the 23 as he turned up the field in pursuit of Singleton.

Parry was within a yard or so of Singleton when the returner cut outside to the left as a teammate delivered a block. That block sent one of Parry’s teammates flying in his direction and straight toward his lower right leg.

Craaaack.

The sound continues to echo. Parry’s foot stuck in the grass as his bones snapped. It was a compound fracture, as gruesome an injury as you could imagine in a sport that’s essentially 60 minutes of car crashes. Think Joe Theismann. Think Alex Smith. Then realize that Parry’s leg not only fractured to the point of his tibia and fibula breaking through the skin, but the artery to his right foot was also severed.

“I rolled over and that’s one of those, when your body moves in a way that it’s not supposed to, you start to worry a little bit,” Parry said. “And so I tried to keep myself calm and I tried to roll over, but my foot wouldn’t come. The way I was laying on the ground, my foot was just hanging there. So I didn’t want to sit up and look at it because I knew it was ugly.”

Jeb Burns, then San Jose State’s assistant athletic trainer, was among those immediately tending to Parry on the field.

“He’s laying there, and his body is laying one way and his leg is in its normal position, and his foot and lower leg is pointing in a direction that is not normal,” Burns said. “And then we start to see the blood course, soaking his sock. And so visually, just from that alone, you knew, this is not good.”

An air cast was quickly applied to keep the leg in place without applying pressure to it and he was rushed to San Jose’s O’Connor Hospital and off to surgery. Baldwin visited him that night and every day in the hospital — he was eventually transferred to Stanford Medical Center — for the ensuing three weeks.

Doctors quickly realized this was worse than expected.

“The fevers, I’ve never seen anything like that,” Baldwin said.

The wound had become infected and through multiple surgeries, doctors began to explain to Parry that amputation might be on the table.

“When it’s a possibility, you never think that could happen,” Parry said. “I’m a Division I athlete, man, that’s not going to happen.”

But no amount of willpower or athletic aspirations could ultimately change the fact that the infection was life-threatening. Without sacrificing his leg, Parry might sacrifice his life. He relented to his fate, but only slightly.

“When they told him they’re going to have to amputate,” Baldwin recalled, “He said, ‘You’re gonna have to cut it off below the knee because I’m playing football again.'”

Sports don’t often stop to mourn injuries. A player gets carted off and when the final wheel exits the field, the whistle is blown to return to play. That’s not so easy when it’s your brother on the way to the hospital.

“I don’t even remember it,” Josh Parry said of the final quarter and a half of San Jose State’s eventual 47-30 loss to UTEP. “That was hard because you know being the Mike linebacker, you’re the guy that everybody’s looking to. You’re the leader, you’re the captain, and being a senior and all that stuff … you’re trying to be there for the guys and then my family, thinking about my mom, my dad, all them and what’s going on, there’s just a lot and I don’t remember the rest of the day.”

Doctors initially placed a 12-inch rod in Neil’s leg to try to stabilize it and that surgery seemed to go well. But despite the use of antibiotics, doctors were unable to prevent an infection from setting in.

“The initial injury cut off some of the circulation to my foot,” Parry said. “So there wasn’t blood flow to my foot, as much as there should have been. So the infection kind of just destroyed everything, and there was no circulation to take any fresh blood into my foot. … After a couple days it became more life-threatening than anything. So what started as a choice — ‘Well, we might have to do this (amputation)’ — became, ‘This has to be done if we want to save Neil’s life.'”

Nine days after the injury, on Oct. 23, 2000, Parry’s right leg was amputated about seven inches below his knee.

Three days earlier, Josh faced his own decision. San Jose State’s bus was set to leave for Reno for its game against Nevada. Josh, who hadn’t practiced all week, was at the hospital with Neil when the team came by to sing the school’s fight song to him from outside his window at the Stanford Medical Center.

Football was the furthest thing from Josh’s mind. He was done.

“I was going to shut it down and just be there for him,” Josh said.

But after the team left, Neil called Josh into his room.

“That’s when he told me: ‘I’m gonna be fine. I’m gonna fight this thing and I’m going to be fine. I’m gonna come back,'” Josh recalled. “That’s really what got me to go play again.”

The team had already left for Reno, but made arrangements for Josh to catch a late-night flight from San Jose. He arrived at the hotel at 3:30 a.m.

“I showed up and just kind of gave them a spark,” Josh said.

Josh Parry had 17 tackles that day in a 49-30 win over Nevada. It remains San Jose State’s only win in Reno in 15 tries. Instead of a boisterous locker-room celebration, the Spartans prepared for their bus ride home in pure silence when Josh delivered a postgame speech informing the team that Neil’s leg was going to be amputated.

“It was just crazy, man,” Josh Parry said. “I didn’t even think I was going to be there. I thought I was gonna be done and I’m figuring out a life plan with my brother. And he calls me, ‘You gotta go play, man. Shit, I’m gonna be fine.’ Then I go on to see those guys and we go on a little run.”

That run included a win the next week over Hawaii and a stunning 27-24 upset of No. 9 TCU, which was then led by Hall of Fame running back LaDainian Tomlinson. That night, just three weeks removed from the injury and just 12 days removed from the amputation, Neil Parry returned to Spartan Stadium and watched from the box level as the Spartans’ defense — ranked last in the country entering the game — slowed Tomlinson down just enough (32 carries, 155 yards) to earn the monumental win. Josh Parry finished with six tackles, including two for a loss.

“I’ll never forget the buzz in that stadium,” Josh Parry said. “Here’s a future Hall of Fame running back, one of the greatest to ever do it, and here’s little ol’ San Jose State … there’s just something about them. … There’s some struggle they’ve went through, some life lessons. And that’s why you play the game, because anybody can be beaten and to have that happen when he’s in the stadium, that first time back … it was just such a special time.

“And to have him share it was special, because he was definitely part of that.”

Neil Parry watches San Jose State’s upset win over TCU just 12 days after having his lower right leg amputated. (Paul Sakuma /Associated Press)

Neil Parry never created a timeline, but one thing was always clear in his mind: He was going to return and play football again. He’d never be a defensive starter — back-pedaling and change of direction would be too tough for him to return as a safety. But special teams was always his calling card and he was determined to both gain clearance to return and earn a role on the field.

“Ultimately it was my drive to finish my career at San Jose State, and not let something that happened to me define me,” Parry said.

Parry returned to his hometown of Sonora after leaving the hospital, but by the start of the 2001-02 school year he was back on campus and on the practice field plotting his comeback. The first step was finding the right prosthetic. A breakthrough came when Burns was on a camping trip with a high school friend — also a below-the-knee amputee who was a wakeboarder — and noticed his prosthetic.

“It had a much smaller spring towards the front and had a little shock in the back end, like where your heel would be,” Burns said. “So we switched up to that for Neil, and that was a game-changer for him and gave him a lot more lateral stability and agility.”

The new carbon-graphic prosthetic weighed about three pounds and helped Parry find more speed — and comfort — than previous versions. The leg was held on by suction, heavily padded to ensure it wasn’t an injury risk for others, and fitted with a knee brace.

The process was never smooth though. Setbacks became the norm. Before he’d actually make his return to a football game, he would endure 25 surgeries. There were bone spurs and nerve damage. At one point the bone came to the skin and essentially reset the process.

But by the start of the 2002 season, Parry’s spirits were high and he was feeling good physically. He was optimistic about playing in San Jose State’s home opener, slated for Week 5 against UTEP, the same opponent as when he got injured.

“I was getting to a point where I was like, ‘OK, this is going to happen,”’ Parry said. “So I was feeling really, really good. Workouts were going well, our trainer was really encouraged.”

But just before that season opened, Parry was dealt crushing news. Mutual of Omaha, the NCAA’s catastrophic injury insurance provider, informed San Jose State that if Parry returned to the field, he would be considered “recovered” and his vast future medical expenses would no longer be paid for. Parry still remembers being delivered the news by Desiree Reed-Francois, then San Jose State’s director of compliance who is now UNLV’s athletic director.

“She called me and said, ‘Hey, can you come over to the office? We’ve got to talk,'” Parry recalled. “And I was like, ‘What the heck?'”

Reed-Francois explained the NCAA and Mutual of Omaha’s position that its policy would mean he wouldn’t have the costs of his future prosthetics, which generally need replacing every few years, or any other related medical expenses covered.

“I understood it from what their guidelines said, but it makes no sense for someone in a situation like mine,” Parry said.

Reed-Francois ensured him they would work this out.

“So we got on the phone,” Parry said. “And I don’t know if it was somebody from the NCAA or the insurance company, but we were on the phone with them and Desiree was saying, ‘Hey, you have to understand the situation is not like anything you’ve ever had. So there has to be a workaround.’ And the person said, ‘Sorry, that’s the policy.’

“And Desiree made sure. She said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this? You’re sure this is the road you want to go down?’ And the guy said, ‘Yeah, that’s our policy.’ And immediately after hanging up, Desiree said, ‘You need to reach out to all these people that have done these stories on you and let them know what’s going on.'”

Stories hit the papers the next day and two days later, Mutual of Omaha sent out a press release headlined, “Neil Parry Can Play!” Upon request of the NCAA, the insurance provider made a benefit modification to adjust its normal policy that would’ve closed his claim.

“We at Mutual of Omaha and our partners at the NCAA fully appreciate this young man’s desire to return to the game he loves,” then-Mutual of Omaha chairman and CEO Jack Weekly was quoted in the press release. “Neil Parry’s courageous efforts to return to the football field after such a devastating injury are a true inspiration. We wish him the best of luck on the football field and in all his endeavors.”

It was a victory, albeit a temporary one. Parry started experiencing nerve damage in his leg not long after the insurance issue was resolved. He doesn’t discount the idea that the physical setback wasn’t brought on — at least partially — by the red-tape setback.

“I don’t know if your mind is more powerful than people think,” Parry said. “But that happened and it was such a letdown and I was so deflated. … It might have happened anyway, but it was like one thing led to another and I had to have another surgery.”

For someone who was so obsessively positive, whose life was being guided by his “never give up” mantra, this represented a rare moment when those close to Neil saw him get down.

“He was just crushed,” said Ro Parry, Neil’s wife and then-girlfriend. “I feel like he thought these are the two foundations (the NCAA and Mutual of Omaha) that he had assumed would support him. But instead, they’re gonna punish him for what he’s trying to do.”

“We felt blindsided,” Burns said. “Here we were making all this wonderful progress and just to have that blow.”

“There definitely was this moment where you could see him going, you could see him working towards it, and then in a way it collapsed a little bit,” said Scott Rislov, San Jose State’s quarterback from 2002-03 and a close friend of Parry’s.

That setback and ensuing surgery took a 2002 return off the table and created a last chance of sorts. The 2003 season would be his senior year. In theory, he likely could’ve been granted an additional season of eligibility to continue his comeback, but his mind was largely made up that this was his final attempt.

“He had a shift in his mindset where it felt like nothing was going to get in his way,” Ro Parry said. “And maybe inside his mind, he knew it’s either this year or I’m not gonna try again. So there was this fire under him. And I think it was at that point where I thought even if something did hurt or bother him, he wasn’t gonna say it.”

Burns, who spent countless hours working with Parry, saw him start to turn the corner as that season neared.

“It was just his ability to get through the workouts and perform at the level that we felt was appropriate for him to be out on the field and play,” Burns said. “Yes, his goal was to get back on the field and play, but he didn’t want to take a position from anybody else. He wanted to earn it and he wanted to contribute.”

Parry said he was starting to feel like himself again.

“Over the summer during the workouts with the team, I felt confidence in myself because I felt good with my prosthetic,” Parry said. “Physically, my weight was back to what I was at when I played before the injury and my speed was picking up. Before that, I would do the drills and I’d be way behind everybody. But that summer, I was keeping up with everybody.

“I was like, ‘OK, this is gonna happen.’ … That was my mindset. This is gonna happen this year. I don’t care what gets in my way. … Just knowing that regardless if I got on the field or not, Senior Day, I was gonna have my name called and my parents were going to be on the field and I was going to walk out with them. That was the worst-case scenario. So I was aces at that point.”

San Jose State opened its 2003 season with a shutout win over Grambling State, then road losses against Florida and Stanford. The Spartans had a bye week ahead of a Thursday night home game with Nevada, scheduled to be broadcast on ESPN.

“I hadn’t put pads on and I hadn’t gone to practice until the week of Nevada,” Parry said. “It was just, I wasn’t ready. It wasn’t time.”

Burns had been in charge of the timeline for Parry’s rehab but never put any dates on it. The day after San Jose State’s Week 3 loss to Stanford, Burns casually asked Parry, “Hey, what are you thinking this week?”

“I was like, ‘Dude, don’t even ask me. I’m ready to go!'” Parry said. “He was more trying to pull the reins on me, which to be honest, that’s probably what every player needs. So having him in my corner, I knew he was looking out for me. And, when he asked me that, I was like, ‘All right, it’s go time.’ … And so he smiled at me and said, ‘All right, tomorrow you’re suiting up.’ And I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, baby! Here we go!'”

(Courtesy of San Jose State Athletics)

Parry had earned a spot on the punt return team. It wasn’t his first love — the kickoff team — but he was going to be suiting up. It was time to start sharing the news.

“I was at Michigan State and I was coming off the practice field,” said Baldwin, the former San Jose State coach, “and our equipment manager said I had a call I needed to take. It was Neil and he told me, ‘I’ve been cleared to play. I’m one of the guys.'”

Baldwin started choking up: “I said, ‘Neil, you are the guy.'”

Josh Parry was on the Eagles practice squad at the time. Normally, a Week 3 bye for an NFL team would be reason for consternation. For the Parrys, it was reason for celebration.

“I was able to fly back and go to the game and be in the stands with my dad and my mom, which is pretty cool, man,” Josh Parry said. “I just realized what I was watching.”

Media swarmed Spartan Stadium on Sept. 18, 2003, to document the historic night. As best as anyone could tell, prior to Parry, the only college football players to play with a prosthetic were Brian Hall, a kicker at Texas Tech from 1974-76, and defensive tackle Richard Busacca, who played at Division I-AA Marist College from 1991-94. Linebacker Koni Dole in 2015 for Montana State and cornerback and kick returner Kody Kasey in 2017 for Georgetown College (NAIA school in Kentucky) have since also done so.

Because Parry was on the punt return squad, rather than one of the kickoff teams, history would have to wait until San Jose State made a defensive stop. And so Parry waited. And waited. And waited.

Nevada converted three times on third down on its opening drive, leading to a touchdown. The Wolf Pack converted twice more on the next drive, then had a long 74-yard touchdown. There were two more conversions on Nevada’s fourth drive, another touchdown. Four drives, four touchdowns, 7-for-7 on third down. The Spartans’ only defensive stop of the first half came when Gerald Jones intercepted a Nevada pass and returned it 99 yards for a touchdown to close the second quarter.

The second half was more of the same, with Nevada driving for a touchdown and a field goal on its first two drives. The Spartans looked to have finally gotten the stop it needed on a third-and-1 play to end the third quarter, but a face mask penalty gave Nevada a first down. The thoughts started creeping in.

“I started telling myself, ‘Man, it’s been three years, what’s another quarter?'” Parry said. “But then to get to the fourth quarter, it’s like, ‘Man, is this really gonna go into next week?'”

“That was brutal,” Josh Parry said. “I wished I could suit up again and go out ’cause we gotta get a punt going.”

The break Parry needed came on the second play of the fourth quarter, when Nevada was called for a personal foul. That made it second-and-22. An incomplete pass brought up third down and a short 4-yard run finally brought Nevada’s punt unit onto the field.

“I think it’s probably like a good symbol for like Neil’s journey,” Rislov said. “It was never gonna be easy.”

Parry lined up on the left side of the Spartans’ punt return unit. He engaged with two blockers at the line of scrimmage and raced down the field looking for someone to hit. It was the culmination of nearly three years of incredibly hard work.

“It was amazing,” Ro Parry said. “There were so many emotions that day that I feel like there’s so little I remember.”

But Neil Parry was admittedly a bit disappointed.

“For three years, I have these visions of making these plays in my head and what I’m gonna do on the field, and, you know, the play happened, and I’m running down the field, and nothing really happened,” Parry said. “At the time, I was disappointed, not realizing how big a deal it was.”

(Courtesy of San Jose State Athletics)

Parry played 19 snaps over eight games for San Jose State in 2003. That’s an important distinction. His comeback was never about him seeking publicity or one shining moment. He was doing it for himself and for his brother, Josh, who was still in pursuit of his NFL dream. (He’d make his active roster debut with the Eagles a year later, when he was a starter at fullback as they reached the Super Bowl.) Whenever Parry worked out or played in a game, he’d do so with NGU — never give up — written on the tape on one wrist and JP49 — Josh Parry and his jersey number, 49 — on the other.

“It was a lot of highs, a lot of lows, but, having that goal of finishing on Senior Day and finishing on my terms was kind of what drove me,” Parry said. “And then also my brother, trying to play in the NFL and finally getting his chance and us pushing each other. If you’re gonna keep trying, I’m gonna keep trying.”

After the season, Parry was invited to the East-West Shrine Game in San Francisco. The annual college football all-star game is a chance for players to make one final on-field impression to NFL scouts, but is also played to benefit the Shriners Hospital for Children. The game’s motto is: “Strong legs run that weak legs may walk.”

Parry appreciated the invitation, but initially was focused on not wanting to take playing time away from those with NFL careers on the line. He knew how important special teams were for rookies trying to make a roster and told West coach John Robinson (then at UNLV) that he’d be at practice and participate but didn’t expect to play in the game.

“A lot of these guys use this — they need to show what they can do,” Parry said. “They’re trying to get jobs. And that wasn’t me. I knew I wasn’t gonna play after that. And I told (Robinson), ‘I don’t want to take one of these spots from somebody that could use this to get a job next year.’

“And he’s like, ‘Hey, listen to me: You know what this game is about? You know what this game benefits? And to be honest, you’re tougher than any guy on this field.’ And when he said that to me, I was like, this is a Hall of Fame football coach telling me this. And he said, ‘Hey, you’re probably never gonna get another opportunity to do this. You need to do this because you’ve earned it.’

“And I said, ‘All right, I’m suiting up.'”

It was a decision he wouldn’t regret. Parry got to play on the kickoff team and racing down the field at what was then called SBC Park, Parry experienced the moment he had been dreaming about. Wearing his blue Spartan helmet and red No. 32 West jersey, Parry broke down, lowered his shoulders and delivered a hit on Arkansas kick returner Lawrence Richardson.

“Woo-hoooo!” Parry, who was mic’d up for the game, screamed.

“Ayye, atta-babe! Come on now, let’s go!” he added while helping Richardson to his feet. He let out a few more primal screams on his way to the sidelines.

“I couldn’t have asked for anything else,” Parry said of his tackle in the East-West Shrine Game. (Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)

“I was just focused on all right, stay in my lane, don’t get blown up by one of these future NFL guys,” Parry said, recalling the play. “And then as I’m running, I saw things start to develop. … Things just started to slow down, and I could see it all develop. And right away, I was like, ‘Oh, this is it.’ So I just hit it.

“It happened in a split second, but when it happened to me at the time, it was like everyone’s moving in slow motion, and I’m not. … It was just one of those moments that sometimes you hear athletes talk about that they’re in the rhythm, they’re in the flow, and it just opened up. And that’s exactly what happened.”

Rislov was one of the quarterbacks for the West team that day and got to experience it from the sidelines.

“Being close with Neil, I know that he wanted that,” Rislov said. “You could feel it. You could feel with him, he went down to make that play — there’s just so much joy there. It was kind of palpable. It was just an amazing moment. Amazing for him and just knowing how stoked he was.”

This was the moment that made all that hard work worth it.

“For three years, literally, that play had gone through my mind,” Parry said of envisioning himself making a tackle. “So to have something like that happen, and then wrap it all up was just … I couldn’t have asked for anything else.”

When Alex Smith made his return to the field Sunday for the Washington Football Team, it undoubtedly brought back more emotions for Parry. As detailed in the ESPN documentary, “Project 11,” Smith similarly dealt with an infection and the consideration of amputation after his gruesome leg fracture on Nov. 18, 2018.

“Everything (Smith) went through, I went through, but I ended up losing my leg,” Parry said last month. “So when I watched (‘Project 11’), it was like, ‘Man, I can’t.’ It brought everything back, it made it so fresh. And for him to be in the NFL still and to battle back from what was basically the same thing, but they were able to save his leg …. that made it fresh. It was a tough ordeal.”

Parry’s body has endured a lot, somewhere between 35-40 surgeries. The last one came in 2007 shortly before his first of three sons was born. He’s had no complications since — never doubt the power of dad strength — though he describes feeling “beat up.”

Now 40, Parry is the head junior varsity football coach at St. Francis High in Mountain View. He was a graduate assistant at San Jose State from 2012-14 and also coached at UC Davis before that, but coaching high school players has felt like the perfect calling. Never was that more evident than when he finally decided to show his team a video that documented everything he had been through. Since Parry always wore pants in public, his players never knew he had a prosthetic leg.

The video, while chronicling his injury and comeback, also detailed his ritual of writing NGU and JP49 on each of his wrists.

“They all came out for the next game with all that written on their wrists,” Parry said. “Just to have an influence over kids, it’s pretty damn rewarding.”

For all the attention that came his way 20 years ago — he met two sitting presidents, President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush, and was splashed across TV screens, magazines and newspapers — he remains very unassuming yet inspiring.

“I don’t really think Neil’s ever talked about it, but after so many years of us reflecting … I don’t know if people realize how much his body endured,” Ro Parry said. “It took a long time for it to really get back to living a more normal life.

“He put it all out there. And I think, in all of his interviews and with all of his friends, he really didn’t want to put that out there. … He would always lighten the mood and make jokes about it. But I think all of that, once he did come back, accomplish his goals, he had a few years where he had to kind of resow physically, emotionally, mentally. Which has made him the most amazing coach.

“I don’t think he regrets any of it. Anything that’s happened, even the injury. … A lot of things in his life have happened the way they have because of the injury.”

Neil agrees.

“Somebody asked me if I would change it or if I would do it all over and there isn’t even a question,” he said. “If I could end up with that one play in East-West Shrine Game, man, I would have gone through 10 years if I had to.”

(Top photo courtesy of San Jose State Athletics)

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