Joseph Polk (born August 31, 1978) is a former

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

defensive back In gridiron football, defensive backs (DBs), also called the secondary, are the players on the defensive side of the ball who play farthest back from the line of scrimmage. They are distinguished from the other two sets of defensive players, the ...

. In his rookie season in

af2 The AF2 (often styled as af2, and short for arenafootball2) was the Arena Football League's developmental league; it was founded in 1999 and played its first season in 2000. Like its parent AFL, the AF2 played using the same arena football ru ...

with the

Tulsa Talons Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with ...

, Polk tripped over a fallen receiver and slammed headfirst into the padded wall that lines the field. The impact broke his C-6 vertebra, leaving him paralyzed, and unable to move his legs and temporarily without feeling in his hands. He was told that he would not be able to walk again, but he was able to get himself into a healthy enough condition to be able to play football again.Polk Playing Football After Medical Miracle
/ref> Polk went on to spend 8 years as a player in the

Arena Football League The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in ...

. He won the 2001 Most Inspirational Player of the Year after playing his rookie season. He has also won 2

American Indoor Football Association American Indoor Football (AIF) was a professional indoor football league, one of the several regional professional indoor football leagues in North America. The AIFL began as a regional league with six franchises on the East Coast of the United ...

championships playing for both the

Canton Legends The Canton Legends was a professional indoor football team based out of Canton, Ohio. They were a charter member of the American Indoor Football Association, which played their first season under the name Atlantic Indoor Football League, and th ...

and the

Reading Express The Reading Express were a professional indoor football team based in Reading, Pennsylvania. They were most recently a member of the United Conference of the Indoor Football League (IFL). The Express began play in 2006, as an expansion team of ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Polk, JoJo 1978 births Living people American football defensive backs Northeastern State RiverHawks football players Tulsa Talons players Grand Rapids Rampage players Buffalo Destroyers players Columbus Destroyers players Orlando Predators players Georgia Force players Canton Cougars players Players of American football from Oakland, California