Until
November 26th, their only link was a shared name and sport of choice. Sadly,
though, Taylor Bradford of the Memphis Tigers and Sean Taylor of the Washington
Redskins will now forever be linked for having been shot and killed during the
2007 football season.
See Frank Murtaugh’s account at “Sports Beat”.
• Until
November 26th, their only link was a shared name and sport of choice. Sadly,
though, Taylor Bradford of the Memphis Tigers and Sean Taylor of the Washington
Redskins will now forever be linked for having been shot and killed during the
2007 football season. Which is actually a troubling connection, in my eyes. Why
do murder victims need to be elite athletes for us to pay attention to gun
violence in this country? And if the connection is going to be made, what might
the sports world do to help the problem?
Here’s a
radical idea. (If young men being shot and killed before their 30th birthday
doesn’t merit a few radical thoughts, I’m not sure what does.) Instead of a
league (or college conference) “mourning” with a victim’s family and fans by
dutifully playing the next scheduled games — the show must go on, we’re told —
why not blackout the games league wide for a day, and capture the attention of a
nation all too willing to find the next news item after another young person has
been killed by gunfire?
This
will never happen, of course. Too much money to lose. (And don’t doubt for an
instant the variable team owners and athletic directors consider first when
making this kind of decision.) But just consider the impact it might have, if
thousands — millions? — of sports fans were forced to take pause and consider
the epidemic of gun violence in our country. To weigh the importance of the Big
Game, relative to a human life. To not simply see another athlete fill the role
of the fallen victim, with a black patch on his uniform to pay “tribute.”
The real
tribute men like Taylor Bradford and Sean Taylor deserve is more attention given
to the plague gun violence has become. If their higher profiles might help
remove a few guns from the hands of people with no business carrying them,
they’d have a bigger win than any they ever experienced on the gridiron.
• Junior
safety Brandon Patterson has been an integral part of the 2007 Memphis Tiger
football team, now headed for the New Orleans Bowl on December 21st. Patterson
is second only to Jake Kasser in tackles and has three interceptions to his
credit. But last week he became a different kind of star. Patterson was named a
second-team Academic All-America by ESPN the Magazine. According to U of M
athletic media-relations director Jennifer Rodrigues, Patterson is the first
Tiger to earn such an honor in 15 years. A native of Germantown, Patterson holds
a 3.7 GPA and is working toward a master’s degree in business administration.
He’s worthy of applause.
• Those
in favor of a playoff system for the highest level of college football are going
to have a field day over the next month. When both the number-one (Missouri) and
number-two (West Virginia) teams in the country lost last Saturday, the
floodgates opened for at least eight teams that could claim as much right to a
“national-championship game” berth as the other seven. The only undefeated team
in the country — Hawaii — is ranked 10th by the AP poll, not even among the
eight teams I see as worthy of a shot (though not what amounts to a two-round
bye in a playoff system) at the national championship. LSU and Ohio State will
face each other for the BCS title. But convince me they’ve had better seasons
than Oklahoma (the Big 12 champ and twice conquerors of Missouri), Georgia
(10-2, hottest team in the SEC, including the Bayou Bengals), Kansas (one loss,
compared with LSU’s two), Southern Cal (10-2, Pac 10 champs), Missouri (two
losses to Oklahoma are no worse a blemish than LSU’s one loss to Kentucky), or
West Virginia (their loss to Pitt was the biggest fluke in a season of flukes).
All we
need to fix this mess is a three-week playoff, with the eight teams above
playing quarterfinals and semifinals at traditional bowl sites, then the BCS
championship game for a winner-take-all. Here’s hoping the Rainbow Warriors put
a whuppin’ on Georgia in the Sugar Bowl and LSU beats Ohio State. Tell an
undefeated team another club is champion with two losses, because I couldn’t.
About six hours after University of Memphis football player Taylor Bradford was shot outside the Carpenter Complex on Poplar Ave. September 30th, approximately 4,500 students received a mysterious text message.
It didn’t say there had been a murder, just that classes would be canceled the following day and advised students to watch the news. It also listed a hotline number that students could call for more information.
“I woke up with my phone beeping at 4 a.m.,” says U of M student Chris Hayden. “They sent out another one later in the morning. I think it was effective because I would have had no other way of knowing classes were cancelled.”
But some students think the update from tigerText, the school’s subscription text-messaging alert system, was sent too late. The student government passed a resolution earlier this month condemning the university for failing to send information immediately after the shooting.
Students also have complained that due to spam filters used by certain cell phone service providers, some tigerText subscribers didn’t get the message at all.
“I understand their frustration,” says Derek Myers, University Police deputy director. “I think in the future, we’ll send out a breaking-news alert over the tigerText system just saying something like, ‘we’re investigating a shooting at Zach Curlin and Central.'”
Myers says the school has created an advisory committee for student input on how future situations should be handled. He says they’re also working on how to overcome spam filters.
“We’re working with the vendor, and they’re talking to various cell phone companies to make sure there’s no more problems with spam filters,” Myers says. “I got my message in five seconds, but others did not get the message at all.”
The day after the homicide, university officials passed out flyers urging students to sign up for tigerText at tigerText.memphis.edu. Since October 1st, more than 2,000 additional students have signed up for the service, bringing the total number of subscribers to almost 7,000.
Originally tigerText was intended for alerting students of class cancellations due to inclement weather, but the Bradford murder was the first situation in which the system was used.
“It seems that young people all have cell phones with them 24 hours a day, and they’re texting like crazy,” says Curt Guenther, U of M’s director of communications. “Colleges are realizing they need to change with the times. E-mail is almost passé.”
Besides evaluating the school’s alert system, Myers says the university is adding more security cameras and emergency phones following last month’s homicide.
“We’re actually down about 18 percent in our overall crime numbers, but the perception is that crime is up,” Myers says.
U of M student Matt Tubinis says he feels pretty safe on campus.
“The Carpenter Complex doesn’t really feel like it’s on-campus,” Tubinis says. “It’s not like somebody got shot by the fountain [in the middle of campus].”
Memphis Police announced Monday afternoon that three people have been arrested in connection with the September 30th murder of University of Memphis athlete Taylor Bradford.
DaeShawn Tate (21), Victor Trezevant (21), and Courtney Washington (22) were charged with murder in perpetration of an attempted robbery. Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin wouldn’t release many details due to the ongoing investigation, but he did say police believe the men were trying to rob Bradford at the time of his death.
“They believed he had something they wanted,” says Godwin. The police director said the robbery attempt was unsuccessful.
Earlier this week, Tunica County Sheriff Larry Liddell reported that Bradford may have won several thousand dollars at a Tunica casino the weekend of his murder. Memphis Police will not discuss details of the casino trip due to the ongoing investigation.
Though the three men in custody are not U of M students, Godwin says possible future arrests in the case may involve students.
Bianca Phillips
A few
not-so-random thoughts from the world of sports:
• I
admire coach Tommy West and the University of Memphis football program for the
strength they showed in playing last week’s game against Marshall, as
scheduled, in the aftermath of Taylor Bradford’s murder. The marching band’s
rendition of “Amazing Grace” at halftime may have been the most poignant
moment I’ve experienced at the Liberty Bowl.
I
strongly disagree with the decision to play less than 48 hours after a member
of the team was shot and killed, but if three hours in helmets and pads in
front of 25,000 friends helped ease the pain, even briefly, the effort was
worthwhile.
It’s
now the responsibility of the U of M administration, of course, to be
proactive in raising awareness about gun violence in Memphis. Our flagship
educational enterprise simply must focus attention on this city’s single most
damning weakness. However isolated or “targeted” the administration considers
Bradford’s murder, guns taking the lives of young Memphians is epidemic. The
university owes this larger battle (and far more than a football game) to the
memory of Taylor Bradford.
•
Having caught my first glimpse of the 2007-08 Memphis Grizzlies at last week’s
public “Lunch Time” scrimmage, I’ve got a name for you: Casey Jacobsen. Mike
Conley and Darko Milicic will be popular new faces at FedExForum and will play
large roles in determining how close this team is to playoff contention. But
the sharp shooting Jacobsen — a college star at Stanford who cut his pro teeth
in Europe — is going to be among the most popular Grizzlies in the season
ahead.
• Can
SEC football get any better? The 12th-ranked Georgia Bulldogs go to Tennessee,
ready to put a beat-down on the sagging Vols, having won their last three
games in Knoxville. Instead, UT discovers it can run the ball and whips the
Dawgs by 21 in a game that wasn’t that close.
Then a
few hours later, top-ranked LSU finds itself on the ropes against the
defending national champions, only to rally with one fourth-down conversion
after another, scoring the winning touchdown with less than two minutes to
play. Don’t bet against these Tigers the rest of the season. (And how many
Mid-South football fans were shedding tears over Florida being eliminated from
the national-title hunt the first week in October?)
•
Tradition will take a beating in the National League Championship Series later
this week. The senior circuit’s two historical whipping boys — the Cubs and
Phillies — both went down in three-game sweeps, and at the hands of two clubs
(the Diamondbacks and Rockies, respectively) that weren’t playing baseball as
recently as 1992.
Consider these “historical” factoids. The greatest player in Arizona history —
the currently hobbled Randy Johnson — has pitched in more games as a Mariner
than he has as a Diamondback. In 10 years of baseball, Arizona has changed its
uniform design more often than the St. Louis Cardinals have in 116 years. As
for the Rockies, they aim to reach their first World Series having still never
finished atop their division. Bless the wild card.
Even
with tradition out the window, the NLCS will be a healthy introduction for
many fans to some of the best young players never seen east of the Rocky
Mountains. Colorado’s Matt Holliday (.340 batting average, 36 homers, 137
RBIs) is — with Philadelphia’s Jimmy Rollins — one of two viable NL MVP
candidates. Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki (.291, 24, 99) is a likely
Rookie of the Year winner. And rightfielder Brad Hawpe (.291, 29, 116) could
stand — in full uniform — at Times Square and not be recognized.
As for
Arizona, reigning Cy Young winner Brandon Webb (18 wins, 3.01 ERA) would be
making commercials if he played in New York, and centerfielder Chris Young (32
homers at age 23) will be a perennial All-Star by 2010.
So
forget the uniforms, the swimming pool in one ballpark and a humidor in the
other. (Mark this down: If Colorado wins the pennant, we’ll see the first snow
delay in World Series history.) Sit back and enjoy some great baseball.
• How
does a King lose his kingdom? He starts by wearing the opponent’s baseball cap
to a playoff game in Cleveland. How tone-deaf must LeBron James be to show up
at Jacobs Field in a Yankees lid? Here’s a thought for the next time the
Bombers come to Ohio for a game, LeBron: Yankee boxers.
I
realized a dream come true last weekend, courtesy the game of football. And I
came crashing back to reality Monday, with football merely the conduit for pain
an entire community must now endure.
I never
got to meet Taylor Bradford, the University of Memphis football player shot and
killed Sunday night on the U of M campus. But Tiger football is a part of my
life — both casually and professionally — every fall, and has been since I
started writing this column more than five years ago. So it’s a loss in the
family, even if extended.
That
dream I mentioned? A friend and I drove to Dallas last Saturday, with our
pilgrimage to Texas Stadium — almost 30 years in the making — central to our
Sunday plans. As children of the Seventies, Johnny G and I have carried Cowboy
blue and silver in our veins since Roger Staubach first bridged the gap between
comic-book hero and flesh-and-blood role model. From the Tom Landry statue —
every bit as rigid as its late subject was over his 29 years as Cowboy coach —
to the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (their pregame kick line from one
25-yard-line to the other rivals any the Rockettes have ever performed), the
experience made for an afternoon of goose bumps for two Memphians. And that was
before the 28-point victory over St. Louis had been completed.
Over the
drive back from Dallas — 500 miles allow for some serious reflecting, even on
the subject of football — I had some thoughts on the difference between football
in Cowboy country and the variety we know, love, and suffer here in the
Mid-South with the hometown Tigers. A professional orange to a college apple,
you might argue, but within the same pigskin realm. The contrast is dramatic, to
say the least.
But then
the crash. Then reality. Then murder in Memphis.
We
sportswriters aren’t deserving of the soapbox other journalists often stand upon
when it comes to society’s ills. Our job is to report scores, describe heroes,
identify trends — on offense, defense, and in between — that shape the way we
spend our down time. That’s what sports provide: a distraction. Until the
distraction is bloodied by the same horrid reality we all — journalists and real
movers and shakers — must confront when the worst in us seizes the headlines.
Time and
a criminal investigation will provide the details in Bradford’s murder. But
here’s one variable that won’t be affected, regardless of the investigation’s
details: no 21-year-old college junior should be dead having found himself on
the wrong end of a gun. Which brings me to my unwanted soapbox this week.
When
will we finally get it? When will we — Memphians, Americans, human beings —
realize that guns are destroying our freedoms, and not protecting them? That
guns turn grievances — minor and otherwise — into capital crimes? That guns in
the hands of young people are tragedy on a stopwatch? That people don’t kill
people, not without weapons, and that guns are the weapon of choice for most
killers?
Taylor
Bradford certainly had dreams. Maybe he dreamed of playing in Texas Stadium one
day (in a Cowboy uniform or otherwise). He certainly dreamed of closing the gap
between football as Dallas fans know it and the football Memphis fans recognize.
A track-and-field star at Antioch High School in Nashville, Bradford had come to
focus on football, and took it seriously enough to transfer from Samford
University to Memphis, where he could play for a program that would fulfill an
athletic dream. Most tragically, Bradford was a dream realized — all by himself
— for Jimmie and Marva Bradford, parents who now must find a way not to hate the
word Memphis, forget whatever football is played here.
The
Tigers will apparently play Marshall University Tuesday night at the Liberty
Bowl, as originally scheduled. The game will be televised on ESPN2. Marshall’s
football program, of course, is most famous for having been rebuilt from the
horror of a plane crash that killed in the entire team in 1970. I don’t imagine
there will be much excitement in the voice of your television analysts at
kickoff.
The game
shouldn’t be played. If it means forfeiting to Marshall, that’s what Tiger coach
Tommy West should do. Football should draw us to society’s margins, where we can
cheer, laugh, even boo events that don’t really matter. Whether performed in the
glow of a stadium that has seen five Super Bowl champions or in an oversized
arena clinging to life as a viable community asset, football should be that fun
distraction a society craves.
A
football player murdered? A human being murdered? The game stops. No time for
distractions.
Memphis Police officials have developed two possible suspects, both believed to be male, in the Sunday night shooting of 21-year-old University of Memphis football player Taylor Bradford.
At a press conference Monday afternoon, police director Larry Godwin wouldn’t discuss any possible motives, but only that the investigation in ongoing.
U of M police director Bruce Harber said the shooting may have occurred inside the Carpenter Complex, a gated apartment complex for students. Gates are programmed to only allow residents’ cars, but Harber says it’s possible that the assailants came in on foot or they may have followed Bradford’s car inside the gates.
Bradford was discovered when U of M police responded to a car wreck on Zach Curlin near Central at 9:47 p.m. Sunday night. Bradford had apparently attempted to leave the scene of the shooting in a two-door Lincoln Town Coupe but struck a tree.
Campus officials didn’t know the football player had been shot until paramedics arrived on the scene. Bradford was taken to the Med, where he later died. There were no reports of gunshots called into campus police last night, but Harber says several witnesses later said “they’d heard something.”
Ironically, police say Bradford had attended a campus safety meeting earlier in the evening.
Godwin and Harber are asking anyone with information to call the MPD homicide department at 545-5300. Godwin is also asking the Memphis City Council to add this crime to their reward program, in which witnesses who provide information that leads to solving this crime will receive $500,000.
— Bianca Phillips
AP — A student football player at the University of Memphis was fatally shot late Sunday on the campus of the school.
Police say that defensive lineman, Taylor Bradford, was shot around 10 p.m. Sunday in the parking lot of the Carpenter student and athlete apartment complex on Central Avenue, right across from the campus.
Bradford told one of his friends that he needed to go back to the apartment to get some keys, and that’s when police say a gunman shot him. Bradford got back into his car and drove one block where he crashed into a tree.
Medics took him to the hospital where he later died.
The university put the dorms on lockdown after the shooting took place.
No suspects have been arrested in connection with Bradford’s murder.
Bradford was a junior transfer from Samford University. He worked as a member of the Tigers defensive scout team last season, but had not played this season.
Earlier Sunday night, Bradford stopped by all the sorority houses with his fraternity brothers to encourage all the sororities to participate in an upcoming fraternity event in order to promote diversity.
Right after the incident, students stood in sweatshirts, hugging and some crying outside Carpenter Complex and in Central parking lot, confused about what was going on.
“Taylor was my brother,” Bradford’s friend and fraternity brother Will Terrell told the University of Memphis Daily Helmsman by phone from the hospital. “We will miss him dearly. He will be remembered. He loved to play football. He loved his family, he loved his friends and he loved Kappa. He was always full of innovation and ideas. If you were around him, you were going to have a good time.”