Update: Virginia Tech commented on Shurburtt's report via its Twitter account. Contrary to what was reported by Shurburtt earlier, Brent is not in the hospital and is at his parent's home in Greenville, S.C. doing fine. Brent suffered a left ankle injury during spring ball and developed deep venous thrombosis after the April practices concluded. A decision on his football status hasn't been made.
Original Post: The family of offensive lineman Brent Benedict informed JC Shurburtt of 247Sports that Brent will likely miss the 2014 season.
Benedict suffered a knee injury this past spring and complications from the injury arose. He experienced clotting in both his heart and lungs and as of late Friday evening, he's in the hospital in Greenville, S.C.
These issues have ruled him out for the forthcoming season and could essentially end his football career. If he recovers and can play again, there's a good chance Benedict and Virginia Tech can successfully appeal for another year of eligibility with a medical hardship.
This is a terrible news for a supremely talented kid who has unfortunately dealt with major injuries throughout his career. Benedict was a blue chip recruit who originally signed with Georgia, but suffered an ACL tear as well as nerve damage his senior year of high school.
Obviously his health is his number one priority, and I wish him a fast recovery.
Brent, you made the best pancakes.
Comments
That sucks, wish the kid the best and a full recovery. Now I want to go eat pancakes.
EDIT: Comment removed by user.
This is about much more than football. This could be life threatening especially after what tragically happened to his brother. Nothing but prayers for Brent and his family.
Yeah I know. I feel horrible for him and his fam. It truly is terrible. But the competitive Hokie in me also gets pissed off at the continual injuries we experience to KEY PLAYers every damn season.
Alright, seriously I don't get what all the outrage over my comment was about. If (downvoters) bothered to read and process entire comment(s) y'all would see that I neither rejoiced, criticized nor blamed injury on Benedict. I was simply expressing my frustration and disappointment of another key player experiencing a pitfall. This isn't the first time I've experienced this reaction (see Facyson injury). I am disappointed for BOTH the program AND the athlete the same. If all 16-20 downvoters have a problem with that please follow guidelines and explain your disagreement with my comment(s). That I can take.
I think you'd be better off expressing your concern for the athlete and the program then, rather than commenting as if the team is all we should be worried about and focused on with a situation such as this.
I downvoted your initial comment, in which you conveyed zero sympathy for the player and family affected, but merely offered a negative comment equivalent to "why does this always happen to us?" It came off as highly insensitive. First, the idea that Virginia Tech is plagued by injuries more than other programs is just wrong. Second, and more to the point, the effect on the program when a player is injured pales in comparison to the effect on their life, especially in a situation like this, where a player is facing something potentially much more serious than a typical injury. Your initial comment just appeared to lack any sort of perspective on a couple of levels.
^ This.
A couple of things:
1. No one is owed an explanation for a downvote; that's not part of the community guidelines. Downvoting inappropriate content is. Your original comment was inappropriate. The second one isn't, so people should ease up.
2. The reason I downvoted? At the time the forum was started and your original comment was posted, all available evidence indicated that a fellow Hokie was lying in a hospital bed with a potentially life-threatening condition. Your reaction? A weakly-censored profane comment lamenting our depth chart. There are bigger issues in this world; most notably a young man who was believed to be in serious medical trouble. He may very well still be in trouble, and he may never be able to play football. Only time will tell.
I am thankful for the updated news that he isn't hospitalized, as I am sure we all are. Let's react to any news like this or any other with a bit more maturity and concern for the well-being of our Hokies.
The TKP community. One of these is not like the other.
post fail...
OK, I get your point. It's all about your frustrations. The next time you write a witty comment, I'll give a participation award up vote so you can feel good about yourself. I'll give you two up votes if you can add a cute gif.
Anybody else want to step forward?
find rockethokie....he's the Jesus of TKP in my experience and if he could've downvoted you a hundred times I guarantee he would. A really moral character, especially as it relates to a BLOG ABOUT SPORTS, JFC!
Just gonna drop this little tidbit from the community guidelines here:
The poster you mentioned isn't even involved in the discussion, and you're ripping on them for being "a really moral character," (cause that's totally a negative). C'mon man, if you agree with an unpopular post, voice your support for the poster and move on. No need for all the pointless negativity.
He is involved if he's one of the downvoters. But I digress. As I said, comment was removed (somehow still receiving downvotes). At any rate, folks should let it go.
This comment is fair enough. I never agreed with an unpopular post though. I DISAGREED with the level of criticism the guy got for expressing frustration about an injury but not saying something about his concern for the athlete first.
Look, there are layers of concern that any fan feels when something like this happens to a player.....and knight got treated like a baby-smuggler for what? expressing the concerns about how the team will be affected? This isn't a fucking prayer group, it's a blog about sports. Ridiculous. TOOLS.
You're right, I shouldnt have brought rocket into the discussion but will guarantee that he downvoted it.
lol I'm glad I'm always on your mind, but I didn't downvote anything until I came across your posts about me. Then I felt obligated to give you what you want. But no, I didn't downvote the original comment, even though I saw it before it was edited.
Dude, I feel your pain. Have a leg. Some of these jokesters get their panties in a bunch WAY too easily. Mini trolls. I love TKP despite the little fuckers.
"self-righteous bloggers....they'll get after ya."
ANd....you got dogpiled. It's real fuckin easy to see a guy who gets a few legs removed and think -heh, yeah, I'll do that too. The opposite is true with French....that guy could come on here and post a picture of a horse taking a dump with no explanation whatsoever and he'd get 35 legs for it. Again....the "sheep factor".
I'm going to upvote every one of your posts because I think it's okay for you to vent, be angry, and not be perfectly considerate every single time you have a feeling about VT sports.
My advice? walk away for a few hours......
I even took the damn thing down. You're right about French & HOAT. If they did that I'd be one of the first to upvote it. Same if they just popped on and simply posted "Fart."
Alright this is getting further off post than I wanted it to. In short: blah, blah, blah upset that another key player is injured-blah, blah, blah feel horrible for his condition & hope he heals up well so he can get back to doing what he loves. Moving on.
I think most everyone on this site would upvote french for anything he posts... but I think it's a way of showing appreciation that he spends so much time providing really in-depth and top-notch content for this site, not necessarily "sheep" just voting because of the username. TKP without French would be very, very different.
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
Meanwhile...MOVING ON PLEASE
Ugh! You had to go and post a gif of her!? What are you trying to do, make people puke? There's ipicac for that.
again
You're not a TKP admin, therefore I don't have to. The good news is that at least this gif isn't making myself, other TKPers and cartoon canines upchucking. So for that, thx.
Serious situation-prayers for him and his family.
Crappy/potentially life-threatening complication from injuries/surgery-if anecdotal info is accurate, he will have to be on anti-coagulation for 6 months plus as he recovers, and then see.
I hate it for him/family.
Fuck.
Shit.
Piss.
Wishing him a speedy recovery, but I iterate my previous statements.
Here's hoping he makes a full recovery. That's a very serious injury and I wish him all the best so that he can enjoy a happy and healthy life- football or not.
This is truly sad news, and I had no idea about what happened to his brother.
Whatever happens, I hope he can get well and live a long healthy life.
Virginia Tech's official Twitter account provided an update:
According to Virginia Tech, these reports are somewhat false. On my phone so unable to post the tweet but he is not in the hospital.
Edit: Redundant post. What Brian said.
Thanks guys for pointing out @VT_Football's tweets. I published the original post, then went out to pick up some paint supplies and ran my wife's car through the carwash. When I got home I was pretty shocked to see that the original story was that poorly reported. Either way, it's good news that Brent's apparently doing well.
Yeah, I wasn't quite sure where the story was gonna go from here, or when/if we'd ever hear from Joe again.
Either that or Joe decided to go back to his former profession of piracy.
That news is certainly way more encouraging, but very sad his older brother died at such a young age.
Not to be Debbie Downer, but depending upon the location a DVT (deep vein thrombosis) can still be a big deal.
IF....the clot is superficial; he be ready to strap it on soon; the ankle injury would be more the concern.
IF....it is deep, then he will still be considering blood thinners to treat for some time and could impact his season.
(A lot of ifs........)
More info to come, I guess.
How long does it take those blood thinners to get going...couldn't he just start taking baby aspirin everyday?
Even if it is superficial, it can still break off and go to the lungs and be fatal as a pulmonary embolism. (courtesy of my nurse g/f who read that post).
As for blood thinners, he will be on blood thinners until the clot dissolves which can vary. With the family history, he could be on anticoagulants/antithrombotics for the rest of his life.
Sadly for his football career, it doesn't look especially good. Luckily for him, it was caught now and they can start treating it.
Gotta disagree: Superficial thrombophlebitis (clots) are not life-threatening at all and do not break off and cause pulmonary emboli. They are bothersome, but treated simply with warm compresses and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories.
Blood thinners indicated for treatment of actual DEEP vein thrombosis (clots) are divided into acute/rapid-acting thinners used in emergencies (Tpa, streptokinase, etc)-these actually do 'dissolve' the clots but have significant risk of side effects; and longer-acting agents that impair the bodies ability to form further clots while the body forms fibrin to solidify the clot and eventually scar the vessel-these agents don't dissolve the clot, nor does the body. It simply forms a scar and eventually the blood flow can resume to a lesser extent through the scarred portion of vein, or via collateral vessels that can form over time.
As a poster above asked-'why not take aspirin?'-Aspirin inhibits platelet aggregation, which is an initial step in clot formation, but once the clot is formed, aspirin will do nothing. The other blood thinners-(Coumadin, and now Xarelto and Eliquis)- act to stop fibrin formation and as such, help the scarring process and healing while reducing any further clot formation. These agents are typically taken for 6 months post-clot and then stopped, unless it is determined that there is further risk for clotting.
You are correct in that the risk is that a portion of a DEEP vein clot can break off or embolize-going into the right side of the heart to be pushed into the pulmonary circulation which acts as a giant filter and 'catches' the clot which can potentially stop gas exchange and subsequently cause inefficient oxygenation and potential death.
Now taking notes for the boards...
I always award turkey legs for medical education posts.
Thanks for the Explanation!!
First off wishing BB a quick full recovery. I'm glad the latest news is sounds less threatening.
Speaking from expirence coumadin a common blood thinner is a pain in the ass. You cant eat certain foods, you get weekly blood tests to adjust the dose and heaven forbid you get a cut it might be a trip to the ER.
Getting blood thinner shots in the stomach suck as well
Wow, I'm late to the post......was taken aback by this. Hopefully BB gets good medical advice, and things go well.....heal quickly!
Any word yet? Ive been totally out of the loop until today but am trying to catch up, I feel so bad for the guy and hope to god he's not in any life threatening situation.
this gives me sadz. I going back into hiding until better news comes.
Personally I had a DVT in my arm and a 1st rib resection, caused by Thoracic Outlet Syndrome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_rib_resection
I spent 19 days in the hospital and 6 months on blood thinners. I was out of work for 6 weeks.
This is definitely serious...
My prayers are with him and his family.