(Retired football star, husband, and father of four Steve McNair was murdered on July 4th, 2009, by his 20-year old girlfriend who then shot herself.)

It was always easy to root for Steve McNair.

A Mississippi boy who played college ball for a historically black college many football fans had never heard of – Alcorn State. A calm-headed leader who smoothly handled the extraordinary pressure of being drafted third overall in the 1995 draft by football-mad Houston.

McNair was the consummate professional who solidified his team, the Titans, as they moved from Texas to Tennessee. He then made the pro-bowl three times, and became the co-MVP of entire league, and led the Titans to within one yard – one yard! – of taking the Super Bowl into its first overtime.

It was no small thing to be a pro black quarterback in a southern city in the late 90′s, in a league where many coaches and owners wondered – not that privately – if a black man could succeed at quarterback in the NFL. As Tom Curran writes:

He was the first black quarterback to really be accorded the respect that his physical ability, leadership skills and mental toughness demanded ….

[Doug] Williams was hailed as a trailblazer when he won a Super Bowl with the Redskins. Yet McNair cleared a more difficult obstacle. He was the first black quarterback that a team built itself around and tethered its fortunes to from Day 1. It probably isn’t a coincidence that, once it became clear McNair was the real deal, quarterbacks like Donovan McNabb, Akili Smith, Michael Vick and Vince Young were suddenly top five selections.

I am a huge Seattle Seahawks fan, but I always rooted for Steve McNair no matter what. You just had to.

And now it seems he may have been, in his personal life, just a garden variety ass, who wanted what he wanted when he wanted it, until he found something else to want.

I heard some friend or teammate or something on the radio talking about how McNair was a class act who didn’t deserve this. And while I don’t believe that anyone deserves to be murdered, for any reason, I was struck by the glossy outrage of this eulogy. I have enormous sympathy for McNair’s four young sons, and for a wife who apparently had no idea of his affair until hearing of the grisly murder-suicide.

But the evolving facts paint a less than pretty picture of a cad who also happens to be a hero of mine:

1. McNair rented a sparsely-furnished apartment where he spent time with waitress Sahel Kazemi (see her facebook photos). He also bought Kazemi a Cadillac Escalade for her 20th birthday.
2. They had apparently been “dating” for months, travelled to Key West and Los Angeles, and even took vacation photos together.
3. Kazemi introduced McNair to her family, and told them that he would imminently be divorcing to start a new life with her. But Robert Gaddy, a long-time close friend of McNair, said he knew nothing of any such plan. And Mechelle McNair says she never knew about Kazemi at all.
4. According to Kazemi’s sister, Kazemi flew to Las Vegas in mid-June for a planned vacation with McNair.  He never showed up.
5. Friends say that Kazemi had increasing financial problems in late June, including her inability to make payments on the Escalade that was in both her name and McNair’s.
6. After midnight on July 2nd, Kazemi was driving the Escalade when she was arrested for a DUI. McNair left the scene by taxi, then apparently called her cell while she was being questioned by a police officer, and said:  “Do not let him know anything.” Kazemi then interrupted him to say “I know, baby, you’re on the speakerphone.”
7. The next morning McNair bailed her out.  She then listed all her furniture on craigslist, apparently confident that she would be moving in with McNair.

   

8. At some point she apparently saw McNair with another woman (not his wife) and followed the woman home. Then Kazemi bought a semi-automatic handgun (it’s easy in Tennessee).
9. The night of July 3rd, McNair went out drinking with friends, without Kazemi. In the wee hours of July 4th, Kazemi, without McNair, knocked on the door of her ex-boyfriend Keith Norfleet. Norfleet says that she left before he could answer the door.
10. The morning of July 4th, Kazemi shot McNair 4 times, while he slept, once in each temple, and twice in the chest. Nashville police believe that Kazemi then positioned herself so that she would die in his lap. Instead, perhaps fittingly, after shooting herself in the temple, she fell to his feet.
11. Norfleet, perhaps before he was aware that she had shot McNair four times, including one in each temple, said “She is the sweetest girl, and she did not deserve this.”
12. It turns out Kazemi was no stranger to violence, either. Her own mother was murdered when she was 9 years old, in Iran. Kazemi’s family, members of the Baha’i faith, had come to America to escape violence and religious persecution.

My prayers go out to McNair’s wife and children, and Kazemi’s own family, who have already endured great tragedy. I feel saddened, but more mixed about the man who seems to have acted off the field like the stereotypical jerk who expects to get away with it because he just always has.  A man who was apparently comfortable with a pristine public image that masked a pattern of boorish behavior.

As Mark Purdy writes in the Mercury News:

McNair’s image in Nashville was that of a classy, regular family guy who played tough on the football field while giving his heart and soul to charitable activities. Well, he was definitely a rugged quarterback who took his team to the Super Bowl. And by all accounts, he did wonderful stuff with his charitable foundation. All of this stuff was covered by
television cameras at every turn. McNair helped build houses, ran youth camps, even picked up a chainsaw himself to help a town clear debris from a tornado. But somewhere along the way, McNair was also hooking up with the 20-year-old waitress and partying heartily with her in Nashville …

In my three decades of experience covering professional athletes, a famous football player seldom turns 36 and suddenly decides to start fooling around on his wife. It’s been going on a while. Plenty of people in Nashville had to know — had to know — that McNair was not everything his image portrayed him to be. But they allowed the image to thrive.

McNair, by all accounts, conducted his affair as an open secret, in restaurants and bars, with which the fawning press was breezily compliant.

In the past days I’ve read a lot of commentary about this sad spectacle. There are the coincidences that are just plain weird – the cop who arrested Kazemi had also previously arrested McNair for a DUI in 2007; Kazemi’s ex-boyfriend had recently recorded a rap song about killing an older man.

Then there are are homages to McNair that, given these revelations, hit an odd note, such as teammate Derrick Mason’s utterance that McNair was “the most selfless … person I have known.” And there is the usual tabloid tripe, such as the New York Daily News proclaiming, with its typical self-restraint and dignity: Steve McNair, Sahel Kazemi Love Nest Became Blood-Soaked Crime Scene.

The shortest comment I’ve read is a tweet from actress Holly Robinson Peete (21 Jump Street). Peete also happens to be married to retired NFL quarterback Rodney Peete, with whom she has four children. Gotta hand it to her, she definitely call it like she sees it, and talks like someone who is aware of her self-worth:

In my heart of hearts, I suppose that at some level I see, and even appreciate, the karmic directness of this tragedy, the physics of action and consequence, the whole thelmaandlouisiness of it all. If the various news reports are accurate, McNair seems to have cavorted with a pretty, and pretty insecure, troubled young woman. A woman with a limited sense of self-worth, who was content, at least for a while, to be the plaything of a rich and famous man. An undereducated waitress at Dave & Buster’s restaurant, she was dating the most famous athlete in the entire state of Tennessee.

Kazemi, for her part, seemed comfortable with the attention she received for her obvious physical attractiveness.  Her Facebook page – the image she publically presented – included numerous photos of her cleavage and her new Escalade, including one of her lounging on the Escalade in a bikini. A wild-eyed innocent victim she was not.

In some ways, such liasons are simply an honest market of supply and demand. Society typically rewards money in older men and beauty in younger women, not so differently than in a Jane Austen novel. And however McNair may have treated Kazemi, and whether or not he actually told her he was divorcing his wife, his attentions to her could only increase her perceived “market value” by other rich and/or famous men.

In other words, these arrangements happen for a reason, that is at some level mutually beneficial, at least for a time. Even the consequence of this case, though extreme, is not really unforseeable. People often play at games without fully understanding the stakes. Indeed, the very danger of such clandestine relationships may carry part of their attraction for all concerned.

What is clear is that both McNair and Kazemi made a series of increasingly poor decisions.McNair partially gifted her a Cadillac, apparently leaving it to her to make payments on a waitress’ salary. Kazemi started selling her furniture before there was any concrete plan for co-habitation. And oh yeah, she drove a high profile car while she was wasted (McNair of course let her; he was the passenger).

McNair probably never imagined that Kazemi was capable of violence more akin to a drug cartel assassination than to Romeo and Juliet. He may not have even had a clue as to just how  desperate she had become. Kazemi, for her part, was somehow surprised that a man who would cheat on his wife so effortlessly with her would also cheat on her. Remember the old addage “If they’ll do it with you, they’ll do it to you.”

The funny thing is that despite all his selfish and thoughtless actions, McNair will still always be a hero, just a hero whose magical powers erode once he hits the sideline and takes off his helmet. I never cheered for Air McNair because of his charity work or his family man persona – I never even heard any of that until he died. I cheered for him because of how he played football, with brains, and strength, and guts to spare. He played football like the game was meant to be played, without drama, without complaint.

In America we seem to have a hard time with such complex dichotomies. We lionize our heroes of sports (and politics too) past any rational relationship to their sphere of expertise and accomplishment – then tear them down mercilessly for not living up to our Super-Sized expectations off the field.

I love sports in part because of the purity of how it defines excellence. Either a batter can hit a Felix Hernandez fastball or he can’t, either a quarterback can thread the needle between the linebacker and the safety or he can’t – there’s little point to arguing after the fact. Even with all the money and glitter and controversy, sports remains unsullied for me. This is why I could care less about Alex Rodriguez’ numerous dalliances (Madonna or otherwise), but am pretty disappointed to learn that he cheated the game by taking steroids.

McNair was a warrior, and deserves every accolade – and the Hall of Fame – for all that he did every Sunday for 13 years, between the lines of the gridiron. So it’s not so much that his tawdry rakishness is forgivable. It’s just irrelevant. As a man McNair leaves behind a mixed record between professional accomplishment and personal dishonesty. But similar things could probably be said for John F. Kennedy,  Ludwig von Beethoven, Pablo Picasso, Thomas Jefferson and countless others. And as a football player, McNair was simply a god.

If ESPN classic ever gets the rights to play old NFL games, I’ll happily watch the Music City Miracle game, then watch McNair lead his Titans down the field for the tying touchdown of Super Bowl XXXIV. I’ll be cheering as he passes to Kevin Dyson, as Dyson lunges for a goal line he’ll never make, the whole game a mere 12 inches or so out of reach.

Like Titan fans everywhere, and a little bit like Sisyphus, I’ll be thinking that this time, maybe, Dyson will stretch that elusive foot and score the touchdown, and that my hero will go on to win the Super Bowl he always deserved but never quite attained.

It’s still easy to root for Steve McNair. Just keep it between the lines.