I wish more athletes were like Warrick Dunn. This is a good read.
http://www.sportsline.com/columns/story/10882420/1If you are tired of all the criminals, turds, jerkoffs, whack jobs, hit-n-runners, dope fiends, parole board junkies, contract squabblers, hooligans, hoodlums and hos, the Jeremy Shockeys, or the HGH hobbyists who now seem to dominate sports and fandom, I offer the perfect antidote: Warrick Dunn.
"Please don't portray me as some sort of perfect person," said Dunn in a telephone interview with me. "I hate that. I'm not perfect."
No one is. Except Prisco.
Still, if you were to pick an athlete who is the closest facsimile you couldn't do better than Dunn.
Dunn was just recently inducted into the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame, joining such legendary names as Tom Landry, David Robinson, Arthur Ashe and Jackie Robinson. The honorary chair of the organization is President George H.W. Bush, who replaced the previous honorary chair, President Gerald R. Ford.
Not bad company for Dunn, eh?
So for once this column will be a jerk-free zone.
This isn't solely about Dunn's indoctrination or the award he received some months ago for his work with the Warrick Dunn Foundation, which so far has awarded over 70 single parents with 192 children down payments to purchase their first homes.
This is more about Dunn being on his way out of the NFL and what the game -- and sports -- will miss once he's gone.
And also what he has to say about today's athletes.
In March, Dunn signed again with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where he spent most of his career. I believe this is Dunn's final season in football.
It is always interesting to speak with someone like Dunn, with his kind of smarts and historical perspective, when he's on his way out the door.
Dunn made it clear he still likes the overall state of the NFL specifically and sports in general. To Dunn, sports remain a vehicle that underprivileged kids can use to better their financial circumstances and end the calcified and cadaverous cancer that is poverty.
"A lot of young black athletes come from poor neighborhoods and use sports as a way to better their lives," said Dunn.
Yet there are things that truly bother Dunn when he looks around the NFL.
"It's not the same," he said. "When I came in, my generation was different. We respected the guys who came before us. I learned about the guys who paved the way. Now you have a lot of young guys who don't care about the past. They couldn't name some of the past great players. They (couldn't) care less."
While it's difficult to say that athletes in other sports seem to have more of a connection with their past than those in football, I have witnessed too many young NFL players who are just flat out indifferent about past generations.
That doesn't seem to be the case in baseball and definitely not in the NBA. I was pleasantly surprised by how upon signing in Boston, star Kevin Garnett instantly embraced Bill Russell and Russell's legacy.
I think the mass indifference of young NFL players to the past is why the crisis with older players becoming financially destitute was allowed to linger mostly unnoticed for so long. If younger players cared more about the players who came before them they would have put more pressure on the union and league to do something more.
Dunn has witnessed something else he would like to change among the younger players: a lack of professionalism.
Dunn doesn't blanket the entire generation of young players. But he has seen enough to concern him.
"You have to be a true professional," said Dunn, one of only 22 players in NFL history to rush for over 10,000 yards. "Don't act like an a-hole. There are too many guys who act like that. I've seen too many guys who just want money and power.
"Some of these guys don't embrace a strong work ethic. I played with Trent Dilfer. He won't go down as one of the greatest quarterbacks ever but he worked his tail off. Not a lot of young players have that kind of attitude."
How did Dunn become one of football's most trusted and respected players? How did he avoid intimate familiarity with the judicial system?
"I surrounded myself with people who were driven," he said. "I had people in my life that didn't care what I did. I treated people the same way I'd want to be treated. I have my faults. I've made my share of mistakes but I've always tried to live right."
You would have to say Dunn has been fairly successful doing just that.
If only many other athletes could do the same.
