My mama had found out that the last flight to Minnesota was boarding in 10 minutes. She and my dad live 30 minutes from the airport. The doctors kept asking me if I was coming right away. It was at least a 16-hour drive. The next flight wasn't until 6 a.m. How was I going to get there?

A little after 10 p.m., I called [Vikings medical services coordinator] Fred Zamberletti and asked, "Doesn't [team owner] Red McCombs have a jet?" Fred told me they were working on it. Twenty minutes later, Randy Moss' agent called to tell me to get to the airport, that a plane would be waiting for me. Later, when Randy went back to the hospital, team officials told him the Vikings were working on a plane. He told them, "It's already done."

When the plane landed in Minneapolis, there was no car for me to get to Mankato. A friend in Minneapolis, my neighbor, picked me up. We drove for about an hour and a half. The storm was bad. Nothing but lightning. No rain, just lightning. I kept thinking, "Korey, hold on."

I finally got to the hospital around 3 a.m. The hospital administrator at the front desk said, "Come with me." Neither one of us spoke on the elevator. Mike Tice, Korey's line coach, was waiting for me. I said, "How is he?" Mike turned me around so I could see the pastor walking toward me. Then he said, "We lost him." All I said was "Okay." But I kept thinking, "Oh, my God." And God was there. I was in a serious car accident when I was 14. Ever since, I've had a different perception of death: It's the people around the dying person that make it bad, not the person himself. The person is gone, that's the one concrete thing. Everything else just goes round and round.
(from Aug 6th issue of ESPN the Magazine)

I've read this story from ESPN the magazine a couple of times today. The first time I read it, I really felt like a $100 million dollar wrongful death lawsuit was incredibly selfish for Mrs. Stringer to ask for. The more I read it, the more i get this weird feeling. It just seems like she's being really really selfish, but the fact that it involves a death makes it almost unethical to question her motives. When she complains about them not providing a jet, or providing a car in Minneapolis, you just can't wonder why she feels as though she's so special that she deserves this VIP service. Her flight from Florida had to land in Minneapolis because of a storm; how can she complain that the Vikings' didn't provide a car? This whole story/situation is just weird to me. I personally don't feel as though the Vikings owe her $100 million dollars; i wonder how much it would have been if they'd just had a car waiting for her in Minneapolis?

On a side note: there's a great letter to the editor in the UD. it says everything i want to say about athletics vs. academics