During an appearance on 106.7 The Fan in Washington, D.C,, this week, former Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann revealed for the first time that he contracted Hoof and Mouth Disease in 1971 while playing in the Canadian Football League.
“First of all, you go back to 1982, I got my teeth knocked out against the Giants because I didn’t wear a mouthguard,” the quarterback told Mike Wise and Holden Kushner. “And then go all the way back to 1971, when I played for the Toronto Argonauts up in the Canadian Football League. We were playing in Montreal, and they had had a cattle show or a livestock show in the stadium the day before, and I wound up with hoof and mouth disease, a bacterial infection. I’m serious. It’s one of those things that fell through the cracks. On your show, things are revealed that are not revealed anywhere.”
“It was miserable, I’ll tell you,” Theismann said. “It was the Autostade in Montreal, and we were playing a game the next day….[Olympian] John Carlos was actually in the stands that day, because they were recruiting him to play with the Alouettes. All the animals had been in, and you get dirt in your mouth, one thing led to the next, and all of this sudden if I drank a glass of water it was like drinking a ball of fire. Finally went to the doctor, I said i don’t know what’s going on, he said you know,I don’t want to say anything, but you’ve got Hoof and Mouth Disease or Trench Mouth. I go oh God, that sounds so disgusting. He says it is, what can I tell you, it is.”
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In related news, Theismann was recently named a national spokesperson for Defense Sport Mouthguard Rinse, which is designed to clean and remove dirt and bacteria from a player’s mouthguard without the use of alcohol or sugar.