Brandon Guillory laid
motionless on the turf of McMahon Stadium in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, for
nearly 15 minutes as team doctors, teammates and coaches looked on.
The former ULM all-conference
defensive end had just suffered a helmet-to-chin hit from Calgary Stampeders
lineman Bobby Singh in the first preseason game of the 2007 Canadian Football
League season.
“After he hit me, I saw light
and then I saw sky,” Guillory said. “I was lying on my back and I couldn't
move. I was asking myself ?Why can't I move?' and just thinking ?Whoa, what is
going on?'
“Right then and there I just
kept thinking, ?How can I live the rest of my life? How can I provide for
myself? What else can I do? What else am I good at doing?'
“I am the type of person that
doesn't have the past flash before my eyes, but the future. So I had to think
about Plan B and that was to come back and finish school.”
Guillory will accomplish Plan
B on Saturday afternoon when he becomes the first member of his family to
graduate from a four-year university. The New Orleans, La., native will be one
of over 600 ULM students honored in the annual spring commencement ceremony.
“This is a really
big deal for me and my family,” Guillory said. “All my family is coming in town
? aunts, uncles, everyone. They are
coming in from New Orleans, Virginia, Georgia and Texas. I didn't know that it
was going to be this big of a deal, but Saturday is going to be a very special
day for everyone.”
“Brandon is a living testament
about what hard work can do both on the field and off,” ULM head coach Charlie
Weatherbie said. “He was a non-qualifier coming out of high school and had to
sit out a year. Brandon passed 24 hours in the classroom during that time and
has gone on to be a guy that we want our players to be around and use his example.
He is a great young man that has his heart in the right place.”
His injury revealed a
preexisting condition ? an abnormal spinal cord ? that would require surgery if
Guillory was to ever step foot on the playing field again. Following four
months of thought and consultation with one of the top spinal cord surgeons in
the world, Guillory decided to go ahead with the procedure after being told he
would most likely have to have it done later in life.
Two days after his surgery in
Edmonton, Guillory was back in the town he loves, at the school he loves,
watching the game he loves. He was on the sidelines at Malone Stadium to watch
ULM defeat Grambling State in front of a Malone Stadium record crowd of 30,101
fans.
“It was crazy,” Guillory said.
“The day after the surgery I left the hospital with no neck brace and no pain
medicine and then the next day I got on a plane to fly to Monroe. I was on the sideline with this
big bandage on my neck, but there was no way that I was missing that game. When
I played at ULM we always did 7-on-7 games with the guys from Grambling and
always joked about playing each other for real.”
A story that appeared in The
Edmonton Journal in Sept. 2007 said that Guillory would probably never play
football again.
In that same story, Guillory
was quoted as saying, "Never count me out, I'll be back. I love this game.
My passion for the game is too big. I will be back."
Guillory was right. He was
back on the field the next season for the Eskimos and ironically enough the
first game he played was against Calgary in the first preseason game of the
season.
“Where my career ended, it
started again,” Guillory said. “It was not really emotional stepping back on
the field because I always knew that I would be back out there. I just have a
passion for the game that is not measurable. When I stepped back on the field I
was just ready to play ball. I got a sack within the first few plays of the
game and then everything was just back to normal.”
“He has a strong faith and
believes in himself,” Weatherbie said. “Brandon is a type of guy who never says
never and never quits. He is a guy that loves to wake up every day and go to
work.”
The 6-foot-4, 250-pounder left
ULM as the school's all-time leader in tackles for loss ? a record he still
holds today with 41.5 ? and as the team leader in sacks in 2004 and 2005.
Guillory was signed as a free agent by the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs in 2006
with some unfinished business in the classroom.
“To a collegiate athlete
coming out of school with a professional contract the money at the time
seems like it is a lot, but in the end it really is not that much,” Guillory said.
“I was committed to come back and finish my education whether I signed a
million-dollar contract or got cut.”
Nearly four years removed from
his final snap at ULM, Guillory still proudly sports his 2005 Sun Belt
Conference championship ring and has strong words for the University that
embraced the young man from Abramson High School.
“I really love this school,”
Guillory said. “I am very passionate about what is taking place here. My family
moved here after the hurricanes and I still live here in the offseason. I love
this place, I love this city and I definitely love this school.”
Guillory, who will play for
the Hamilton Tiger-Cats this season, will graduate with a degree in general
studies in a ceremony at 2 p.m. on Saturday in ULM's Fant-Ewing Coliseum.
