Steve McNair Will Live On

I remember the day I bought my white Steve McNair jersey at a mall shop in Knoxville, Tennessee. I already owned the blue home jersey, and I wanted a white one.

Much to my chagrin, the Titans and McNair had parted ways. Now McNair jerseys were on clearance. Less than twenty bucks for a jersey that probably had sold for nearly a hundred bucks at one time.

So this is what it had come to: twenty dollars for a Steve McNair jersey. Twenty bucks for the jersey of the greatest Titan.

When I took it up to the counter, the guy asked me, "Are you a fan of the Titans or McNair?"

"Both," I replied coolly.

While I could never turn on the Titans, my team, for what was essentially a business move that I hated to see happen but understood, I remained a staunch McNair fan. The lighted sign I had bought of McNair in a Titans' uniform still hung on my wall, but if he had to go anywhere I was glad to see him go to the Ravens to be reunited with Derrick Mason, who had been on the receiving end of so many McNair passes in Tennessee. The Ravens quickly became my "other team" and I followed McNair there until he retired.

It wasn't hard to be a Steve McNair fan. I mean, I think the guy could have broken his throwing arm and he would still have found a way to get out onto the field to contribute. He was the toughest athlete I had ever seen. He may have shaved a couple of years off of his career because he was so damn tough. For McNair, playing hurt was just part of the game.

He played the game like it was meant to be played. McNair was the living, breathing incarnation of all the old clichés you hear about what coaches want you to do (i.e., "Give 110 percent out there!" and "Leave everything on the field!")

For McNair, those clichés were a way of life; there was no other way to play.

As a coach, I look for the qualities of players like McNair in my own players. Mental toughness. Physical toughness. Leadership. Determination. Fearlessness. Humbleness. Resilience. Intelligence. (And a ton of pure, raw athletic ability never hurts, either.)

Steve McNair had them all. And then some. I look for these same qualities in my own players because I know, from seeing the guy play countless times, that with a team full of Steve McNairs, I have a chance.

With just one Steve McNair and the leadership he provided, you could never count the Titans out, even in McNair's final years in Tennessee when the Titans were not exactly good, as they had been forced to dump many stars (including Mason) in an effort to clear cap space.

You don't find Steve McNairs just anywhere, though. In fact, they're few and far between. Not too many players like him come along in any sport. But if you can just find a little bit of Steve McNair in a young athlete, then you know there's something you can work with, a foundation on which you can build so much.

All of the facts surrounding McNair's unfortunate and tragic murder are not clear just yet. Obviously there are some things that point to the fact that McNair was not perfect. A married man was most certainly dating a twenty-year-old girl whose life is also tragically over. That much is clear.

If not perfect off the field, he certainly was pretty close on it. One can make the case that McNair was a model athlete, a competitor that any coach would love to have on a team, a leader like no other, and, as many have described him, a warrior who persevered through sometimes excruciating pain and serious injury to help his team. This picture of McNair is hard to dispute.

But no one said McNair was the perfect man. Speculation about and scrutiny of his personal life, though, is unfair; everyone has a past. We make mistakes, and we all have certain truths about ourselves that we would like to keep private. Due to this tragic situation, some details McNair probably would have wished to remain private have come out, with more likely to follow. Some will say he made some mistakes. Some will point to poor decisions he made.

And maybe they will be right, and maybe some of them will even enjoy being right. Maybe some of them should see, though, that he was a human being, as fallible as the next man or woman. Maybe some of them should examine themselves. That hurts, doesn't it? The truth does, indeed, hurt - especially when it concerns oneself. That is most likely the very reason why people enjoy looking at the flaws of others. It doesn't hurt so much, and it even makes some people feel better about themselves.

McNair wasn't perfect, not when he died and not when he played for the Titans and not even long before that. He wasn't perfect when I bought that jersey, either.

Yet, as I did the only time I got to see him play live in Nashville, I will slip on that McNair jersey and wear it to the Titans' first preseason game in Canton, Ohio this August. I will wear it proudly in honor of one of the finest athletes I have ever seen. I will wear it in tribute to one of the greatest and most inspirational on-field warriors I ever had the pleasure to watch.

In a sense, a warrior like Steve McNair can never die. He will live on every day in the hearts and minds of those who enjoyed watching him play.

Thank you, Steve.