Being a champion worth it for Compton

BLUEFIELD — Much was made of Patriots’ tight end Rob Gronkowski’s high ankle sprain in the days leading up the Super Bowl.

Would he play or not? It was the biggest story leading up to Sunday’s kickoff, other than the non-Super Bowl focus on whether Peyton Manning will be back as quarterback in Indianapolis.

Mike Compton never had a doubt Gronkowski would play. No one wants to miss the opportunity to play in a Super Bowl.

“I have used all the football remedies, took shots, especially for this game,” said Compton, who was a standout at Richlands, West Virginia University and spent 12 seasons in the NFL, winning Super Bowls in New England in 2001 and ‘03. “This is the one game where unless something is absolutely broke or tore, you are going to do whatever you can to be out there and to help your team.”

‘Normal’ folks would say ‘no’ to much of what a professional football player must endure to play the sport they love. It’s just part of a mentality that is a near requirement to survive for so long in the NFL.

“If I could have took a needle every week I would have done so. I did it in Detroit with my hand when I broke it,” Compton said. “It is not the most pleasurable thing, but professional football players are a different beast of nature.

“It is how you are developed. You have been trained your whole life since little league. You go, you hit, you run. Once you adopt that mentality, it is always going to be there.”

Unlike other sports, such as baseball, where the slightest injury seems to sideline a player, athletes are trained from their earliest days on the gridiron to play through the pain.

“It is probably why so many of us are crippled and battered because we have abused our bodies and done things to our bodies that normal people would look at you and say, ‘no way am I sticking that in me,.” Compton said. “You have broken hands and fingers and broken fibulas and played and torn this, ‘tape it and get me back out there.’”

While that type of attitude shows courage and guts, it can also take a toll on a player’s body. Compton is no different, having spent more than a decade in the trenches in the rough-and-tumble NFL.

“I have a future lifetime of arthritis looking at me for my knees and ankles, hips, my arms, I can’t remember the last time my elbows were straight,” Compton said. “Because I was playing offensive line I was getting hit every play. Quarterbacks and receivers, they may go a couple of plays without getting hit.

“If you run 70 plays in a game, I am getting hit 70 times one way or the other, while a receiver may only get hit 20 to 25 times. It takes a toll on your body, but that is the price you pay to live that life and be a football player.”

Any regrets? Certainly not from Compton, who is now the offensive line coach for the rejuvenated football program at Bluefield College.

“People ask me and without hesitation I would do it all over again and deal with the issues I am dealing with now health-wise in a split second,” Compton said. “I wouldn’t second guess not doing it one bit.

“It is worth every morning that I have to either fall out of bed or be helped out of bed or limp up the stairs, the aches and pains, it’s worth every bit.”

It was a injury — a stress fracture in his foot — suffered in the second game of his final season in New England that sidelined Compton for the year, and may have cost him a shot at a third Super Bowl ring.

“That is the end and the outs of the game, I have always been one of those guys, you play with pain,” said Compton, who was part of the ‘03 team, but was on injured reserve and didn’t play in the Super Bowl. “There is a difference between being injured and hurt, my injury was to the point where I had to have surgery to function when football was over with.

“In hindsight if I had to do it over again, if I would have took two weeks rest it would have healed. Stress fractures heal with rest, but with the constant pounding of an offensive lineman, a stress fracture eventually turns into a fracture and it has to be replaced with screws so that was unfortunate.”

Compton, who played eight seasons in Detroit and three in New England, finished his career in Jacksonville while the Patriots were winning a third Super Bowl in four years.

“I would like to think if I hadn’t got that freak injury I may have got a third one,” Compton said. “I think I would have been retained or stayed in New England for another year, but you reach a certain age and your contract is out, and it is time to grab the U-Haul.”

While Compton is no longer connected to the NFL, football is always be a part of his life. It’s a sport took Compton from small communities in Tazewell County to becoming a college All-America and two-time Super Bowl champion.

“It was a great time in my life that I feel very blessed and fortunate to have been a part of it and to be in a select group,” said Compton, who has three children, Jessica, Josh and Sarah. “From where I came from, from the things I overcame, it is a great testament to set your goals high, work hard, sacrifice, it didn’t come easy,

“It was probably more luck than skill on my part. I have never been called an athlete or a skill guy...That is part of being from this area. Work hard, blue collar, lunch box, hard hat, southwest part of Virginia.”

That is a message Compton has shared with his children, and continues to deliver the players under his tutelage at Bluefield College.

“You get what you work for. It is not going to come easy, it is not going to be given to you,” Compton said. “You have to bust your (butt) to get somewhere in this world and that is one thing I try to tell our kids here at Bluefield and my own kids.

“It doesn’t matter your name, it doesn’t mater what your parents did, it is what you do and how far you are willing to go to get it.”

Compton went the distance, and paid the many sacrifices required to reach the highest level of his profession.

Being a Super Bowl champion made it all worthwhile.

“I am very proud to say that I was lucky enough and blessed enough to be a part of a special group,” Compton said.

—Contact Brian Woodson

at bwoodson@bdtonline.com

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