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Does TampaDude live in D.C.? Or Tampa?
That was probably my post.
Does TampaDude live in D.C.? Or Tampa?
According to the press conference on ESPN right now, every player in the NFL will be wearing Taylor's 21 on their helmet. The Redskins will also add a patch to their jersey.
JamStone...
I mentioned my friend in a previous post who works for the team and he confirmed what Shoog said. The people in the front office are stunned and saddened at the same time.
i hope your friend isn't vinny cerrato mikey. cuz that guy is on my list!
nope, he is the IT guy.
went to school with ASF and Spurswoman.
A Roosevelt grad?
A Roosevelt grad?
Roughriders blow.
That's right, you went to . . . what, Incarnate Word?
It's cool. I wasn't trying to call out anybody. I just mentioned it because when I read it, it read a certain way. I wanted to reinforce the idea that his family and friends mourn much more for the loss of the person than a team or organization will mourn for the loss of the player. I don't think you intended it in a negative way. I just wanted to bring it up.
i'm sure the team and fans are mourning the loss of the person more than the fact that we're shorthanded at safety now bro.
We take no credit for him at all.
I live in Tampa now, but I lived in Northern VA for over 30 years, and I am a Skins fan 4 LIFE!!!
R.I.P.
He was a great player. It's hard to imagine him gone.
Well, bro, while I'm sure that's true for the vast majority of his teammates, most of the fans didn't know Sean Taylor the person. They only knew Sean Taylor the football player. And, there are some fans that are more concerned about how it affects the Redskins as a team. That's why I brought it up in the first place. The comment was made that the "Redskins will miss him." Not, his family and friends will miss him or the DC community will miss him or the University of Miami family will miss him. It was "the Redskins will miss him." That's why I brought it up. More important than how his passing affects fans or the Redskins team and organization is how it affects his immediate family and friends. That was my point all along. Sure, the Redskins will miss him. Just not the way his wife and daughter and parents and brothers, sisters, cousins, and close friends will.
I was reading and watching the reports last night about him falling into a coma. I was hoping for the best.
Sad day to be a Redskins fan.
Rest in peace, Sean.
Condolences to his family, teammates, and friends.
No, Robt E Lee. We used to have Roosevelt for lunch every October in Football....they were a bunch of pussies. I even got to play against them.
when you get down to the thick of it, it was a man who had a career that he enjoyed in front of him, he had parenthood in front of him, and he had a whole chapter of his life. its sad when you realize how many people he could've or would've influenced in his life. sadly that's all we have left to say now is what could've or would've happened.
R.I.P.
Dude, I don't mean to sound like a here, really I don't. But, you said "DC will never be the same again".
On 9/11, the country lost 3,000 some odd folks, if anything that would be the day that DC would never be the same again, but after about three weeks, it was back to normal.
This is a ty deal for sports fans, redskins fans, and friends and family of Sean Taylor, but let's not act like the world is coming to an end.
I wanted to post this here because it's kind of what happened in this thread, too. Plus, a friend of mine is one of the reporters quoted (Zuri Berry).
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http://www.maynardije.org/columns/di...071127_prince/
Black Sportswriters Fear Stereotypical Narrative
The shooting death of Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor has left some African American sportswriters concerned that coverage by their predominantly white colleagues will unfairly emphasize negative aspects of Taylor's past.
"The one thing that I have found today from listening to talk radio and reading columnists/bloggers views on this matter is this," the Boston Globe's Gregory Lee, who chairs the Sports Task Force of the National Association of Black Journalists, wrote to his colleagues on Tuesday:
"Don't speak or write on things you don't know. What I mean by that is often times when sports turns into social issues, most don't get it and don't have the background to speak about it. The only thing they can go off is stereotypical images of rap videos or watching New Jack City."
Taylor, 24, died Tuesday after he was shot in his home by an apparent intruder, "leaving the Washington Redskins in mourning for a teammate who seemed to have reordered his life since becoming a father," the Associated Press reported.
The AP story continued, "An All-American at the University of Miami, Taylor was drafted by the Redskins as the fifth overall selection in 2004. Coach Joe Gibbs called it 'one of the most researched things' he'd ever done, but the problems soon began. Taylor fired his agent, then skipped part of the NFL's mandatory rookie symposium, drawing a $25,000 fine. Driving home late from a party during the season, he was pulled over and charged with drunken driving. The case was dismissed in court, but by then it had become a months-long distraction for the team.
"Taylor also was fined at least seven times for late hits, uniform violations and other infractions over his first three seasons, including a $17,000 penalty for spitting in the face of Tampa Bay running back Michael Pittman during a playoff game in January 2006.
"Meanwhile, Taylor endured a yearlong legal battle after he was accused in 2005 of brandishing a gun at a man during a fight over allegedly stolen all-terrain vehicles near Taylor's home. He eventually pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors and was sentenced to 18 months' probation.
"Taylor said the end of the assault case was like 'a gray cloud' being lifted. It was also around the time that Jackie was born, and teammates noticed a change."
Those paragraphs, and others like it, did not sit well with members of the NABJ Sports Task Force. "There's a problem I've been having with reporting on Sean Taylor and I'm leaning to being annoyed on a moral level more than anything else," Zuri Berry, sports reporter at the Union in Grass Valley, Calif., wrote.
"The story AP has sent out is only as long as it is because it provides a laundry list of transgressions Taylor had that I simply feel are not important for this particularly tragic event. I mean, there's obviously a list out on everybody that's done anything wrong, waiting to be attached to the person's next scandalous story. Well there's no scandal here, just tragedy. And I feel that Taylor's memory right now is being done a disservice for rehashing that 'Taylor also was fined at least seven times for late hits, uniform violations and other infractions over his first three seasons, including a $17,000 penalty for spitting in the face of Tampa Bay running back Michael Pittman during a 2006 playoff game.'
"Excuse me if I wonder out loud, what the does this have to do with him being shot. Mind you, this isn't an obit, this is breaking news."
Justice B. Hill, senior writer with MLB.com, compared the coverage with that of Ronald Reagan. "Last night, I read Leonard Pitts' column on Ronald Reagan. Pitts wrote the piece in April 2004, and he called out journalists for painting this overly flattering a picture of Reagan on his death," Hill said.
"In concluding his column, Pitts wrote: 'The media have sold us a fraudulent version of history. Everybody loved Ronald Reagan, it says.
"'Beg pardon, but "everybody" did not.'
"I would have no problem with the coverage of Sean Taylor if, in fact, what the media did to Taylor was consistent with how they deal with others in his cir stance. To suggest that black men like Taylor aren't dealt with unfairly in the media is to embrace the idea of mermaids as real or that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."
Another writer singled out Leonard Shapiro of the Washington Post, who wrote a piece on the Post Web site headlined, "Taylor's Death Is Tragic but Not Surprising."
"Certainly it would be terribly easy to rush toward some sort of instant judgment based on what we think we all knew about Taylor and the sort of life he once, and for all we know, still led," Shapiro wrote. "But really, we know nothing at the moment, and until we do, 'may he rest in peace' ought to be the operative phrase for this day."
However, the next sentence was, "Still, could anyone honestly say they never saw this coming?"
Wrote Jemele Hill of ESPN.com: "Before Taylor died, I intended to write a column about how the tenor of reporting seemed to be, well what do you expect? Look at all the trouble he got into.
"It's not like Taylor was out at the club, or at the wrong place, wrong time. If the police thought his past troubles were related to his murder, then I understand it. But it seems as if this is being framed as, he got what was coming to him, when he'd been trouble-free for some time. Maybe I'm being oversensitive, but I just have a hard time believing that if Brett Favre got shot, there would be grafs about his personal drug abuse issues."
Hill wrote her own column, noting, "Studies conducted in 2006 at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other ins utions concluded a black man is more than six times as likely to be murdered than a white man.
"This isn't to say Taylor was killed because he was black," Hill wrote. "This is to say that, because he was black, Taylor was more likely to be killed. The weight of that should be just as jarring as waking up and discovering an NFL player died from a gunshot wound. Please don't roll your eyes, release a frustrated breath, and trivialize this as 'playing the race card.'"
Not everyone agreed that Taylor's legal issues should not have been mentioned.
"I don't think anyone can really escape their past," another said. "I didn't see the relevancy of the AP story talking about his fines and some on-field run-ins, but I didn't have a problem with the mention of his legal issues. no telling what this police investigation will turn up, it doesn't sound like a random break-in to me. maybe I'm just too cynical but when I first heard Taylor got shot at his home, I wasn't thinking about his present turnaround. I was thinking of his past troubles."
Asked for comment, Mike Silverman, senior managing editor at the Associated Press, referred Journal-isms to AP's latest version of the story and pointed out that it now also had a sidebar about the medical aspects of the case.
Harris said the newer version did not address his concerns, "simply because it reworks the lead to address the general public's concern, as well as his family and friends, over his negative portrayal. But the grafs I cited in my initial post . . . are still included, however irrelevant and damaging.
"But yes, compared to yesterday's story on the shooting, it is much better in its reporting on the incident rather than Taylor's previous transgressions. Or I should say, more properly balanced."
yep....c/o 88A Roosevelt grad?
'Twas my first thought as well.No telling what this police investigation will turn up, it doesn't sound like a random break-in to me.
I'm interested to see what the investigation turns up, if anything.
Michael Wilbon said the exact same thing I said (for the most part) on Sportscenter tonight and wrote the same thing I said in his section in the Washington Post; so I'm not being the only "asshole" in this world.
Link it, because I'm not looking for it.
it's not Wilbon's column but he is quoted towards the end
Taylor's Death Is Tragic but Not Surprising
By Leonard Shapiro
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, November 27, 2007; 12:28 PM
A few years ago, I was allowed to spend what became a thoroughly illuminating afternoon at the NFL's rookie symposium, then, a four-day session held at Lansdowne Resort near Leesburg. Every drafted rookie was and still is required to attend an annual event designed to prepare the players for a wide variety of issues they would soon be facing as highly visible professional athletes.
One of the more compelling elements that day was a series of skits put on by a professional acting troupe based in New York. A wide variety of scenarios was played out on the stage; from a scene in a club showing an athlete losing his temper when his girlfriend was groped by a drunken bar fly to a young player confronted by his larcenous cousin wanting him to buy a recently stolen sound system at a very reduced rate.
At the dramatic high point of each presentation, at about the time the player would have to make a very critical and potentially life-altering decision, a voice offstage would scream out "FREEZE!!!!!" and the actors literally stopped and became living, breathing statues. At that point, a discussion leader stepped out and opened the floor to comments and questions on how the fictional player would have, and should have handled that situation.
Consequences was the theme of the day. Everything you do has consequences, and even more so when you are young, rich and a highly visible professional athlete.
I've been thinking about that symposium ever since the news broke Monday morning that Sean Taylor, the Redskins Pro Bowl safety had been shot in an apparent burglary attempt at his home in a suburban Miami neighborhood. Tragically, Taylor died early Tuesday morning from a bullet that severed the femoral artery in his groin area. The massive loss of blood was too much for even this seemingly superbly conditioned athlete to overcome.
He was only 24, the father of an 18-month-old baby girl who was also in the house along with her mother, Taylor's girlfriend. And this was for real. No symposium. No actors. No questions and answers from the audience, and certainly no one around to yell "FREEZE!!!! before the madness in Miami escalated into murder. The consequence of who knows what?
At the moment, it is far too soon to draw any conclusions as to how or why this tragedy occurred, why another young black man is now dead from a gunshot wound in his own home, why another athlete, Michael Vick, Pacman Jones, Tank Johnson, and now Sean Taylor becomes headline news for all the wrong reasons.
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Certainly it would be terribly easy to rush toward some sort of instant judgment based on what we think we all knew about Taylor and the sort of life he once, and for all we know, still led. But really, we know nothing at the moment, and until we do, "may he rest in peace" ought to be the operative phrase for this day.
Still, could anyone honestly say they never saw this coming? You'd have to be blind not to consider Taylor's checkered past. It was only a few months after he was drafted, when we got something of an inkling of what sort of young man the Redskins were selecting out of the University of Miami with the fifth overall selection in 2004.
For one, Taylor brazenly skipped the rookie symposium he was required to attend his first year, and was fined accordingly by the NFL. You also can look at the timeline of his professional life printed on this web site or in the newspaper and draw your own preliminary conclusions.
Over the first few years Taylor was in the league, he bounced from one scrape to another, blowing off the symposium, disrespecting Hall of Fame coach Joe Gibbs by not showing up for mandatory offseason workouts and never calling to explain why, running afoul of the law in a widely reported shooting incident in South Florida and very nearly going to jail.
On the field, Taylor often was a thoroughly undisciplined player who loved to make bold statements with vicious and often dangerous hits that occasionally got him tossed from games. Clearly, he seemed to embrace the thug image on and off the field, and the fact that he rarely spoke to members of the media only enhanced his reputation as a moody, enigmatic athlete we hardly ever got to know.
My colleague, Post columnist and ESPN broadcaster Michael Wilbon was asked about Taylor during his weekly internet web site discussion Monday and said, "I've known guys like Taylor all my life, grew up with some. They still have shades of gray and shouldn't be painted in black and white.
"I know how I feel about Taylor, and this latest news isn't surprising in the least, not to me. Whether this incident is or isn't random, Taylor grew up in a violent world, embraced it, claimed it, loved to run in it and refused to divorce himself from it. He ain't the first and won't be the last. We have no idea what happened, or if what we know now will be revised later. It's sad, yes, but hardly surprising."
In the wake of his shooting, we are now hearing about a so-called new Sean Taylor, a guy who seemed to be getting his life back in order, perhaps because of the birth of his child. Maybe a light bulb finally went off in his head. He was even enjoying arguably the best season of his career until he was derailed by a knee injury two weeks ago.
After a loss to Dallas two weeks ago, everyone around here, and in the Redskins locker room, was saying there was no way Terrell Owens would have caught four touchdown passes if Taylor had been patrolling the middle of the field, prepared to pounce and pound the yappy receiver any chance he got.
And on Monday, a stream of Redskins players and coaches were paraded in front of the cameras and microphones at Redskins Park to testify that Taylor had truly turned his life around for the better.
"The man changed his life," said running back Clinton Portis, his best friend and a former Miami teammate. "That man changed his mentality, changed his at ude. He came to work with a defined happiness."
But now, Sean Taylor will never come to work again. Never mind the impact of his loss on the football team, the last thing anyone ought to be thinking about at the moment. Instead, we need to focus on why this unspeakable tragedy happened and how we can keep it from happening to so many other young men soon to be attending rookie symposiums of their own.
If everything we're hearing about his life turnaround is true, surely Taylor would have been a marvelous speaker to show up at the 2008 session this spring. Maybe this time, when the man off stage shouts "FREEZE!!!!" everyone in the room will be thinking about truth, and consequences and surely paying a lot more attention
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...T2007112702001
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