Make Time for a Good Story: Stephen Nicholas

The Internet is great and vast and wonderful. It has spawned blogs and communities and social networks and all sorts of fun and entertaining crap. Most of the time, I pen this blog with an eye toward the lighter side of sports and capturing the emotions – mature or otherwise – of an everyday (albeit somewhat fanatical) sports fan.

One of the occasional (temporary) downsides of all this content, and the overall style and tonality of the majority of the sports blogosphere, is that we can miss the real stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with WAGs and top 10 lists and sports movie quotes and all that – we still love all that s%$t. But, sometimes, we’re so caught up in scouring through all the tongue-in-cheek stuff that we overlook the stories that demand a little more telling.

So, in case this condition has befallen you as it has me, here’s one of those needs-to-be-told stories. Tucked into an NFC South blog post by Pat Yasinkas on ESPN.com this past weekend was a “Father’s Day story” about Stephen Nicholas. Taking you through the synopsis and all the pieces will detract from the piece, so I won’t do it.

The point is I’d never heard of Nicholas. Needless to say, I’m now a fan. I also walked away from the article with even more respect for Mr. Blank and the Falcons organization, a franchise that may not have a tradition of winning, but, one that by all accounts, has a penchant for human empathy. Too often they’ve probably been mocked for what may have befallen them because of that trait that some may characterize as weakness. They shouldn’t be.

Here’s the story of Stephen Nicholas – check it out. I hope to see #54 starting and making a name for himself this fall.