|
MIAMI -- Be it player, coach or team executive, everybody who gets to the Super Bowl has his own story of how he traveled to the NFL's biggest game. No two roads are quite the same. But I can't imagine how anyone's journey could possibly have been more meaningful than that of Chicago's Rashied Davis. You probably know that Davis is the former four-year Arena League veteran who made the Bears roster in 2005 as a 26-year-old undrafted rookie cornerback, and that this season he was switched to receiver. You might even remember him for that game-turning, 30-yard overtime catch that, in essence, won the Bears' the divisional round playoff game against Seattle. But Davis' saga isn't just a tale of how an overlooked player rose to the challenge of competing on football's grandest stage. He didn't just come from a different league to the NFL. He came from almost a different world, somehow surviving and prospering amid a childhood that was touched more than once by gang-related violence in the infamous neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles. Of all the players and coaches I've talked to here this week at Super Bowl XLI, Davis has the story I'll long remember, well after the details of the game have faded and been replaced by other short-lived memories. He tells it almost dispassionately, but I'm sure it didn't feel that way when he was living it. He lost his father, Marion, at the age of 8 in 1987, when he was murdered by gang members while on a bike going through a drive-through lane at a fast-food restaurant near the family's home in Lynnwood. (The crime prompted California to pass a law requiring citizens to be in a vehicle in the drive-through lane). He lost an older brother, Delion Jamerson, in a 2000 car accident, shortly after Delion had visited him at San Jose State; and a beloved aunt, Bertha Lee, died the year before. Most of his six brothers -- he is the fifth oldest sibling of nine -- were in gangs, and once upon a time, just the act of walking down the street was a risky endeavor. "I guess I have beaten some pretty big odds,'' said Davis, speaking more so of the challenges of his early life than the unlikelihood of his football career as a 5-8, 183-pound receiver. "Football is kind of my oasis away from the troubles of this world. Life is so hard as it is. Football is not real life. You can really get hurt, but it's not the real world.'' We could all use a bit more of that kind of perspective, especially this week, when the Super Bowl once again gets built up to larger-than-life status. Davis knows the difference between the hype and what life is really like after this week is over, and because of it, I think I've detected a bemused look on his face at times. How are you going to shake him up with nothing more than the build-up to a big football game? The worlds of South Central and South Beach are a long ways apart, and he knows no one else has come to this week with just his vantage point. Naturally he wants to win on Sunday against the Colts, and add a Super Bowl ring to the two Arena Bowl rings he owns, but he's smart enough to know that he has won already.
Don Banks covers pro football for SI.com.
| 
