And then he's gone.Corey Smith was a professional football player. He played here in Detroit. When journalists entered the locker room after a Lions game, they scattered to get quotes. Now and then they went to Smith. I did it. I did it without thinking. I played my role, Smith played his. A notepad. A question. An answer.And then he's gone.
The beating began when he was 7 years old. His father, a drunk, would whack him with the back of his hand. He would scream insults. "You're no good!""You're stupid!" He would hit the boy's sisters, as well. Worst of all, he would hit their mother, his wife, over and over, night after night. He would split her lip. He would smack her forehead until she bled. She never spoke of it. And so the boy never spoke of it. And the shame began to bubble inside him.
I hear a knock. I open my door. Look who's come a-Christmas caroling with their own personal spin Striking Hollywood writers do "Joy to the World":Joy to the world, we're still on strikeLet reruns fill the aiiiir!Let every week of "Heroes"Look like last week of "Heroes"Let "CSI" go away"Grey's Anatomy" go grayThen maybe, just maaaay-beWe'll get our payTony Romo and Jessica Simpson duet on her being a distraction with "Baby, It's Cold Outside":You really can't stay (baby, it's cold outside)
It is wrong and harmful and we should all be ashamed of ourselves and I guess I'm going to keep writing it until I'm the last person in this business saying it. This glorifying of high school recruits has got to stop.Last week was Signing Day for college football, which used to be a date known only to coaches. Today, it is cause for endless TV coverage, mountains of newsprint and an Internet gone wild. What's changed? Nothing and everything.The nothing part is that a high school kid picks a college.The everything is everything else.
TAMPA - Got it. Held it. Count it. This Super Bowl was always going to come down to a pass and catch. You sensed that going in. But until the final minute, that story was being inked as Kurt Warner to Larry Fitzgerald, the amazing duo from the desert who had electrified the NFL playoffs and turned the two of them into household names. Their tandem had been quiet most of the night, but they exploded in the fourth quarter with a fade touchdown to pull within six points, and an over the middle 64-yard dagger that put the Cardinals up for the first time with less than three minutes to go.
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
