T.J. Watson is my “godson” even though there was no religious ceremony proclaiming me as such (the joke was that I outbid our friend Maury for the right 17 years ago). Often we have kidded that somehow he got some of my DNA – he loves comic books (like me); his favorite band is The Who (ditto); and he loves movies (although his Mom and Dad share that trait). Also, T.J. and I suffer from depression.
Like me, he has been to therapy and we both take medication. But T.J. tried to commit suicide and was institutionalized. Over the course of his 17 years, I have been very proud of him, but never more so than this week. I direct you to last Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune articles and website for video: T.J. shared his issues with the world through a brief article; a graphic novel style comic; and an online interview. In the story, he talks frankly about the way he felt; his treatments; what worked and what didn’t.
Most important, while he admits that he is not “cured,” he is much improved and has hope for the future. There are tons of kids out there who are alienated and depressed. Some of them are bullied and their suicides are getting much needed press; but the issue is even bigger than that, and, as teenagers do, they internalize and think that they are the only ones who felt that way. They are wrong, and T.J. told his story and as one woman told his Mom, T.J. saved some lives with his article.
T.J. and his brother Matthew are the sons I will never have, and I love them like an uncle would. That will never change. Their parents are godparents to my youngest daughter, as the girls they will never have – a tidy reciprocal relationship. T.J. once again showed that he is one special young man. He says that I am like “his other Dad.” I am humbled and truly proud .

It’s easy to blame college athletes when they get caught taking money because the money goes for clothes, women, bling, drugs, etc. But, sometimes we rush to judgment and we may not have the whole story.
Former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor was caught selling memorabilia for money and tattoos, and brought down Coach Jim Tressell; was thrown out of school and treated in an Old Testament way (“remove the name of Moses from all buildings, statues, and monuments” – The Bible by way of the film “The Ten Commandments). But, according to an interview with Sports Illustrated, he sold his sports memorabilia to get money to help his family.
Now with the Oakland Raiders, Pryor received a five-game suspension during his final season, and he openly discussed why he made those decisions. “The reason why I did it was to pay my mother’s gas bill and some of her rent,” Pryor told the magazine. “She was four months behind, and the (landlord) was so nice because he was an Ohio State fan. He gave her the benefit of the doubt and she said, ‘My son will pay you back sometime if you just let me pay you back during my work sessions.’ She ended up losing her job, and she and my sister lived there.
”Let me remind you it was freezing cold in November, December and she’s using the oven as heat. That’s what I did as a kid. I was telling the NCAA, ‘Please, anything that you can do. I gave my mother this so my sister wouldn’t be cold, so my mother wouldn’t be cold.’ They didn’t have any sympathy for me.“
What may be the deciding factor is that he says that he has receipts to prove that the money went toward the family’s bills and not personal use. If true, this makes the case for paying the athletes even more compelling. Most of the athletes playing the money sports in colleges and universities are from poor backgrounds, often African-American, and there is all of this money that they generate and they can’t get any of it. It’s one thing to “need” the money for dates and stuff; it’s another thing entirely if it is to keep the heat on for his mother and sister.
The monolithic NCAA should have had a clause to allow athletes to prove there is an economic need and the organization can get money to them. I wonder why the booster money that reportedly funneled to the parents of Reggie Bush and Cam Newton couldn’t make their way to Pryor who was just as important to their programs and just as much a “star?”
Still, if true, this would cast a completely different picture on Terrell Pryor as a player and a man. It is easy to trash a young man’s name and reputation and hard to restore it, but in this case, let the building begin.

There is no sport I love more than football, especially the NFL. When I was growing up, I wanted to be Dick Butkus, the Hall of Fame linebacker. When I played, I reveled in hitting opposing players as hard as possible, but I never had the talent or the drive to be a college player or try to be a pro.
In those younger days, one thinks of having a child who fulfills the dream(s) that you had, which would have meant a son playing football, growing up and perhaps making the big time (and of course, thanking his mother on television – no one ever sends a shout out to Dads; why is that?) But it wasn’t a passionate dream; not something that burned in me; just kind of something that, I thought, would have been cool if it happened.
Life, of course, often makes other plans: I have two beautiful, willful, often difficult daughters which means that the NFL is not really an option. Considering the suicide death of Junior Seau this week, I’m glad that I won’t have a son offer up his body and mind to the meat-grinder that is football.
Seau, 43-years-of-age, killed himself this week with a shotgun blast to the chest. Like former Bear safety Dave Duerson, Seau did not shoot himself in the head so that his brain could be studied for damage resulting from his 20 year NFL career. How much did brain injury lead to the suicide remains to be seen; how much personal issues including being out of the spotlight and away from the team experience played in it is also subject to question (and the fact that it occurred one week after the NFL Draft, when young men joyously join NFL teams is more than ironic).
A question now has to be asked: if a method of playing football more safely to the head – either through rules, different teaching, or better equipment – cannot be developed, should serious discussion be given to the elimination of the sport? Going too far? Probably, and there is simply too much money in the sport at all levels for it to go away, but young men are bashing themselves in collisions as severe as auto accidents for our amusement. I know what some will say – they are playing on their own volition and often making millions of dollars doing it – they know what they’re getting into. But I say that the modern athlete doesn’t really know anything other than the plays on the field, the celebrity and the big money they find out about in the press. Furthermore, as all young men are – they think they’re invincible; they can worry about the rest of their lives later. Finally, the fact is that 60% of NFL players eventually file bankruptcy, so even the money isn’t permanent.
I don’t have an answer – I don’t know that anyone does. And I’m not convinced that the large number of ex-players suing the NFL over the issue of concussions will do any good either. CTE or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy which has shown up in the brains of many NFL and NHL athletes’ autopsies is a relatively recent find, and, as of now, can only be detected after death. Tests on live subjects and possible means of treating the disease are years away at best. My argument against the Player suits against the NFL is that the league somehow knew that the sport caused CTE. Without some kind of “smoking gun” I don’t know how these suits can win, and how much of this is a legitimate call for reform, and how much is just another greedy money grab?
All that all parties agree on is that something has to happen for the good of the sport and the men who play it. In the meantime, I’m glad I have girls.

Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony if one of the greatest players in baseball history ended his career fielding in practice? That looks like the case for 42-year-old Mariano Rivera, the closer with the most saves in baseball history.
He was shagging flies in the outfield before the Yankees’ game in Kansas City like he did before every game in his 18-year career when, according to witnesses, his knee buckled before he reached the center field wall. Rivera was carted off the field and an MRI showed that Rivera has not only a torn ACL, but also a torn meniscus, which would make any return more difficult.
While nothing had been publicly said, it was widely believed that Rivera would retire after this season and one last chance at a World Series Championship. Rivera and shortstop Derek Jeter are true rarities and throwbacks – star players who played for only one team their whole careers. In days of free agency and players free to move to the highest bidder, Rivera, who is head-and-shoulders statistically, the best reliever in baseball history, he and Jeter are Yankees and will always be Yankees.
There is a slight chance that Rivera could be back for the postseason, players have done it in the past, but most of those times, the players were in their 20s, not 42. And if the rehab is more that 6-8 months, will Rivera want to return?
Sport is a funny place – sometimes funny ha-ha, more often funny weird. That a Hall of Fame level career ends on an innocuous incident in a relatively uneventful evening in an early season game is funny weird; and sad in a way.
Unless you’re a Yankee hater, that is.

All too often, sportswriters (myself included) write that coaches are akin to used car salesmen: shysters who use and discard players at every level: high school coaches “sell” prospects to colleges by limiting access and other ways; college coaches bring in players then the players get money under the table, or leave college with limited or no education, especially if the player gets injured or doesn’t play pro ball. And the professional coaches and front offices sign then waive, trade or cut players when they are no longer useful.
To hear us, coaches are the sporting equivalent of CEOs. And maybe they are, but like every broad brush, you cover up an exception to the rule.
Eric LeGrand was a defensive tackle at Rutgers who never made it to the NFL until now. LeGrand injured his spinal cord on a kick return tackle against Army on October 16, 2010. The injury left him paralyzed from the neck down. At the hospital, medical personnel told him he he’d be a quadriplegic and would need a respirator for the rest of his life.
LeGrand fought the grim prognosis: he was breathing on his own after five weeks, and today he operates a wheelchair on his own, and he’s been able to stand upright with the help of a metal frame. He says his ultimate goal is to walk again. But he will never play pro football.
LeGrand’s coach, Greg Schiano remained close to the young man, helping him emotionally after the injury. Schiano is now coaching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the team announced this week that they’ve signed LeGrand to their 90-man off-season roster.
Schiano, who joined the Buccaneers this year after more than a decade with Rutgers, offered the symbolic deal to his former player by phone on Tuesday, LeGrand told reporters in a conference call.
“I said, ‘Are you serious? You want to use this on me?’” LeGrand said. “(Schiano) said, ‘It’s the least we can do.’ Honestly, it’s amazing. It really is.”.
LeGrand, who intends to graduate from Rutgers in the fall and hopes to pursue a career in football broadcasting, said the signing is only honorary and no money is involved. The team is sending him a jersey with his No. 52 – expected to arrive at his New Jersey apartment this week – and he already has posted to Facebook a picture of him with a Buccaneers helmet.
Schiano said that heading into last week’s NFL draft, he “couldn’t help but think that this should’ve been Eric’s draft class. “This small gesture is the least we could do to recognize his character, spirit, and perseverance. The way Eric lives his life epitomizes what we are looking for in Buccaneer Men,” Schiano said in a Buccaneers news release.
It is easy, believe me I know, to blast coaches for a lot of things, and many times, they deserve it and are paid very well to take the heat. But I now have to doff my cap at Greg Schiano, and I may actually root for Tampa Bay next season. Except if they play the Bears, of course.

Once the NFL had suspended Saints coach Sean Payton for the 2012 season while levying an indefinite suspension on former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, who was accused of masterminding the bounty bonus program, and the GM of the Saints for helping to cover it up; it was only a matter of time before the league got around to handing out penalties to players who paid money into the bounty kitty and tried to carry out the program by injuring players on other teams.
The league announced that Scott Fujita, Anthony Hargrove, Will Smith and Jonathan Vilma are suspended without pay for varying lengths of time. Vilma, a linebacker still with the Saints, is suspended for an entire year, and teammate Smith, a defensive end, got a four-game suspension. Fujita, a linebacker now with the Cleveland Browns, was suspended for three games while Hargrove, a defensive lineman now with the Green Bay Packers, got an eight-game suspension.
The league statement said evidence reviewed by the league “demonstrated that from 2009-11 Saints players of their own accord pledged significant amounts of their own money toward bounties, that players accepted payments for ‘cart-offs’ and ‘knockouts’ of injured opposing players, and that the payout amounts doubled and tripled for playoff games.” Vilma was a captain of the defensive unit under Williams and assisted in creating and funding the bounty program, the NFL statement said.
All four players can appeal the suspensions and would be entitled to a hearing and representation by counsel, the statement said, but in a head scratching decision, DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL Players Association, said the organization would help the players fight the suspensions.
I know that the union is paid a lot of money to defend players’ rights. But one has to ask, how much should you support people who were trying to injure other members of your union? Football is a violent sport and everyone who plays knows that they are constantly one play away from severe injury and, since there are no guaranteed contracts, one play away from having the NFL gravy train come to an end.
That is what makes the bounty scandal so heinous. When I played football, there were times that I wanted to wreak havoc on the other team, and I wanted to make them pay for lining up on the other side of the line from me, but I never wanted to hurt anyone for real. What if you’re a new teammate on the Browns or Packers and you know that two guys in your locker room were part of a program to potentially hurt them?

So, as reported for awhile by numerous sources, the NCAA is finally considering a four team playoff for BCS division football. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany has been hinting about it for weeks while putting the kibosh on rumors that the Rose Bowl officials were against any playoff.
For the first time, all the conference commissioners and other power brokers who run the sport are comfortable with the idea of deciding a championship the way it should be done – on the field. What would be the immediate benefit – the end of the BCS as it now stands.
The word in that they want to limit it to four teams. That’s fine, I think, but here comes the hard part – the implementation. How the teams are chosen; where and when the games are played; how or if the bowls are included in this, are difficult questions, and considering the fact that the NCAA has blown decisions much less important than this, I have little faith that this will work out smoothly.
One of the major shortcomings of the BCS was that the major conferences and independents got priority status when the BCS bowls were decided. There are vicious arguments now over the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament field, and they are picking 68 teams (counting the play in games). Now some people (or computer program or HAL, or something) is going to pick the four best football teams in the nation to enter the playoff? Objective? I don’t think so. And how much say with ESPN and the networks have over who get picked?
While I definitely am in favor of a playoff, I will be interested to see what plan the powers that be come up with. I know that the dirty little secret is that the players aren’t expected to attend classes, but for those “true” students who do go to class, I wonder if there will be any thought to class schedules, tests, etc., or will it just be about money?
My cynicism at the motives and designs of the people who run college sports knows no bounds.