Air McNair, my last hero

Almost everyone who gets into sports as a young child idolizes certain players. For me it was Ken Griffey, Jr. and Barry Bonds for baseball, Latrell Sprewell for Basketball, and Steve Young and Jerry Rice for football. As you can tell for all except Ken Griffey, I was a Bay Area fan as a kid. As you get older though, you begin to lose interest in your initial heroes and find new ones for different reasons. My reasons involved a combination of injuries, retirement, women beating, and just being an overall asshole. Steve Young stayed with me the longest of all these players. When Steve Young finally hung it up though, something that literally changed my life happened. The Houston Oilers would be coming to Nashville. I was 11 or so. I remember thinking “I don’t care, I’m a 49ers fan.”

But then the Oilers finally made their way to Tennessee and the 49ers weren’t very good. My favorite college team was (and will always be) the Ohio State Buckeyes, and one of my new heroes, Eddie George, was on the team. I got an Eddie George jersey and became a fan. I watched several of the games in that 1999 season. Like only a 13 year old can, I fell in love with the Titans. I lived and died on every play. I had no idea what the heck was really going on, would scream and rant like hell when on 3rd and 12 we’d throw a 5 yard pass. Never understood why on 4th and 3 we would punt it. I thought it was stupid (little did I know I was ahead of my time, as Football Outsiders has taken the mantle of going for it more on 4th down). It worked in Madden, why not in real life? Yet somehow, we found ways to pull out games. I learned to despise the Jacksonville Jaguars, the over-confident pricks who could beat everybody but us. My younger brother became a die hard Jevon Kearse fan.

I remember watching the Music City Miracle game and the Bills taking the lead and my mother saying “Well, this game is over.” With all the optimism of a kid who hadn’t watched hundreds of football games and understanding probabilities I retorted “They COULD return the kickoff back for a Touchdown!” And then they did. And I lost my mind. I screamed and screamed and screamed. From there we went to the Superbowl. Up to this point I was not so much a fan of Air McNair. Not that I wasn’t, I was just ambivalent. I liked Eddie George. That was my guy. Then in that Superbowl against the Rams, when he lost the players and threw it down the field to Dyson, something changed in me. As I cheered I thought “That was incredible! That was our Quarterback! OUR Quarterback did that!” Then as we came up a yard short of tying it, I sat in silence, and I actually felt bad for McNair most of all. To display such incredible toughness and grit and clutch to come up a yard shy, it made me sad. In an unusual way, it made McNair especially my teams Quarterback. MY team. Why? Because he had come up a yard short. Had Dyson shaken off the tackle enough to reach the end zone, the Titans had won the coin toss, and then won the Superbowl on an overtime field goal, while he still would have been our Quarterback, EVERYBODY ELSE would want a piece too. ESPN and bandwagon fans and people who couldn’t find Nashville on a map would’ve sung the praises of McNair. But when Dyson was tackled a yard short, McNair’s heroics were doomed to be forgotten in time. Except for us. The real Titans fans. Every Titans fan is ready at the drop of a hat to recollect that drive to every detail. Trust me. Just ask.

From that point McNair became my other favorite Titan. I read up on him, devoured every story I found. In Middle School he came to one of my football games because we were playing a team with Jeff Fisher’s son on the squad. Then, when I was 16 and entering a “too cool for school” phase, my stepfather worked at a Cat’s Music store over in the Fieldstone Farms area. One night my stepdad came home and handed me a little local free newspaper that one finds at a place like Cat’s Music. On the cover was Steve McNair, and across it was “To Sam – Steve McNair”. I looked up at my stepfather in surprise and asked “how did you get this?” He then informed me that McNair had just come in to buy some CDs, and it had taken him a bit to figure out who he was, but when he did, he had just asked him for the autograph and McNair had obliged. I treasured that autograph quite a lot.

We all know about the toughness of McNair, and how he played through any and everything. He also developed into an excellent passer. Sadly, he developed into an excellent passer as we slowly descended into Salary Cap Hell. We never were able to put together a top notch team at the height of his talent and abilities. Eddie George began to decline and eventually left for the Cowboys. McNair was the last “hero” I had. With the way it ended with McNair and the Titans, I was furious with my team. How could they treat McNair like this? Our Quarterback? Our guy? He then left for the hated Ravens and my “hero worship” of him was over, ending ingloriously in a way that left me very bitter towards my very own team for the next couple of years.

There is a time in a sports fan’s life where you begin to realize that athletes aren’t the heroes. Granted, go to any message board and you see some of those people (specifically Vince Young fans) never reach it. But most rational sports fans do. Athletes are usually talented yet pampered, spoiled, and flawed human beings. Some are pretty good guys. Some are downright horrible people. Most are somewhere in the middle, with good and bad flaws. The point is, they lose mythical status in our minds, and we lose our awe of them. This happened to me at a younger age than most because of who my favorite players were. Barry Bonds cheated. Latrell Sprewell choked his coach. Those two events combined with becoming a bigger NFL fan after the Titans arrived in Nashville, a league in which the Salary Cap causes most older stars to finish their career elsewhere, and it just sort of happened before I knew it.

McNair, for me, will always have the distinction of being the last “sports hero” I had.

I don’t know the details surrounding his death yet. Who knows why he was where he was and what lead to this horrific event. It scares me to think that some very disturbing details could potentially arise from this investigation in regards to McNair. Maybe not. We’ll see. But regardless, for me and for many in Nashville, he will always be synonymous with the Titans. Who knows whether he’ll get into the Hall of Fame. Who knows whether in 25 years that drive will be remembered. But I know I will remember it, and I’ll remember it through the eyes and heart of a 13 year old boy who watched him bring his team down to the edge of victory on the greatest stage sports has to offer.

Thank you for the memories, Air McNair. They’ll stay with me forever, no matter who else might forget.

Tags: personal tribute, Soul Crushing Season enders, sports heroes, Steve McNair, Tennessee Titans, tragedy