Baffoe: Here's To Rooting For Peanut Tillman In The Super Bowl
By Tim Baffoe--
(CBS) Peyton Manning is my favorite non-Chicago Bears NFL player ever. And for the second time in a Super Bowl, I will be rooting for him to lose.
When you don't have a dog in the race (as is the usual case if you're a Bears fan), come playoff time you have to start going through team resumes. Maybe there's a particular narrative that pierces your heart. A particular aging veteran on a team amid his one last shot at elusive glory? Did a player beat cancer or return from a car accident?
Maybe a team has a third alternate jersey you find particularly easy on the eyes. Whatever.
My reflex is to root for the Carolina Panthers because Cam Newton pisses off and makes uncomfortable the people who deserve to be pissed off and made uncomfortable in perpetuum. While that's very much a part of why I'm hitching my wagon to the Panthers for bragging rights of saying "my team," the Vegas favorite, won the big game, it's not my sole reason.
Charles Tillman's my favorite player to don my favorite team's jersey. His combination of All-Pro talent, All-World personality and All-Time humanity makes him the rarest of pro athletes.
I really want him to win a Super Bowl, just as I really wanted him to win one when he played for the Bears against Manning and the Colts in Super Bowl XLI in February 2007. Manning has his ring. Peanut doesn't. The math is easy here.
Peanut, 34, should've retired two years ago due to a declining body and didn't. After the 2014 season, his 12th and final one in Chicago, he should've retired last year and didn't. He'll probably retire after this Super Bowl.
Tillman's NFL life isn't unlike Manning's in that regard. He's similar off the field, too, humor-wise and with the ability to seemingly talk comfortably in any situation.
Manning's a lock for the Hall of Fame. Tillman needs (correct) arguing for. Where Manning pitches national (cough garbage cough) pizza, Tillman merely got local air conditioning endorsements while in Chicago while being a Pro Bowler at cornerback. Such is the celebrity disparity between quarterback and cornerback.
Tillman joined The Laurence Holmes Show on 670 The Score on Monday night for one of his usual must-listen interviews. The segment -- if you can call his typical hijacking of Holmes' show a segment -- contained the usual Peanut tomfoolery that all but demands the guy go into broadcasting when he does finally hang 'em up. But it also had the usual professionalism that Tillman so deftly balances with being a goofball and makes him so endearing and compelling.
Tillman tore his ACL in Week 17 and has been ruled out for the entire postseason. He wasn't at full health late in the season, but he accepted the risk of further injury that came.
"I knew that I could possibly tear my ACL more when I was playing," he said. "I knew it was partially torn. But I was giving it up for my teammates. I'm pretty sure they'd all do the same thing if the tables were turned. It's not about me, it's about the team. If that was my sacrifice, hey, so be it, I won a Super Bowl."
Make no mistake -- though this will be Tillman's third straight do-or-die game on crutches, should the Panthers prevail, he won a Super Bowl as much as Newton or Luke Kuechly. And while Newton will dominate media coverage on the Carolina side and the active members of the defense will get their fair share of attention, know that those players have the goal of putting a ring on Tillman's finger in the backs of their minds.
There's a Mark Grace-on-the-Arizona-Diamondbacks thing to it. When your favorite player is deemed no longer of use by your favorite team (Grace was my favorite baseball player during his time with the Cubs), part of you selfishly wants him to go out "pure" by having only worn that one jersey. But then he doesn't, and you can't help but put selfishness aside and want happiness this year for the guy on TV who brought you years of happiness.
There's some other gravy to rooting for the Panthers. Coach Ron "Chico" Rivera gets requisite '85 Bears love and was a good defensive coordinator for Chicago who probably got a raw deal when he was let go. There's even an Brian Urlacher/Lance Briggs dynamic to the Kuechly/Thomas Davis linebacker tandem.
But my heart is with Tillman. You don't stop rooting for your favorite player, even when he's playing against your other favorite player.
"You guys (in Chicago) have never stopped supporting me," Tillman said Monday. "I love you guys and I really appreciate it."
Go Panthers. Go Peanut.
Tim Baffoe is a columnist for CBSChicago.com. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBaffoe. The views expressed on this page are those of the author, not CBS Local Chicago or our affiliated television and radio stations.