Sports Arena
Nashville Mourns Its Fallen Star?
Steve McNair put to rest.
They say five thousand Nashvillians turned out to moan and mourn the passing of Steve McNair, encouraged perhaps by the headline on the Washington Post front page tease as “the city in which Steve McNair achieved stardom.” The tease adds that the “positive memories of his life far outweigh the troubling details of his death.”
Those troubling notions are further outlined in the main sports section story, which is also headlined: “Accentuate the Positive.” We get a hint from the staff writer’s lead: “This city has always kept its secrets well hidden, tucking imprudence away from the lights of music marquees, sequestering it behind closed doors.” If so, how ever did we find out that McNair’s passing was occasioned by two bullets to the head and two more to the chest, administered by a 20-year-old woman who then put a fatal bullet in her own head? Another troubling detail; the woman’s name was Sahel Kazemi, not Mrs. Mechelle McNair. And, according to police, she had complained to friends, just before she bought the gun, that she suspected McNair of seeing another girl, and not only her, in the brick townhouse they shared.
The “accentuate the positive” goes on to explain that she was “too young and naive to understand the subtleties of his lifestyle, mistaking vacations and the gift of a Cadillac Escalade for a declaration of love.” Now, how dumb can a girl get? There survives a Mrs. McNair, and four boys, two of whom said to have been fathered by McNair with wife Mechelle. The story quotes friends as saying McNair was never going to leave his wife. He was just going to do — what so many overpaid sports stars do. And, as one fan wrote on the window of Steve NcNair’s Gridiron 9 restaurant, “Steve, we forgive you.”
For the record, McNair was an NFL quarterback who never won a championship but led the Titans to the 1999 Super Bowl, and had been traded some years later to the Baltimore Ravens. But he did good in Nashville, ran free football camps, positioned his restaurant just across from the Tennessee State U. campus, in the black community. For two days his old team, the Titans, threw open the main gate of their stadium and supplied eight giant notebook binders filled with papers for mourners to record their grief. Heard often was the sub-Mason-Dixon phrase: “He was good people.” He was 36.
True, there had been a couple of DUI charges along the way, which were dropped. As a longtime teammate said of the manner of death and Nashville’s reaction, “They know it doesn’t look great, but they’re intelligent enough to look past that and see what he’s about.”
About the Author
Reid Collins is a former CBS and CNN news correspondent.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (28) | Leave a comment
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Richard Baker| 7.14.09 @ 9:00AM
So let's see. He was catting about on his wife AND his mistress? What a fine example of manly integrity. It's a wonder he wasn't shot earlier. Hero? Not even.
Das Boot| 7.14.09 @ 10:17AM
Everyone wants to blame the victim, but nobody wants to talk about how this crime is the direct result of the sense of entitlement, lack of morals, and emotional instability in today's women. This is especially true of young women in America. Even though this woman was from another country she has clearly been Americanized as evidence by the fact that she thought she DESERVED Steve Mcnair and everything that his accomplishments had won. For what? being a waitress and Damon Busters?
Richard Baker| 7.14.09 @ 11:07AM
Das Boot:
Were you speaking of her or him? What's the difference between their moral emptiness? Talk about moral equivalency.
Seek| 7.14.09 @ 11:36AM
Since when does a woman get to be judge, jury and executioner of an innocent man? I don't give a rat's ass if McNair had been stringing along 14 women simultaneously. This crazed Persian chick is a murderer and ought to be prosecuted as such. The "immorality" of Steve McNair is immaterial.
Mike Daly | 7.14.09 @ 11:37AM
A lot of these stories alleging he was catting on his wife and on Kazemi come across as unsubstantiated gossip. While it is clear he was palling around with Kazemi there has been no credible evidence it advanced beyond close palling - no evidence of any sexual relationship has come up here. McNair was guilty of palling too much with Kazemi, but it seems he was realizing she was a nut in that DUI video shot just before she killed him.
Das Boot| 7.14.09 @ 11:40AM
Richard: You are correct that there are many similarities but McNair didn't kill anyone. He had his life taken. Im no fan of pro sports stars but he didnt deserve to die. His biggest mistake was not recognizing her emotional instability. He let the chaos that was this woman into his life.
Richard Baker| 7.14.09 @ 4:27PM
Das Boot:
If he hadn't been the initiator of all the catting about, then he'd have not taken the chance of running into a crazy, don't you think? Keeping it in one's pants would have eliminated a lot of his risk. You know, "Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances". He rolled the dice and crapped out.
vatvince37| 7.14.09 @ 5:37PM
Perhaps it is a sign of age - mine - that I sense that some of the responses to Signor Collins's piece conflate criminal guilt with behavioral baseness. There is no doubt that Sahel Kazemi will, and should, face the full force of the law, but that apart, how can one not also judge McNair's actions as other than those which evince a pattern of conduct that, albeit not criminal, is morally depraved? And to glorify this man in death is appaling, but no more so than the funeral circus of a depraved pedophile that took place recently. De mortuiis nihil nisi bonum - of the dead say nothing but good - I can only respond, Veto, I object.
Vincent Chiarello| 7.14.09 @ 6:29PM
There is no doubt that Sahel Kazemi will, and should, face the full force of the law, ...
When Kazemi, like Lazarus, rises from the dead, that is.
Mea culpa, mea culpa mea massima culpa.
RichardBaker | 7.14.09 @ 7:49PM
vatvince37:
Steve McNair forgot the basic rule that every sailor knows. If you've got a string of girls running, don't let any of them find out about the others. McNair is not even the first man to discover "a woman scorned". Sadly, we glorify such as him and the "Glove" all the while thinking about how stupid they were. You're just maturing and that's alright.
Grzmlyk| 7.14.09 @ 8:13PM
Like all professional sports, the NFL has become the NTL - the National Thug League.
McNair's transgressions don't even move the needle compared with some of the NFL's other princes.
Remember when things like team and character mattered in sports?
Richard Baker| 7.15.09 @ 7:13PM
Grzmlyk:
Jackie Robinson and Dr. King would weep over the lack of character. These thugs are what Dr. King and Medgar Evers died for?