Priest Holmes, the superb running back for the Kansas City Chiefs in the early 2000s, would shake his head every time we talked about postgame interviews. The whole thing just didn�t make any sense to him. Holmes was no taller than 5-foot-9, by midseason he probably weighed 200 pounds, he wasn�t exceptionally fast by football standards. He had blown out one knee, blew it out again, got his hip knocked out of joint and had been hit so hard he was not sure how he made it to the sidelines.....................After a game, he would need a half hour of massage and an hour in a hot tub just to feel something close to human again. This is not unique. This is football.

�Do you have any idea what kind of mental state I have to get myself into to play a game?� he would ask.

�No,� I would say.

�It�s pretty extreme,� he said. �It�s like I have to become another person. It�s like I have to become a warrior. We all do.�

.....................Then he would smile and shake his head and say, �And then, five minutes after the game ends, y�all are asking us questions about how we feel and what did we think of this play, and what�s it like to lose, and we�re supposed to talk like none of that just happened.�

.......... I have no idea what Richard Sherman has to do to himself to play professional football at the level he plays it. I have no idea what his state of mind must be like when he�s trying to match up to the violence of the moment. When Priest Holmes would finish games, he would almost never come out to his locker to talk. Sometimes, though, I would wait for him. An hour, an hour and a half. Sometimes two. The locker room would be empty. The equipment guys would ask me to turn out the lights when I left. Finally, he would limp out, and he would walk over to his locker, and he would slowly put on his clothes. And we would talk.

�I don�t see how those guys do it,� he would say of the players who had already spoken to the press. �If I had to talk right after the game, I�d say the craziest things you�ve ever heard.�


have you paid your dues, can you moan the blues, can you bend them guitar strings