To an Athlete Dying Young

In truth, it is unlikely that even football fans, at least those outside Miami or Washington, will remember Sean Taylor for very long. The murder of a star athlete has become too commonplace, and we are becoming sadly inured to these tragedies. What was the name of that Denver Broncos cornerback who was shot to death after leaving a New Year's Eve party in the first hours of this year? I had to look up the name of Darrent Williams. Or the name of that University of Miami star defensive lineman gunned down outside his apartment last fall as he returned from practice. A computer search yielded Bryan Pata.

I'm not looking to trivialize these tragedies—only to demonstrate that life (and death) in our country has already done so. I can recall the shock I felt in 1978 when 27-year-old Angels outfielder Lyman Bostock was killed by a shotgun blast while riding in a car in Gary, Ind. I can't pretend that we were innocents back then—not after the massacre of the Israel Olympians in Munich six years before. Still, in America, star athletes died of diseases or in car and plane crashes. It was not yet open season on them.

Today a Google tour of "athletes shot to death" bears abundant fruit: a 17-year-old Albuquerque high-school baseball player, who was organizing an anti-violence campaign at his school; a University of Memphis football player, while driving on campus; a University of Mississippi track star, found in his apartment with a bullet in his head during what investigators say was a robbery; a Baylor basketball player (a teammate was convicted of his murder); a Vanderbilt running back in a nightclub parking lot in Tampa; a former Red Sox prospect, during a carjacking of his SUV outside a Scottsdale, Ariz., nightclub; a Fairfield University football player on a night out in New York City. The list goes on and on—and that doesn't count those who are wounded or targets of armed robberies (or those athletes actually doing the shooting). Pata was only the unluckiest of three Miami Hurricanes involved in shooting incidents last season.

Miami was certainly a school where, for far too long, football players appeared to revel in the thug culture. Its teams brawled on the field and embraced militaristic fashion and language. And there is certainly evidence that, at least for some of the players, there was precious little distinction between all the posturing on the field and their behavior off it. Some of the program's most famous alums, like Ray Lewis and Michael Irvin and Sean Taylor, have had run-ins with the law. The school's unsavory reputation explains why the campus and the broader football community are so eager to embrace first-year coach Randy Shannon.

Shannon, a former player and defensive coordinator for Miami as well as a key contributor to three national championship teams, grew up on the city's toughest streets. While he is a man of few, carefully chosen words, he can talk the talk and walk the walk. Shannon's father was murdered when he was a teenager. He watched as his four older siblings surrendered their lives to drugs and other urban ravages. All that dying young was indisputably sad and inglorious. So both his life experience and his Miami experience have combined to dictate a new direction for the school's football program.

His new rules, as reported in a Sports Illustrated profile, are simple: no underclassmen living off campus. No upperclassmen living off campus if they don't maintain a 2.5 grade point average. No cell phones or hats in the football offices or meeting rooms. Meeting rooms are locked at the start of the meeting and won't be opened up for latecomers. Miss class, you ride the pine. Involved with guns, you are gone from the team.