One of Steve McNair’s greatest professional moments will be the way he navigated the Tennessee Titans on a potentially game-tying drive in Super Bowl XXXIV. The Titans fell just one yard short of scoring a touchdown that would have sent the game into overtime and could have given McNair a one-way ticket to football immortality as a winning Super Bowl quarterback.

Elusive and almost invincible, McNair had spent the entire season leading up to football’s biggest game fighting injuries and proving his mettle as he led the Titans to their first Super Bowl appearance in franchise history. Fans were amazed as McNair and the Titans erased a 16-point deficit and, with less than two minutes in the game, attempted to beat the heavily-favored St. Louis Rams. However, Kevin Dyson, the receiver who caught McNair’s last-ditch pass, was tackled inches short of the goal line. The look on McNair’s face that January night in 2000 conveyed that he’d give anything to get one more chance to get what he wanted.

In the aftermath of McNair’s shocking and brutal murder, we’re left wondering how much his desire to have it all on the field carried over into his personal life. Athletically-gifted, well-respected, and presumably financially-stable, McNair seemed to have it all. A father of four sons, he married his college sweetheart, who just happened to have been crowned Miss Alcorn State as he was breaking records and barriers as the star quarterback at the tiny black college. The two were pretty much considered royalty at the school, in his Mississippi hometown and throughout the Nashville community where they lived during his NFL career.

Yet McNair dipped out on his queen, trading quality time at their palace for dalliances with a commoner. Perhaps we’ll never know the true state of the McNair marriage, but we do know this: Mechelle McNair had graduated from college and, even though her boyfriend had been a Heisman Trophy runner-up and third overall pick in the 1995 NFL Draft, she chose to work as a nurse in a Nashville hospital, often tending to him at home as he dealt with injury after injury. We’re now finding out that Sahel Kazemi, McNair’s 20-year-old mistress, was leading a troubled life. Young and naïve, she really believed McNair would leave his wife for her and, although she was “the other woman,” apparently became enraged when she suspected McNair might be cheating on her. A high school dropout, Kazemi left her Florida hometown to live in Nashville with a boyfriend, with whom she dumped after hooking up with McNair earlier this year. A waitress at Dave & Buster’s, Kazemi even thought she could afford to pay a car note on her Kia as well as the Escalade McNair “bought” her for her 20th birthday just weeks ago. Days before her apparent suicide, she was posting furniture on Craigslist to get extra cash and had even been arrested for driving under the influence.

Sadly, it seems that both McNair and Kazemi were always yearning for something more, seeking what they thought they needed to finally be happy. My initial reaction to McNair’s tragic death was one of disappointment that a married man would cheat on his wife. But I know that we all have flaws so that disappointed turned to sadness. An avid sports fan, I remember hearing about “Air McNair,” the nickname given to McNair as he put black college football on the mainstream map. As a student at an HBCU, I beamed with pride when McNair was drafted and wanted to see him do well, especially considering the tough road black quarterbacks before him had to travel. While easily accepted in various positions in football, the role of quarterback seemed too cerebral for blacks, yet McNair was able to debunk the myths.

Injuries caused McNair to retire last year at just 35, but I was hoping he’d be one of those former players who could parlay their knowledge of the game into a career in broadcasting or at the very least, be an ambassador to the game in which he so excelled for years and years to come.

But McNair’s desire to engage in an extramarital affair resulted in his deadly undoing. The sports fan in me is sad that a master of the game is gone too soon, but the married wife in me is angered that a widow has to wonder just how real her marriage was. Infidelity is never easy to deal with, but I can’t imagine how Mechelle McNair must be handling the fact that her dirty laundry is hanging for all to see as she deals with the loss of her husband. Whispers about affairs will eventually bother even the most confidant woman, but to see pictures of your husband parasailing with his side girl posted on TMZ.com, well, that gives an entirely new meaning to the definition of “angry black woman.”

Steve McNair will be laid to rest shortly, but the rumors, questions and accusations will likely never die. He was reportedly shot in his sleep, crashing out in a barely-furnished “bachelor pad” he rented with a friend as his wife was in their $3 million home six miles away. Despite his phenomenal sports career and philanthropic ways, McNair may best be remembered for his philandering – a sad and senseless ending to a remarkable life. By:Monica Lewis Wilborn

Forwomenonline.com