Va. Tech lineman loses part of pinky, keeps playing

BLACKSBURG

The job of an offensive lineman is typically thankless. It's the most anonymous position in football. There aren't many 300-pound men featured in shoe advertisements or on magazine covers.

But Virginia Tech lineman Greg Nosal, a Kellam High grad, is suddenly in the spotlight. Sports Illustrated would like an interview.

ESPN's Erin Andrews is working on a piece about him.

"I guess it's a big deal if your pinky got ripped off," Nosal said.

It's an even bigger deal when you bandage up the finger, tell the team doctor to stick the severed chunk of flesh on ice, and continue playing a football game. When Nosal did that Saturday during the Hokies' win over Central Michigan, he wrote himself into Virginia Tech lore.

"It was incredible," athletic trainer Mike Goforth said. "I tell people we do some crazy things and that guys we work on are pretty tough, but that one might take the cake."

Nosal was at the center of an odd scene on the field at Lane Stadium during halftime. A group of trainers wandered around staring at the ground, squinting and searching for something.

Back in the locker room, Nosal lay on a table having his left hand examined. He had jammed it into another player's face mask during Virginia Tech's final possession of the second quarter and thought he suffered a bad cut.

Upon looking at his bloody pinky finger, the team's medical staff became somewhat frantic as they asked Nosal where, exactly, his injury had occurred on the field. He didn't understand why that really mattered, but they kept asking.

"Why do they want to know?" he wondered. "Did my finger fall off?"

Well, not all of it. But roughly a half-inch chunk of skin and tissue became separated from Nosal's finger. He didn't know that immediately because he was wearing a glove - inside of which the nub was eventually discovered.

Nosal stayed in for the final three plays before halftime. He squeezed his hand, which was throbbing, between the action. Then, when he removed his blood-soaked glove on the sideline, the gruesome nature of his injury became more apparent.

To everyone but Nosal, it seems.

"Will you guys tape this up?" he asked Goforth, who, upon seeing exposed bone, rushed Nosal into the locker room.

"Obviously, the wound was pretty alarming," Goforth said.

Equally disconcerting was the brief period during which the detached digit was missing. Nosal helped locate it by using the No. 1 rule of thumb for lost items: Look in the last place you remember having it.

"So they ended up dumping it out" of his glove, Nosal said. At that point, the team's surgeon inspected the little lump of flesh and determined it could be reattached. The only remaining question was when.

"He wanted to play," Goforth said, pointing out that Nosal never screamed in pain.

He was calm, even laughed. Then he asked whether the fingertip could be sewn back on after the game. The surgeon, while surprised at the request, said it could be done.

"I didn't think twice about going back in," Nosal said. "It happens. It's football."

So the medical staff cleaned up his finger, wrapped it in gauze and strapped it to his left ring finger for support, covering them both in hard casting material. With that and a shot of Novocain for the pain, off Nosal went.

He played the entire third quarter, after which the Hokies held a comfortable 31-7 lead, and Goforth told Nosal it was time to get stitched back together. The reattachment surgery was a success, and he's expected to have a normal finger in a few months. Until then, he'll play with his hand protected by padding.

"That's the ultimate warrior," Tech running back Darren Evans said. "I definitely gained a lot of respect for him from that. Hopefully he's the example that the rest of (the linemen) follow."

Hopefully not literally, but given all the attention he's gotten, Nosal said he and his fellow blockers - who continue toiling in anonymity - might be willing to lop off a few more minor appendages.

Kyle Tucker, (757) 446-2374, kyle.tucker@pilotonline.com