Oakley took a similar approach toward practices. In one scrimmage, he dove for a ball that was headed out of bounds, but knocked it into the crotch of assistant Jeff Nix by accident, leaving Nix in so much pain that he made arrangements to see a urologist. The ordeal was a blessing in disguise: during the visit, the doctor found, and removed, an unrelated growth Nix hadn’t been aware of. “It’s always made me grateful that Oak hustled the way he did,” Nix says. “He may have saved my life.”
