Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

A gentle tackle from the heart

By ERNEST HOOPER
Published September 20, 2006

Bucs defensive tackle Anthony "Booger" McFarland is a 6-foot, 300-pound world-class athlete who has played eight years in the National Football League.

He practices three times a week, collides with men who are even larger than he is on the field every week and works in the offseason to stay in the shape.

And he had high cholesterol.

"You think you're a great athlete, you run and do different things all the time, but I was surprised," McFarland said Tuesday. "As much running in the heat as we do, my cholesterol was high."

McFarland made the discovery after his 50-year-old mother, Nancey McFarland, died of a heart attack in August 2005. Doctors told him it was coronary heart disease, and the death sent him on a mission to learn as much as he could about heart problems and his own health.

Now McFarland is eager to teach others what he has learned. He contacted the American Heart Association to create Heart of Sacks, in which he will give the nonprofit $1,000 for every sack and $50 for every tackle he records this season.

The local association had even bigger ideas. In January, it launched Go Red For Women to band women together against heart disease, the No. 1 killer of women over age 25. Both McFarland and association officials agreed he would be an apt spokesman for the effort.

So on most Tuesdays this fall, McFarland will do what he can to raise awareness of a disease that kills nearly half a million women a year, or about one per minute.

"People ask, 'What did you do today? What's going on? How's the weather? You bought a new car?' But not, 'How's your health?' " McFarland explained. "We need to get that in the conversation rotation. That's how I would describe awareness, getting it in the front of your mind."

The association's campaign is geared toward getting women to take their health more seriously and understand the risk factors associated with high blood pressure, smoking, high cholesterol, physical inactivity, obesity and diabetes.

"This is 2006, and there's no reason for us to be in the dark with as much information and knowledge and research being done not only on this subject, but pretty much everything," McFarland said. "We want to claim we know this and claim we know that ... but when it comes to some of the things we should know about, we don't until it's too late.

"We're all guilty of that."

McFarland isn't sure if greater awareness could have helped in the case of his mother, but he does believe he and his family could have been more informed about symptoms and causes.

If he succeeds in raising awareness, his hope is that folks who know someone who may have heart disease won't be shy about expressing concerns.

"Maybe they'll act like they're not listening, but they're listening because they can hate everybody else in the world, but everybody usually loves themselves," McFarland said.

"And if you love yourself, you're going to pay attention to what's going on with your body."

McFarland said he largely internalized his grief and kept his emotions inside. Yet it's clear his mother's death has affected him in a number of ways.

He says helping the heart association isn't a part of his mourning process, it's about saving someone from the pain he endured.

"Hopefully, someone else can benefit from knowing the information I've gained after the fact," McFarland said. "This is an opportunity to take issues that were inside me personally that I've learned from and now help create awareness and momentum.

"We all have women in our lives."

Who knew that this ferocious football player has such a big heart?

That's all I'm saying.

Ernest Hooper can be reached at 813 226-3406 or hooper@sptimes.com.

[Last modified September 20, 2006, 01:14:22]