Scary Heart Breaking News: he said he would not play for WVU Mountaineers again……

But if one would be pressed to come up with one, it would have to be the play safety Aubrey Burks made as he stripped the ball out of the hands of BYU receiver Parker Kingston at the WVU 41 with 1:05 left before halftime as the Cougars were driving.

True, it was 24-0 at the time, so perhaps the win-lost aspect of the moment may not have fit the crucial definition, but can anyone say for sure (do you remember Hudson Clement’s touchdown reception from Garrett Greene in the closing minute that seemed to have Houston beat a couple of weeks back?) if it was a game changing play.

What it was, though, was a message to the Mountaineers fans who were balling it up in the stands, to Burks’ teammates and to WVU’s final opponents, beginning with this coming on Saturday’s crucial (there’s that word again) game at Oklahoma, that Burks was back at the top of his game.

You might remember back to the TCU game when Burks was laying motionless on the turf, being loaded onto a backboard after suffering what looked to be an injury that could be tragic.

“I was definitely scared, probably one of the scariest injuries I’ve had over my career playing football,” he admitted.

As if it could be anything but scary.

Picture yourself laying there, having taken a hard hit on a tackle, unable to move your extremities.

“Once I hit the ground, I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know how bad it was,” he said.

The WVU training staff rushed to his aid.

“They asked me to squeeze their hand and I couldn’t do that,” Burks said. “I didn’t have much feeling in my hand. Once I heard they were getting the stretcher, I knew I’d done something bad. It was really bad. Tears came out of my eyes once I knew I couldn’t squeeze his hand.”

They were telling him to lay still and just breathe.

“But as a competitor, you want to get back out on that field playing the sport you love,” Burks said. “But you also know this is part of the game and that something like this can happen to you at any moment.”

What had happened to cause the numbness and tingling and loss of strength?

“As I was going down my neck was turned,” he explained. “I’m not taught to tackle like that … always have your head up. I came in and my neck was kind of tilted a little bit. That’s probably what caused it.”

After arriving at the hospital in Fort Worth, he received some good news. There wasn’t any kind of spinal cord injury or anything of that sort.

“At the hospital they were saying it was a bad concussion. That was the biggest thing I heard through the night. There was nothing wrong with my nerves. Everything would come back. I just had a concussion and they said I had to take it one day at a time.”

They put Burks into a neck brace, which he says he wore for about two hours. As it turned out, Trey Lathan also suffered a serious injury to his leg that required surgery, so they both wound up there together.

You might recall the game. WVU won it on Michael Hayes’ 49-yard, fourth-quarter field goal with 9:01 to play.

“I was laying in the hospital bed, looking up, and getting updates on the game,” Burks said.

They told him about the first of two blocked field goals as the game was going on.

“I told them, please don’t tell me anything more about the game until we won or lost. About five minutes later, Zack told me ‘You got a buddy joining you.’ I said ‘Who?’ That’s when I learned what happened to Trey.”

They spent the night together in the hospital and the next morning he went to visit Latham to make sure he was OK.

“I could have gone back to Morgantown but Trey was in a lot of pain, so I told the trainers I was going to stay an extra day. I told him I wasn’t in any rush and I wanted to make sure Trey was all right,” Burks said.

A while later he was told that Sean Martin had blocked a field goal and the Mountaineers were in victory formation.

“I kind of wanted to jump up but I kind of realized where I was at and what I was going through, I just had to lay down and be happy about it,” Burks said, proving the old adage “No pain, no gain.”

And so it was that he went through the concussion protocol before returning for the BYU game.

“Once I heard I was cleared and able to get back to football, I was definitely excited about that,” he said. “It was a great feeling running out there, just knowing I want to help my team, help this defense accomplish what we are trying to accomplish.”

His injury was a serious one and he admits he was slow getting into the action. He had to make that first hit to be sure everything was all right.

“They told me I can’t go back and replay that hit again,” Burks said. “I just had to go tackle somebody so I could get the feeling of hitting again. Once I did that I was full speed.”

And then the moment came when he could make a play that mattered and delivered.

“I do practice that play,” Burks said. “In fact, earlier today Coach (Chad) Scott (the offensive coordinator) came up to me and said ‘It was about time you did that to some other offense than ours.’ That was a funny moment.”

Burks recalls vividly how the play unwound.

“I saw him running holding the ball kind of loose and Marcus Floyd was on my left side, so I knew I had help that way and I just could go in and make the tackle,” Burks explained.

Then he felt another teammate on the other side, “so I thought somebody’s got to go for this ball. Once I put my hand in there and get underneath it I just yanked it out. That was a crucial moment because if they got some points on the board before the half they’d of had some fuel coming out.”