It’s a busy time for coaches in college football as they travel across the country this month evaluating the next crop of players they’ll sign in the coming years. While we’ve seen more than a handful of interesting stories from the coaches hitting the road, one Big Ten coordinator disclosed quite the scary moment about one trip this week.
Illinois defensive coordinator and longtime NFL veteran Hardy Nickerson was back in the familiar confines of the state of Florida on a recruiting trip recently and visiting the Jacksonville area. That’s apparently where the trouble happened as the coach tweeted on Friday afternoon that he had undergone an emergency appendectomy surgery and was recovering at nearby hospital St. Vincent’s Medical Center Riverside.
In Jacksonville recruiting & had emergency Appendectomy surgery!Thanks St. Vincent's Medical Center Riverside for taking care of me!🏥🙏🏽 pic.twitter.com/8v84zhWSgE
— Hardy Nickerson (@hardynickerson) May 11, 2017
Yikes!
It’s not every day that you hear of somebody undergoing an emergency appendectomy, much less a prominent coach on the road recruiting during the evaluation period.
Best wishes to Nickerson as he recovers from the surgery. Hopefully for the Illini, whatever recruits he was visiting will pay a little more attention to Illinois in the future knowing just what their defensive coordinator went through while evaluating them this spring.