Cam McCormick

Cameron McCormick (born April 2, 1998) is an American football tight end for the Miami Hurricanes.

After suffering multiple season-ending injuries requiring surgeries and living through the COVID-19 pandemic, McCormick was granted his ninth year of NCAA eligibility extending through the 2024 NCAA Division I FBS football season in 2022.

He is thought to be the first football player to have been granted such eligibility.

Cam McCormick was born to father Corey and mother Debra McCormick in Mesa, Arizona on April 2, 1998.

His parents met in Arizona, and Corey had been a college baseball player at Arizona State University.

Two years after McCormick's birth, his parents were divorced.

Debra suffered a bout of melanoma—diagnosed at one point as stage 4—when McCormick was five years old.

McCormick and his mother remained in the Phoenix metropolitan area until shortly before McCormick began the second grade in 2006 when his mother moved with him to Pennsylvania.

McCormick and his mother returned to the Western United States in 2012, settling down in Bend, Oregon.

McCormick attended Bend's Summit High School beginning in 2012.

He played on the high school's football team throughout his time in high school, though he suffered an ACL tear during September of his senior year and underwent knee surgery on September 15 of that year.

McCormick was all but sidelined for the rest of the season; his team went on an Oregon 5A state championship run, and McCormick took the field only while the team was in victory formation.

McCormick was a three-star recruit, and The Oregonian listed him as the #2 football prospect in the state of Oregon upon the completion of the 2015 Oregon high school football season.

Prior to his enrollment, McCormick committed to Oregon in February 2015.

McCormick matriculated at the University of Oregon in the spring of 2016, leaving high school early to enroll in college.

Following his matriculation at the University of Oregon in the spring of 2016, McCormick redshirted his freshman season while recovering from his knee injury.

By August 2016, McCormick had been cleared to fully participate in football activities, though he was required to wear a knee brace.

In September 2016, McCormick told The Oregonian that the brace may be blunting his speed, owing to the brace's impact on his natural running motion.

Following an off-season workout in January 2017, McCormick was hospitalized at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at Riverbend along with two other Oregon athletes; he remained in the hospital for several days.

McCormick, along with two other athletes, exhibited high levels of creatine kinase, indicating possible rhabdomyolysis following their strenuous workout.

In response to the hospitalizations, Oregon suspended their strength-and-conditioning coach without pay, among other measures.

During the 2017 Oregon Ducks football season, McCormick started two games, though his statistics were limited to six catches for eighty-nine yards and one touchdown during a total of thirteen games played.

McCormick was named as Oregon's starting tight end at the start of their 2018 football season, though his season was cut short due to an injury suffered while playing against the Bowling Green Falcons in Oregon's season opener.

The injury, a torn deltoid ligament combined with a broken left fibula, occurred after his teammate blocked a defender into the back of McCormick's leg during the first quarter of the game.

McCormick had one reception during the 2018 season opener, losing two yards on the play.

Complications with McCormick's leg injuries and the resulting surgeries plagued him for years thereafter.

During post-injury surgery, a screw was placed into McCormick's ankle as an anchor for a surgical suture to hold a ligament in place.

The two other student-athletes who were hospitalized during this episode later sued Oregon, alleging negligence, in 2019; McCormick did not, saying that he wished to put the situation behind him.

McCormick had initially appeared to recovered from his surgery well; in April 2019, The Oregonian described his injuries as "fully healed" and described McCormick as "fully recovered" prior to Oregon's spring football game on April 20.

But less than one month after the spring football game, new swelling and pain arose in McCormick's left ankle.

The screw had failed, and had caused another fracture.

Doctors, however, had initially misidentified the injury as being a stress fracture arising from overuse, and recommended that McCormick merely rest in order for his ankle to heal.

Rest was ineffective at resolving McCormick's pain in the long run; sharp pain resumed after McCormick worked out, and the true cause of the pain—the malfunctioning of the anchor—was not discovered by doctors until shortly before the third game of the 2019 Oregon Ducks football season.

McCormick tried to play for part of that third game, hoping to delay surgery until after the football season, but he could not bear the pain—a second left ankle surgery, to replace the anchor, was performed, and his season once again came to an early end.

By the start of training camp before the pandemic-shortened 2020 Oregon Ducks football season, McCormick was undertaking limited practice reps, and doctors suspected that he was suffering some sort of tendinitis that was causing him ankle pain.

But his injury was not mere tendinitis; he had suffered a posterior tibial tendon rupture caused by two screws that had been inserted during a prior ankle surgery.

His pain worsened with time, and he underwent a third surgery on his left ankle, this time performed by the then-team physician of the Green Bay Packers on December 23, 2020.

During the 2.5-hour ankle reconstruction surgery, the two ligament-rupturing screws were removed, a tendon transfer was performed, and additional actions were taken to stabilize McCormick's deltoid tendon and left foot more generally.

McCormick did not participate in spring football during his recovery in 2021, though he was cleared to return to practice in July of that year.

He participated in the 2021 Oregon Ducks football season opener against the Fresno State Bulldogs, seeing action on special teams.