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San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman visited four different doctors to get opinions on his damaged left knee recently.

Specifically, Merriman wanted to know if he could play football with a torn PCL and a torn LCL.

Four doctors said he needed surgery. Merriman plans to suit up for the Chargers this season anyway.

"My knee still looks pretty good," he said in a press conference. "The decision was left up to me to play. If you give a football player a decision to play, you know, I'm going to play."

Elite athletes become elite through relentless hard work and a ton of passion for the sport they're playing. But when should someone step in and say no to an athlete who doesn't have it in them to say no themselves?

Merriman isn't the first example of an athlete playing through a potentially catastrophic injury. Not even close. Remember:

-Terrell Owens, who played in Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005 despite a broken leg. Doctors wouldn't clear him to play but he did anyway, catching nine balls for 122 yards in a loss.

-Oregon quarterback Dennis Dixon was the Heisman Trophy favorite in 2007 before hurting his knee against Arizona State halfway through the season. He returned two weeks later against Arizona but left again when his knee buckled. It was then made public that he tried to play with a torn ACL.

-St. Louis Cardinals superstar Albert Pujols has played the 2008 season with a "high-grade tear" in his elbow, which is liable to blow any day. It's his call to delay surgery as long as he can. The way he can hit a baseball (even with the bad wing), nobody's going to get in his way.

-Even in the Beijing Olympics, China track star Liu Xiang tried to compete in front of his home country with a serious Achilles injury. He had barely broken out of the blocks on a false start when he finally gave up, knowing it wasn't going to work.

It seems coaches don't intervene in the professional ranks, which is up for debate. College coaches have much greater authority over their players (football coaches, in particular, take advantage of that). But in the case of Dixon, Oregon's coach allowed him to play until there was another sign of trouble.

Here's the debate: At what age does it stop being the player's call and starts being someone else's? Should Chargers coach Norv Turner step in and tell Merriman no? Would the NFL Players' Association raise a fuss if Turner didn't play Merriman? We know San Diego fans would.

If Merriman wanted to play through this injury while at the University of Maryland, does that change things? What about during his high school days in the Washington, D.C. area?

It's a gray area worth visiting. Merriman wasn't the first player to ignore a doctor's orders. You can bet he won't be the last.

United States women's soccer goalkeeper Hope Solo made a beautiful save in the 72nd minute of the gold-medal game against Brazil, one of about 10 stops she made during the crucial match.

She said she would almost a year ago after not playing against Brazil in the World Cup. Now we believe her.

Solo and the rest of the defense led the United States to a 1-0 victory over Brazil and a gold medal in the Beijing Games. The lone goal was scored in extra time, when Carli Lloyd poked one through in the 96th minute.

Solo and the defense then held on.

This is a big victory for the Americans, who probably weren't favored to win. Though they played well against Brazil in friendly matches leading up to Beijing, Brazil still had bragging rights until now.

"We've seen Brazil three times since that last match, but it wasn't the same," Solo said. "On the world stage is when teams really come to play so it sat with us a little bit but we were confident in our team defending, so I knew it going to be a different game altogether."

In some ways, the Olympics have been disappointing for the Americans (Michael Phelps aside). Softball lost a gold it was a huge favorite to win. Track and field has had several setbacks. Women's gymnastics lost the team competition to China.

Women's soccer provided a little relief in the post-swimming Olympics for the USA. It took us 100-plus minutes of action to figure it out, though U.S. defender Lori Chalupny knew long before that.

"We just look in each others' eyes and we believe and we know that we can do it," Chalupny said. "It's just a feeling that we have and nobody can break that bond. It's awesome."