Shattered Dreams

Was a football practice drill too dangerous?

TARPON SPRINGS - Corey Burrowes was a kid from the streets. Wearing number 12, he became a star at Tarpon Springs High. He dreamed of playing in the NFL. His coach, Don Davis says it could have happened.

"I would have bet on him. I would have bet on him with his attitude," recalled Davis.

But at a junior college in Georgia, Corey's world would change forever in a practice drill.

"It was just like my ears had popped, and I just went down and I just felt real crazy - this electrical feeling going up and down my body, and my hands just throbbing real bad, my feet throbbing and I can't get up," explained Burrowes.

Corey's neck is broken. He'll never walk again. His foster dad takes care of him.

"I have to bath him, dress him, and do every other grooming, and any other accessories he has to do to his body. I have to do that," said Charles Driver.

Corey's high school coach has looked at the film repeatedly. The drill was called 'stray bull'. No one has a football. One player is told to run through three others, hitting as hard as they can.

"I don't see what that drill has to do with football. I don't get it," said Davis.

Davis says the drill was inherently dangerous, and had no place on a football field.

"To see this drill the way it was run, and I keep saying to myself 'if they never ran that drill, this kid could be at the University of Georgia or the NFL, if they just didn't run that drill,'" said Davis.

Attorney Pete Sartes believes the college and the coach were negligent.

"Placing Corey and his teammates in that kind of jeopardy is far beyond what the game of football is about," he offered.

Sartes had a lawsuit ready to go against the Georgia Military College and the state of Georgia, because it's a state school.

He could show the x-rays of Corey's terrible injury and the tape of the drill that broke his neck, but he needed something else.

He needed an expert witness - a college or pro coach - one who would testify that the drill was dangerous, and shouldn't have been used on the practice field.

Sartes says he spoke with many college coaches who told him the drill was dangerous.

"And the subsequent question was 'will you testify to that?' and the answer was, across the board, 'no,'" recalled Sartes.

Corey's high school coach says he's disappointed, but not surprised. He says big time coaching is a fraternity.

"It would be like going into the police force and asking about the bad cop. Nobody's gonna talk about it," said Davis.

Coach Bert Williams at Georgia Miltary College says the 'stray bull' drill teaches balance when a player comes off a hit.

He says he uses a variation of the drill today, but wouldn't comment how he's changed the drill, or why.

Williams says he hates what happened to Corey, but he says the fact that no college or pro coach has come forward is evidence that the drill is legitimate.

Corey has received around $400,000s from an insurance policy carried by the college on all its players, but he says the insurance money will run out in a few years.

"They took all. They took everything from me and I can't do nothing that I want to do, you know," said Burrowes.

Corey says he'd like to go to college. An education could help him become more independent, but the lawsuit that would force the college to pay stays on the shelf without a college coach to testify.

"And now I see if you get hurt, hit the road, whatever, deal with it the best way you can, it ain't right," said Burrowes.

What happened to Corey shows the inherent risk - the possible disaster - that can occur at any level of the game.

"So if the child feels as if something is happening on that field that has no football purpose and is dangerous, he needs to have the guts to stand up and say I'm not going to do that," said Sartes.

Davis says coaches must be vigilant.

"Because we know in a violent sport like we play it's just one act that can cause like this to happen and Corey's proof of that," he said.

Life changed in a split second, and Corey Burrowes can only sit and imagine how his dreams might have come true.