Steve "Air" McNair

So, I am sitting at Penfield Beach waiting for the Fairfield fireworks display and my neighbor dropped this bomb shell on me.Perhaps I have lamented this before, but I really have made a 24/7 job for myself what with this celebrity death blog. I continue to wrestle with the whole "timely vs. thoughtful" issue. Instead of rushing home and banging out a hasty version of this, I decided to wait until today. And, then Allen Klein kicks it, and now I am all backlogged. Ugh.

So, regarding Air McNair. Guts. Guts. Guts. Root for the Titans or not, and I imagine most were indifferent, the guy earned his rep as a real throwback type guy who played through injuries. He was the kind of guy who was more valuable in reality to his team than in the abstract, statistical world of "fantasy" football.

Interestingly, my strongest McNair memory is a non-memory. Everyone who knows me, knows that I am a huge sports fan. As such, I don't miss Super Bowls. Well, Super Bowl XXXIV was a different matter. At the time, I worked for Modem Media NY and we were pitching the site design of what would ultimately become the travel portal, Orbitz. I'm not sure how it worked out that we ended up working on Super Bowl Sunday, but sure enough there I was on 26th street in the old Bozell building. I recall "watching" the game, one of the most exciting Super Bowls ever, via a primitive version of ESPN's GameCast. Well, McNair's Titans lost the game and Marrelli's Modem Medians lost the pitch. I was miserable, especially given the personal sacrifice.

One of the things I like to do is go to the area where folks are most affected by the loss. A little research on McNair's roots brought me to Alcorn State University Athletics site which has a nifty flash intro. I also discovered that Jefferson County, Mississippi, has the highest density of obese people in the U.S. In keeping with the back to the roots theme of this entry, there is a really nice career retrospective in photos from the Mississippi Clarion Ledger. Taking it even a bit further back, I found this very humble home page for Mt. Olive High School that serves the less than 1,000 population of M. Olive, Mississippi.