Sean Taylor - RIP UPDATED

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=bojackson

This a very poignant piece when you consider the events of the past few days. As I read it, I could not help but think about Taylor possibly trying to become a family man.

It also makes me sad that most people in the general public under 30 do not have idea who this Jackson guy is and what made him so famous.

 

I think the best part of the Bo story is that he's not at all consumed with what might have been. I don't know him, but from that piece he seems totally happy with who he is and where. Which makes him a special person.

 

I've been out of the loop a little ... did ESPN just say the guy that broke in a week ago left a knife on Taylor's pillow?

 

I have heard that for the past few days, but the location of the knife seemed to move from story to story.

 

I've had a bouncer say that he'd rather face someone with a knife than someone with a gun.

With a gun, there's plenty of room for failure: the gun jams, the gun isn't loaded, the guy misses.

With a knife, the guy's probably killing you, unless you have a good grasp of self-defense and how to disable and disarm someone quickly.

As for Bo, he's a special person [/petergammons], and having a few million in the bank when he hung 'em up didn't hurt.

 

Half the time I hear 'fiance', half the time I hear 'girlfriend'. Which is it?

 

Excellent column. He makes a great point: just because you leave the street behind doesn't mean it has forgotten about you.

 

I thought Wilbon abandoned his argument just as it was getting interesting with his turn into the Len Bias situation. I understand what he was saying, I just think it was another column for another day.
That said, I don't quite understand the point as well as I understand the emotional punch the column packs. He seems to be arguing -- correctly, in my view -- that abandoning virtually your whole upbringing is a complex, complicated problem, but he then advises people to do it immediately, as if that were easy or possible. Moreover, if we accept his premise that you can't really leave it all behind forever because it can always come and get you, then the whole column seems to me distressingly futile. You do all the right things and some guy from your past comes and shoots you down anyway, where do we go from that?
Sooner or later, also, somebody's going to have to talk about guns, particularly their ready availability in poorer black neighborhoods, the importation of which used to be a big issue for Rudy Giuliani before he needed cracker votes in South Carolina.

 

From the police report on the earlier burglary posted on the Miami Herald site:

"C-2 also advised that a kitchen knife was left on her bed. Damage was observed to the AC vent in V-1's bathroom."

C-2 on the report is listed as "Junor, Donna - mother of V-1". V-1 is Sean Taylor. The knife was on his mother's bed and in the context of the report it appears it may have been used to pry open the AC vent. There is no indication at all it was perceived as a threat contrary to what is being reported elsewhere.

 

I disagree.

Leaders must do their part to ensure that the ladder exists.

Whether people at the bottom attempt to climb it is up to them.

 

An interesting piece on that subject:

http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/11/28/race_poll/