Steve McNair was absolutely my favorite quarterback of all-time. Me and the great BumpCity were watching BET late one night when I saw McNair, then of Alcorn State, do things that I didn’t think were possible on the football field. I rooted for him as much as possible (being that I am a Jets fan) and I was broken-hearted when his Tennessee Titans came 1 yard short of tying the Super Bowl in 2000 and lost to the St. Louis Rams.
Then I heard over the weekend that McNair and a woman that was not his wife were shot and killed in his condo (despite the fact that Steve was married with 4 kids) and all I could think of was Sam Cooke.
Sam Cooke had the single most beautiful voice of any male singer in recorded history. Switching back and forth being gospel and rhythm and blues like an ambidextrous NBA point guard, Cooke was on top of both games simultaneously. He also, legendarily, had the Lil Wayne disease of wanting to, ahem, know every girl in the world.
Also a married father, Cooke checked into LA’s Hacienda Motel on December 11, 1964 for a little action with a woman named Lisa Boyer who apparently robbed him. Furious, Cooke demanded that hotel clerk Bertha Franklin tell him the whereabouts of Boyer-and his pants and underwear. Things got ugly. Sam’s last words ever were “Lady, you shot me!”
Al Green’s still alive, thank God-literally. The “other” Reverend Al wasn’t cheating on his own wife with Mary Woodson back in 1974; they were both cheating on Woodson’s husband.
When the “Love and Happiness“, “Let’s Stay Together” singer refused to marry Woodson, she threw a pan of boiling hot grits on him while he was in the shower causing third degree burns on his back, stomach and arms. Woodson then reportedly shot herself with Al’s gun, committing suicide, and Al Green became an ordained minister.
Since Steve McNair was shot multiple times and the woman he was with was shot only once and there was a gun found nearby, the case is being treated as a murder-suicide.
This is one of those instances when the moral of the story is the story itself.
