Sports Injuries That Happened Outside of the Actual Game

Sports injuries that happened outside of the actual game include stories of crazed fans, fluke accidents and pure drunken idiocracy. We are all used to seeing athletes who are injured while playing their respective sports but this list is about those bizarre injuries that happen to athletes, fans, coaches and even cheerleaders when play stops and the craziness begins.

Some of the most commonly seen oddball injuries occur on the sidelines of football games when players in motion plow into others inadvertently. Numerous coaches, such as former Penn State head Joe Paterno and New Orleans Saints leader Sean Payton, have fallen victim to leg injuries because of incidents like this as did one unfortunate Dallas Cowboys cheerleader tackled by a player on Thanksgiving in 2011.

Other incidents are just weird. Later in the season in 2011 at Cowboys Stadium, journalists were injured on the field after a high school championship game when a golf cart, sans driver, barreled through a crowd. The scene was equally as puzzling back in 1995 when a fan jumped from his seat several feet into the tunnel during Monday Night Football to catch a football. One can only guess alcohol was involved in that decision-making process, as it was when one Cleveland Browns fan stormed the field during a Pittsburgh Steelers game. That ended not only with criminal charges but also a humbling tackling from the mighty James Harrison.

Even more of these strange incidents are sadly no accident but rather from intentional acts to harm others or from athletes taking out their anger in improper ways. Tennis star Monica Seles and figure skater Nancy Kerrigan are familiar with the violent side of sports as both were severely injured by intentional acts of harm. It's not just the athletes though that get the brunt of the force as fans are often victims too. Incidents involving MLB pitcher Frank Francisco, running back LeGarrette Blount and members of the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers each have come under fire in past years for their athlete-on-fan violence.

It's a given that injures are part of the game and professional athletes are paid millions of dollars a year for the risk. No one however accounts for these types of freak accidents, drunken incidents and acts of violence that can and does occur in the sporting world. Whether those incidents led to the careers of athletes ending too soon or simply a short period of recovery time, each are examples of the unpredictable outcome when passionate sports fans and athletes collide.