Alabama, Kalen DeBoer get incredible message in 'The Path to Two Percent' from Hunter Pinke

Alabama players are approximately one week into their first-ever preseason fall camp under new coach Kalen DeBoer.

Hunter Pinke is five years into being paralyzed from the middle of his chest down.

A former University of North Dakota team captain, Pinke suffered a catastrophic snow-skiing accident in Colorado in 2019.

He has not walked since that tragic event.

As Pinke addressed the Crimson Tide this week, his unflappable attitude stood where Pinke could not.

"I went head-first into a tree. No concussion; miracle. I went head-first into a tree, did not break my neck," Pinke told the entire Alabama team and coaching staff.

"But what I did was I shattered the middle of my back. Everybody take your right thumb and put it right in the middle of your chest. Feel your chest-plate right there. 

"That's my line. My spinal cord injury is at T-6-7, meaning I have no feeling and no function below that line."

At the time, Pinke expected not only to make a full recovery but to soon be back out on the football field for spring practice at North Dakota.

"Doc walks into the operating room [and says], 'Hunter, we got good news and bad news. Which one you want first?'," he recalled. 

"Well, Doc, give me the good news first. Give me the good news, because I know what it's going to be. Because you're going to tell me this is a stinger, two weeks from now I'm out of here and I'm good for spring ball. Right?

"[He said] 'Well, the good news is you still got a life. You're going to graduate college. You can have a family.'

"(I said), 'Doc, tell me when I'm walking out of here, man.' (He said) 'You've got a two-percent chance to get some feeling back in your legs.'

"I said, 'So, you're saying there's a chance?' Shout-out Jim Carrey (from the 'Dumb and Dumber' movie) for the ones in the back. You're telling me I got a two-percent chance? Bet. I thought you were going to come in here and tell me I got no chance at all.

"I don't know if I'm going to actually ever get to two percent; I don't know if I'm ever going to get to actually stand up and walk out of this chair. But at least I know where I'm going."

Pinke then brought home his message to the Tide: No one yet knows if Alabama can win the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff for the upcoming 2024 season, but Pinke said they've started the journey.

"I don't actually know, for fact, that y'all are going to win a national championship this year, but the direction has been set," said Pinke, a North Dakota native who this spring earned a graduate-degree from the University of Arizona. "Thats' where we're going, right? It's to be a champion every single day. The direction's been set, man. And along that path, along the journey, that's where we grow. That's where life happens.

"I don't know if I'm ever going to get out of this chair and walk again, but I know on the path to two percent, it's going to be a good journey."