Remember McNair for the Positive

Greg Matzek Posted: July 10, 2009

Day by day, hour by hour we’re learning knew aspects of Steve McNair’s life that render it more complex than we thought. The initial reaction when we learned of McNair’s murder was not only shock, but one of reflection on a football warrior – tough as nails – who lead his team with dignity and class right to the Super Bowl.

But as each day passes following this tragic occurrence, police diligence is allowing us a glimpse of the other side of McNair, one that leaves fans wondering just how much they really knew about the guy. It pains me to read the hourly stories that are damaging of McNair’s character – almost to the point where I don’t want to believe them to be true. Those are my feelings as a Packer fan who appreciated McNair as a football player and humanitarian…I can’t imagine what the people of Nashville must be feeling.

Behind every wonderful athlete lurks a very fallible human condition. And no matter how many football Sundays we spend with athletes, no matter how many wondrous tasks we see them performing, sports are only a brief snapshot of their life.

In most cases, we never have a complete sense of who an athlete really is. And in McNair's case, that has been made crystal clear. No one ever would have predicted that McNair (who was married and a father of four children), considered one of the classiest men in sports, would die so violently at the hands of a 2o year old woman he had been dating on the side. The fact is, athletes don’t live in TV sets or in their uniforms. They live in the real world – just like you and me – they stub their toes (both literally and figuratively) and make mistakes.

And that's why McNair's death hurts. Some of us just can't fathom how he could live an imperfect personal life because he won over football fans by playing the game with such integrity and invincibility. The former co-MVP charged up and down the field with little regard for his body, and from that we likened McNair to a superhero.

Even off the field, McNair was considered a champion. He was known for his extensive charitable work in Nashville, coming to the aid of Hurricane Katrina victims, and for always being there for those who needed him. In a statement, Vince Young said McNair was "like a father," which is why Young affectionately referred to McNair as "Pops."

To me, it's a disservice to McNair's legacy if he's remembered solely as a married man having an affair with a woman almost 20 years younger. He has done too much and meant too much. A flaw doesn't define any one person, and this one shouldn't eliminate all the good works McNair has done or what his storied NFL career meant. Sure, he may not be exactly what we thought he was, but he was a pioneer who defeated the nay-sayers with each and every game he played.

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Remember McNair for the Positive