A short, ungrammatical rumination on what it’s like for an old man to turn 21: here. Reminds us that Greg Oden and his sense of humor belong in the NBA for years to come, and reminds me that somehow this man is older than me.

Also worth checking out Oden’s blog post for the comments from fans – does a blog comment break down some barriers between athletes and fans? I think so.

New York Jets DE Shaun Ellis was just fined $10K by the NFL for throwing a gigantic snow chunk at Seahawks fans after the Jets’ loss Sunday. To be fair, Seahawks fans shouldn’t have been throwing snowballs at departing Jets players. Ellis’ move comes across just like he claims in this article: a funny response to overexcited fans.

Check out this YouTube clip of the sequence.

It’s almost as if the author of this crime was inspired by David Fleming’s recent ESPN the Magazine piece about violence against NFL players, which I blogged about here.

Anyway, someone decided to rob the New York Giants receiver Steve Smith (not to be confused with Carolina receiver Steve Smith or with another New York Giants receiver who recently shot himself in the leg) at gunpoint outside his townhouse in Clifton, N.J. Clifton isn’t anywhere near an oasis from crime, so that it happened there isn’t surprising, but Fleming’s article reads now as eerily prescient and at least raises questions about a copycat crime. Scary encounter for Smith. It happened about a week ago and was just reported now.

Read ESPN.com’s report here.

Dave Fleming and ESPN take a novel approach to a piece on the effect of Sean Taylor’s murder one year later. Read the full article on ESPN.com here.

Fleming writes his own introduction, but then gives way to a number of NFL players to share thoughts on security and fear in their own words. Many of these players are stars, including Taylor’s Washington Redskins teammate Clinton Portis and Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. These insights are fascinating and emotional. It’s important, obviously, to recognize that celebrity comes with a serious price, and that fans demand a level of intimacy with stars that would make many of us uncomfortable if we were in the stars’ position. Fleming’s article hinges on the juxtaposition of players’ lack of fear on the football field and their fear off it, which highlights well the psychological impact of Taylor’s death. The other players don’t just highlight theoretical fears – they share anecdotes, like Dunta Robinson’s account of his own armed robbery just months before Taylor’s death in a similar incident, or like Roethlisberger’s story of a gun being brandished in his face.

Now Roethlisberger only goes out with bodyguards, a move that recalls the story in the New York Times earlier this week about wealthy Mexicans and their fleets of bodyguards in that country with extreme disparities in wealth.

For all of his good work, well-geared to the magazine format, Fleming fails to take a critical look at issues of wealth and with the way that NFL players conduct themselves. He fails to examine the consistently-violent actions of Adam ‘Pacman’ Jones and their connection to home violence against NFL players. With NFL players increasingly finding themselves in crime blotters and on the front page of ESPN.com for their indiscretions, they’re making themselves look like public figures who don’t know how to handle celebrity. There’s a two-way street here, though I don’t in any way condone violence against NFL players or by NFL players. It’s all sad, including the economic disparity.

Read the article and enter the conversation.