About that time I ran into Steve McNair...

You'll have to forgive me if it takes a few days for me to get back in the loop. I spent the weekend maxing out my party meters (red alert!) at the happiest place on Earth, New Buffalo, Michigan (a.k.a. where overprivileged suburban Chicago white kids pretend every day is Spring Break. Or maybe that's just my friends.). After a weekend like that, it's going to take me a few days to catch up with the Sox, baseball's All-Star selections, and everything else. I was pretty much cut off from the real world up there. The only piece of news I really got was the death of Steve McNair, which was a shocker to my friends and I in every sense.

Remember when I took that little camping trip about a month and a half ago? It included a one night adventure in downtown Nashville, where, wouldn't you know it, we happened to run into McNair.  I always thought he was a pretty cool player back in the day (who doesn't love black quarterbacks?), but he immediately went up in my book that night. That's probably mostly because we saw him at the one Nashville bar that actually played good music instead of, you know, Toby Keith or whatever they usually play in Nashville bars (Americah!). Was it a coincidence or does (did) Steve McNair actually dig Phoenix and the Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's? I like to think it was the latter.

We weren't sure it was him at first, which prompted a 10 minute discussion on whether or not it was racist to ask the only black guy in Nashville if he was Steve McNair.

My friend Josh finally worked up the nerve to go up to him.

"No offense, but are you Steve McNair?" (how funny is that question? 100 percent funny!)

It was, and McNair was actually super cool and friendly. We all went up there, shook his hand and said a few words. I think I told him I loved using him in Madden. The best by far, though, was my buddy Jason (raised in St. Louis) who said "you played in my favorite Super Bowl ever!" before remembering, oh yeah, McNair's team came up a yard short.



"But....uh....I wish you would have won." (Jason was lying)

So naturally when the text messages about his death started rolling in to myself and everyone else, we were shocked. I mean, we all just saw that dude! And he was a super rich, super famous, recently retired pro athlete who was actually pretty cool!

Also noteworthy: when we approached McNair, he was at the bar with just one other guy. As the night went on though, a group of chicks about our age recognized him and started hanging out with him. I'm pretty sure he was making out with one of them before we left.

No big deal really....it's just kind of weird that the girl who murdered him was only 20 years old. What if it was one of the girls we saw him with at the bar!? (/head explodes)

So yeah: rest in peace, Steve McNair. He was a cool football player, a hell of a video game quarterback, and, judging by my 30 second interaction with him, a fairly nice dude.