The Secret Lives Of Professional Athletes

You never expect to hear news like what we heard on Saturday about Steve McNair.

A 36-year-old retired professional athlete found dead of multiple gunshot wounds in his home. A pro bowl quarterback who eluded so many defenders, cut down in what is still very much the prime of his life. So tragic.

But as more and more details come to light, we're starting to see the dark side of professional sports, and even more so, the dark side of life.

McNair was found dead in an apartment in downtown Nashville next to the body of a 20-year-old woman who had been described initially as a "friend." McNair's wife Mechelle and their four sons were at the family home in Mississippi when the bodies were discovered. More and more reports are coming out now that call Saleh Kazemi, the woman found next to McNair, his girlfriend. Given that McNair was shot four times, and that Kazemi had only one gunshot wound to the head (and was found with a pistol underneath her), it seems pretty obvious what happened. None of these details make the situation any less tragic, but one of the side effects is that we're having to take an honest look at the lives of our superstar athletes.

Pro athletes are human. They eat, they sleep, they go to the bathroom, they watch Sportscenter in the morning, they wonder why Twilight is such a big deal...just like the rest of us. But unlike most of us, pro athletes get paid gobs of money for doing what they do, and unfortunately, an excess of money often allows for behavior that is also quite excessive. Most of it is fairly harmless -- despite what the tree-huggers want to tell us, it's not such a bad thing to have a garage full of Hummers and Range Rovers. Whatever our interests are, if we had the money to pursue them to an excessive degree, there aren't a whole lot of us who wouldn't.

And that carries over into the one area where we all -- without exception -- struggle: sex.

It's everywhere. From Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers to Viagra ads on race cars, we can't get away from it, no matter what our age or position in life. We live in a culture inundated with sex.

And you know what? Not very many of us seem to mind it that much.

I know there are groups out there trying to "protect" the children, or to "clean up" our various forms of entertainment. But if we're honest with ourselves, we're only worried about things like that because we know how exciting and captivating sex is and can be. Underneath all of that posturing and political correctness, I think the reality is that we're inundated with sex in our culture because it's what's on our minds the most.

And in some ways, we need it to be. For one thing, in the proper context, sex is a wonderful gift that is very necessary for a healthy marriage. And it is the biological means of progressing our species. Then, of course, it is also rumored to be something of a thrilling experience, if we're to believe all those rock and roll songs.

But the negative side is that too much focus on something so powerful can lead to its use in the wrong context. In the specific case of pro athletes, with their excess in money and the inherent attractiveness of being young, successful and in great shape, it's probably really, really easy for them to get sex whenever they want it. Honestly, it seems easy enough for them to get it even if they don't particularly want it.

I remember going to the New York Mets play at PNC Park in Pittsburgh a few years ago. We had a good group of guys, one of whom brought his young son, so we made sure to go down early enough to see batting practice. Because we were among the few early-arrivers, we were able to go down right by the field to watch the players up close. Most of the fans there were crowded around the dugout areas to maybe get an autograph or a baseball...or something. Among the gathered spectators were some women, who looked curiously out of place amidst the mostly male fans wearing some sort of team gear. These ladies were young...kind of?...and wearing what I would classify as "clubbing" attire. Their attention perked up as the players started heading for the dugout en route to the clubhouse before the game started. And for some reason, of all the players they picked out, they locked in on -- I'm pretty sure it was this guy -- Shane Spencer, a career backup outfielder. They weren't very subtle in handing him what appeared to be a cocktail napkin with their hotel information, and they didn't hang around to see any further reaction.

All of that to say, if Shane Spencer gets a chick's digits in Pittsburgh, imagine what a guy like Steve McNair would have run into wherever he went. McNair was a genuinely nice guy, and reports say that he met Kazemi at a Dave & Buster's restaurant where she worked. I'm sure that before all this, McNair had been propositioned in every way imaginable in every place he'd traveled. Rock stars have groupies, and a lot of them are gross, hairy old dudes who look more at home in a biker bar than on a stage. So it's not hard to imagine that pro athletes, who generally maintain a higher level of fitness and hygiene, would have just as much female attention.

Despite this, there are many athletes who maintain their integrity in their marriages, and the more we look at this subject, the more respect I have for them. And just because McNair stumbled in this one area where so many are prone to weakness doesn't make him a bad person or unworthy of our admiration on the football field.

It is a shame that this is the world we live in. And for every soccer mom who complains about professional athletes not being good role models, I'm sure this is just another bullet in the clip of another attack on the integrity of sports.

But the truth of the matter is that athletes shouldn't be role models. They are because a lot of kids don't have anyone better to look up to, but that's not the fault of the athlete. If parents can't effectively explain the difference between admiration and idolization, then they deserve to have children who do stupid things like take steroids.

Hopefully though, we won't lose sight of the tragic fact that even those athletes who best fit into this persona of role model are going to fall prey to the human condition of imperfection.

So we mourn the passing of an outstanding athlete, a wonderful humanitarian, and an imperfect human being. May we appreciate what he did on the field and learn from the mistakes we now know he made off of it.