I just came back from being out and out of touch with the news all day to hear about what happened to Steve McNair. Needless to say I was shocked and more than a little saddened by it all. I became a fan of McNair very early in his career and in strange circumstances. For some strange reason, a game between Grambling and Alcorn State was shown on TV in 1992 – an odd occurrence, though one slightly more common when Eddie Robinson was around. The game was a thrill ride shootout and I couldn’t help but watch it despite knowing nothing about either team. On the final play of the game, the hobbling sophomore QB forAlcorn State, who was coming back from a leg injury, made a heroic dash for the end zone to score the winning TD. That was McNair, and I was hooked. The guy was incredible.

I followed his career as best I could in these early Internet days. When he was a senior in 1994 I had serious issues with both Ki-Jana Carter (Penn State sucks) and Rashaan Salaam (Colorado ripped the heart out of my beloved Wolverines that year), so I desperately hoped that Heisman voters would make history and give McNair the nod. They didn’t but they came surprisingly close – he finished third.

I was thrilled that McNair wound up in Houston when he was drafted. I was never a diehard Houston fan, but as a Canadian I was a very big Warren Moon supporter, so I liked Houston because they gave Moon the chance he deserved. McNair struck me as very worthy of following in Moon’s footsteps. I was quite disillusioned when the Oilers moved to Tennessee, so I quit following McNair as closely. Despite that, I always had a sense in my head that McNair was one of the true good guys – a guy who played the game right. I was thrilled for him when he won his MVP, and very happy when he moved on to Baltimore – a team I really respect.

I hope for one thing above all others in this story – I hope that it doesn’t turn out to be a twisted, awful story. He has a large family – four kids – and they certainly don’t deserve that. Neither do the rest of us – after so many of the guys I looked up to in sports in recent years have fallen from grace in dramatic fashion I’m certainly not anxious for any more. This story is already very bad, but here’s hoping it gets no worse.