NO way he played against Doctors orders.
Correct. Playing against doctor's orders is not going to happen. There are still protective layers beneath that—trainers, coaches, and even lawyers.
In 2002-03 an awesome Mason player named Darren Tarver was told that he could no longer play for Mason because of a heart ailment that nearly killed him during a summer pick-up game at the field house. He was evaluated by doctors and cleared to play months later, the heart ailment was resolved.
But, this was only a few years after Hank Gathers of LMU collapsed and died during a conference tournament game. Apparently, coaches knew of his heart ailment (similar to Tarver's), but were accused of discounting it and encouraging Gathers to play anyway, some saying that staff influenced Gathers to cut back on his heart medication during games to increase performance. Interestingly enough, it was the demise of Paul Westhead at LMU and what eventually sent him to coach at Mason.
With the memory of the Gathers "
scandal" still relatively fresh, there was no way that Mason would allow Tarver to play. Tarver finished his career with two seasons in DII (or DIII) without incident—no one from DI would touch him. DI schools were worried about the "Hank Gathers Effect" and couldn't stomach the risk of having a similar event occur to them and Tarver.
[Note: If someone here has a better account or memory of this story please correct me if I have misstated or misrepresented some facts.][/s]
