There's a good old fashioned inspiring sports profile in yesterday's Times: Greg Bishop writes about Jerrico Cotchery (here). Cotchery sounds like the anti-Redskin -- if only Dan Snyder would focus on players like him, rather than the big name free agents, maybe we'd become a likeable team again.Cotchery went to N. C. State and was drafted by the Jets in 2004. For several years he didn't get much playing time, but he's blossomed the past couple of years. Bishop says that Cotchery is a genuinely nice person: devoted to his family (he has 12 siblings and they now travel together to see some of his games), very devoted to his wife, humble, and wanting to give back to society (via a foundation that he and his wife started).
Reading about Cotchery is refreshing in light of so much sports coverage focusing on players' misdeeds and in light of the ESPN's (and television's, in general) tendency to focus all their attention on the loudest, showiest players -- Terrell Owens being the ultimate example, but I am thinking also Brett Favre (who with the recurring retirement sagas seems even more of a diva than T.O.), Chad Ochocinco, and Braylon Edwards (who ironically will now be Cotchery's teammate after being traded from the Browns this week).
He is a guy who sounds like he appreciates what a blessing it is to play a game for a living. He reminds me to appreciate my own job and to work hard and be humble.
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Now, as for the football field this weekend: Virginia's beating Indiana 14-0 in the second quarter (it's a drizzly day but a good football temperature); Virginia Tech absolutely crushed Boston College, and the one national upset so far is that Arkansas beat Auburn.
