What do Big Ben and Lawrence Taylor have in common?

[freddyg12]

man, this is a crazy thread!

I thought I'd just share my personal LT experience; he's from my hometown - Williamsburg, VA. I had a basketball coach in 5th grade that was one of LT's 3 best friends. My football & track coach coached LT & often talked about him. LT gave our program a lot of $, relatively speaking.

During my senior year, 86-7 the year the g-men beat the broncos & LT was mvp of the league I believe, he came to our school to speak. All of us on the football team got to attend, along w/a select group of a couple hundred that were invited, media included.

It was his first time ever talking about his drug addiction. He talked about overcoming his cocaine habit, which he essentially said sprang from having hundreds of dollars in his pocket & being bored, wanting to get the kind of high in the offseason he did from football. He seemed honestly changed to some degree, but was still short of humility. It almost seemed as if he was giving this speech in his hometown to fulfill a career PR obligation. I can't remember his words, but someone asked him about JOey T's leg, which he'd broken a year before. He answered in some crass manner. He seemed more upset about theiseman's leg when it actually happened though, I do remember that.

Anyway, Williamsburg over the years is much less proud of him than we are of Ron Springs and Bruce Hornsby. Not just his behavior, but his often arrogant attitude thereafter has been a turn off to a lot of people. Over the last 10 years or so it seemed he started to grow up. Nonetheless, this shouldn't surprise many people that are sports fans & familiar w/him.