Scott Thompson took one look at his Citadel football teammate Marc Buoniconti on the field during warmups before their 1985 game against East Tennessee State and could feel a sense of dread.
Buoniconti, a 19-year-old linebacker and son of Miami Dolphins Hall of Famer Nick Buoniconti, had been injured in the previous week’s game.
Thompson says team doctors and trainers “taped together neck rolls and put a strap on his face mask and tied it to his shoulder pads to try to stabilize his neck. Today, that would never happen, but you’re talking about a school that has never really had an athletic budget. We were wearing retread shoes and everything else.
“They put this brace on Marc’s neck and tied it down just before the game,” Thompson, a star defensive lineman, continued. “I was standing next to him and said, ‘Marc, you can’t play like that. You’re gonna break your f—ing neck.’”
It’s third-and-1 for East Tennessee State on the seventh play of the game on Oct. 26, 1985, at Memorial Center, a domed stadium in Johnson City, Tenn. Then and there, the lives of Buoniconti and running back Herman Jacobs intersected in a catastrophic collision that would inflict damage to each in different ways before turning into a deep and lasting friendship.
“On first-and-10, I got reached on a block and Herman ran for 9 yards,” Buoniconti told The Post recently during a joint interview with Jacobs. “Second-and-1, they ran the same play, no gain. Now, third down, they pitched the ball to Herman going to his right. I’m scraping left. The [blocker] tried to cut me. I got off the block and I’m running. I’m on my horse. I’m running as fast as I can.
“Our linebacker [Joel Thompson, no relation to Scott] dove and got his legs and literally Herman’s flying in the air, cartwheeling forward toward me. I dove as he dove. I think I hit his upper butt area, which was like iron. And, ‘Bam!’ It was, ‘Bam!’
“And that was it. I remember falling to the turf. It was like a buzz. I didn’t feel any pain. I knew it. I said [to myself], ‘You’re paralyzed.’”
Consider the steps Buoniconti and Jacobs took to get to that moment.
Nick Buoniconti was a star linebacker for the 1972 Miami Dolphins, who at 17-0 remain the only NFL team to finish a season and playoffs undefeated. After his playing days, he co-hosted HBO’s “Inside the NFL” with Len Dawson and became an even more iconic figure for football fans.
“I knew growing up that my father was different. People kind of treated him differently — asking him for autographs and going out of their way to meet him,” Buoniconti said. “And as I got older, I recognized his career, his greatness, the Dolphins, the undefeated season. My brother [Nick Jr.] and I also excelled in sports — baseball, basketball, and obviously in football. People were watching my father and obviously they were intrigued about my brother and I following in his footsteps.”
By the time he got to high school in Miami, Marc’s future was starting to go off the rails due to partying. One particular lowlight saw Marc and two friends streak through the halls of Lourdes Academy, an all-girls school, wearing only sneakers and ski masks.
“The fact that I was able to graduate high school and get into college was a minor miracle,” Buoniconti said. “My parents were quite pleased and proud that I was able to earn a scholarship to the Citadel. I think they realized it was going to help me discipline-wise.
“It did and it didn’t. They tried, but that wild streak that I had growing up continued there and I bent every rule that I could and I fractured a few.”
When Herman Jacobs was 5-years-old, he watched his father get shot dead by a boyfriend of an older sister in the Riverview Terrace projects in Tampa, Fla.
“I went through a rough time, you know, being 5 and not really knowing and understanding what’s going on,” Jacobs said. “I did my share of breaking the rules and, you know, breaking in people’s houses [at ages 7 and 8]. There were times I was brought home by police officers because I’d done things wrong. I didn’t understand. You know, kids my age had both parents and I only had one. So I just acted out what I felt.”
A horrific accident on the football field in ninth grade also helped to shape Jacobs as a person. Opposing quarterback Henry Mull dropped back to pass.
“I went in on a blitz untouched and hit him as soon as he turned around,” Jacobs recalled. “It was a good, legal hit. It was just my face mask right in the middle of his chest, under the chin.
“And before I knew it, I turned around and he wasn’t getting up. They called [off] the game and I heard from the other sideline that he was possibly paralyzed.”
(According to a 2009 Sports Illustrated article, Mull regained feeling after two days, walked out of the hospital four months later after spinal fusion surgery, and later was a high school baseball teammate of Dwight Gooden.)
Marc Buoniconti stopped Herman Jacobs for no gain and history records that the Citadel won the game 28-21. But at this moment Buoniconti is lying on the turf, motionless.
“An ambulance comes onto the field,” Scott Thompson remembers. “ I was 2, 3 yards away when Marc had the collision. He rolled to his left. His legs went limp. He immediately turned gray. People ran out on the field. They did the extraction twist thing to crank his mouth open to pull his tongue out.”
Buoniconti was conscious as medics packed ice around his neck, which was put in a brace, according to media reports.
“I repeated to myself, ‘Don’t freak out. Don’t freak out.’ Because I felt myself gasping for air on every breath,” Buoniconti said. “Apparently it took like 20, 30 minutes for them to stabilize me and to get me on that ambulance. I was whispering, ‘I can’t breathe.’ I had no air. I finally get to the hospital. I remember them wheeling me [in] and the doctor saying, ‘We’ve been expecting you.’ ”
Emergency room doctors intubated Buoniconti, which made him vomit.
“And I remember then, kind of using my peripheral vision to look on the side and I can see X-rays, scans, all kinds of things on the wall,” he said. “And that’s where they said, ‘You dislocated your neck. You’re a quadriplegic and you’ll be paralyzed for the rest of your life.’ ”
The official diagnosis was a dislocation of the C-3, 4 vertebrae and a severe spinal cord injury. Later that night, Nick and Marc’s mother, Terry, arrived at the hospital after rushing to Tennessee from Nick Jr.’s game for Duke at Maryland.
“It was a terrible moment, but a moment which captured the true love of a father and a son, where he was able to summon enough courage to promise that he would do everything in his power to help me,” Marc remembers. “Little did we know what that promise would turn into.”
Before the end of 1985, Nick and Dr. Barth A. Green helped to found the Miami Project/Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis, a charity crusade that has become Marc’s life work.
Meanwhile, Herman Jacobs may have been the lucky one, but he suffered in other, very profound ways.
He would never play football again with the same zeal. He turned down an invitation to the NFL scouting combine and quit semi-pro ball because he no longer could stomach the contact.
In 1986, he invited his twin brother Herbert to move in with him in Johnson City. Herbert was shot and killed in a drug-related incident on the night he was supposed to leave Tampa.
According to a 2015 Associated Press profile, Herman left East Tennessee State before finishing his degree, had a failed marriage, and was working dead-end jobs at the local parks and rec and fast-food restaurants. It was the beginning of a 20-year, mind-numbing funk caused by Jacobs blaming himself for Buoniconti’s injury.
“I blamed myself for years and held on to the guilt for years,” Jacobs says now. “I felt like, ‘What could I have done differently, for that not to happen?’ ”
Marc Buoniconti sued Citadel and its trainer and team doctor in 1988. Lawyers on both sides harshly placed the blame on the other. Jacobs and Scott Thompson testified on his behalf, as did his father’s friend, NFL legend Dick Butkus. The parties reached a settlement, but Buoniconti and the school would remain estranged for more than two decades.
In 2006, a day before his 40th birthday, the sides had a reconciliation and Buoniconti’s Citadel No. 59 was retired in a halftime ceremony. Around that time, Buoniconti acted on an urge to reach out to Jacobs.
“We searched for him, and he was living across the street from the stadium in Johnson City,” Buoniconti said.
Joel Thompson, the Citadel player who made the first hit on the fateful play, set up a call between Jacobs and Buoniconti. Jacobs says he waited a few days, worried he was going to get cursed out.
“Absolutely. I was waiting for him to start yelling,” he said. “But it’s not what happened. I did ask him, ‘Are you mad at me? Is your dad mad at me?’ I really felt like they hated my guts. But after I started talking with Marc and he assured me that it wasn’t my fault. I still kind of held the guilt, but I felt better talking to him.”
Said Buoniconti: “We started this friendship where I told him, ‘Look, if you want to be in my life and you want to be a part of this movement, you have got to understand that God has a plan and brought us together for a reason. And all of that past and all the negativity, let it drip away.’ ”
Jacobs said his healing started when he joined Buoniconti at a Citadel reunion in October 2007. There, Buoniconti asked Jacobs, “What are your dreams?” It was a question Jacobs never had been asked. He told Buoniconti he wanted to be a chef, an ode to his favorite times growing up with his mother and grandmother.
Not long after, Jacobs visited Buoniconti in Miami during a work vacation, and learned he’d been set up to enroll at Johnson and Wales in North Miami, a university known for its culinary program. So Jacobs drove to Florida, started school and moved in with Buoniconti. When one of Buoniconti’s aides got ill, Jacobs started to assist with his daily care.
“I was able to help Marc in and out of the bed and give him his medication. I mean, I felt great,” Jacobs said. “I was like, ‘Wow, now I can actually say I’m doing something.’ I would do anything for him. That’s my brother. I love Marc to death.”
Jacobs, 61, today serves as the kitchen supervisor for the renowned Columbia Restaurant in Tampa’s Ybor City neighborhood.
“I have to know everything that goes on in the kitchen, every position, what everyone does,” he said. “I’m the one the chef comes to and asks why [something isn’t] ready. You know, I have to answer that question. I don’t like answering that question.”
Buoniconti is the president of the Miami Project/Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis, where he’s continuing the work his father started.
“My father was my hero,” Marc said of Nick, who died in 2019 at age 78. “He was a legend in so many ways. He sacrificed a lot of his life to help his son and to help billions of others.”
Over 40 years, the endeavor has raised more than $550 million for research, according to the charity. It has funded and conducted studies that range from first-responder treatment of victims to understanding the cellular biology which could unlock cures not only for paralysis but also Parkinson’s disease, MS, ALS and Alzheimer’s disease, Buoniconti said.
On Monday, his 59th birthday, Buoniconti will be on hand at the New York Hilton Midtown for the 40th Annual Great Sports Legends Dinner. The New York Post is a co-sponsor of the event, which will be hosted by Gloria Estefan and Bob Costas. Honorees include Albert Pujols, Dominique Wilkins, Warren Moon, Dwight Howard and Thurman Thomas. Tickets are available at thebuonicontifund.com/gsld40 or by calling 305-243-4656. Tickets are available at thebuonicontifund.com/gsld40 or by calling 305-243-4656.
Scott Thompson, the treasurer of the Miami Project/Buoniconti Fund, will be in attendance. So, too, will Herman Jacobs, most likely at Marc Buoniconti’s side.
“I love him like a brother and it means the world to me that he’s in my life,” Buoniconti said. “Crazy forces brought us together and we’ve both bettered our lives by being together.”
