After the Monday interview I had with Mike Roan, El Mo's coach, who played with McNair at Houston-Tennessee, I thought back to January, 2003, when I was in Nashville previewing the Raiders-Titans AFC title game. McNair, the Titans quarterback, spent an hour with a couple of reporters from the Bay Area and I was impressed that he did. Not that he spent an hour. That he spent a minute.

McNair was in such pain he wouldn't allow you to shake his hand. He sat through most of the interview, his back too painful. "If I stand for 15 minutes, I have to sit down," McNair said. "If I sit for 15 minutes, then I have to stand." He was too injured to pick up his four-year old son. After a Raider game in 2001 McNair had to be carried off the plane.

While all that impressed me, how someone could play with so much pain, McNair's greatest impression was this: Humility. For a superstar, the team's signature player, to act modest, is uncommon in any pro sport.

But McNair had no attitude or gripes. "I'm a country boy and you are expected to do your chores." This was his chore, to play with pain. He didn't whine. He just did his job and when I asked the Titan beat reporters if McNair was always like this, they said yes, without fail. The most mature professional they had ever dealt with.

So I wonder now, as so many other people who met McNair, how did this truly class act get so sideways in his life? I'm not sure I'll be satisfied or agree with the answer, if it ever is truly known.