A Brief Moment of Sincerity: on Kevin Everett and Why I'm a Sports Fan

During the playoffs this October, a couple buddies and I decided to head to the bar around the block to enjoy the game and have a couple beers in a communal setting. En route, we ran into one of our neighbors, who happened to be heading to the same place. Naturally, I asked him if he was going to watch the game as well. “No,” he responded, “I don’t pay much attention to commercial sports.” Overlooking the subtle dig he was throwing our way, being decked out in caps and jerseys flaunting our affiliations, I begrudgingly conceded he had a point.

It would be stupid of me to deny the creeping, unsettling influence of corporate dollars in all of our favorite games. While the influence of marketing money has provided for great changes in the availability and accessibility of games and highlights, it also causes many of the negative consequences that give professional sports a bad name, drive away fans, and cause my neighbor to look down on me and my friends for investing ourselves so deeply in the fortunes of our teams.

The last month or so has seen far too many examples of the negative side of sports rearing its ugly head. The murder of Sean Taylor, targeted for burglary simply because of the comfortable home his athletic prowess enabled him to purchase. December means the annual controversy over the BCS, which only seems to satisfy the greedy, well-remunerated conference chairmen and bowl commissioners. And last but certainly foremost, the release of the Mitchell Report on steroids, which only seems to confirm our worst suspicions about some of America’s most revered athletes.

I talked to Jordan for a little bit after our final the day the Mitchell Report was released. We gossiped about the names and the impact of these revelations on certain teams. On one of the darkest days in baseball history, most fans (including us) were discussing steroids like high school girls gossiping over who gave who a VD. There’s a sickening apathy behind our attitudes toward the nadir of sports.

But when I returned home, I found a pleasant surprise waiting
for me in my mailbox. A nice little reminder of why I put up with all the bullshit that sports throws at me. On the cover of SI, Bills tight end Kevin Everett stands, holding a football, proudly, defiantly, walking. Just walking.

You don’t have to follow sports so closely to understand the significance of the story, and I won’t rehash the details. I bet it even makes my curmudgeonly neighbor smile a little bit. But when you’ve been sifting through all the negativity, all the bullshit, and all the greed that big money seems to bring to pro sports, seeing Kevin Everett triumph over the possibility that he might never walk again means much more. That light is so much brighter after the darkness.

And it’s moments like these, where the little guy exceeds all our expectations, that keep me paying so much attention to commercial sports. Not every moment has to be tainted by the evil scepter of money. They’re there if you look hard enough. It’s the possibility of another Kevin Everett doing the unthinkable that keeps me going as a fan. It’s his grace and desire that makes me spew vitriol and make dirty jokes as a defense mechanism against the notion that most other athletes, especially the ones in the news, aren’t cut from the same cloth. Bless you, Kevin Everett. Your small steps in your fiancee’s arms mean so much more to the world of sports and to this embattled fan than you realize.