What’s So Special About This Player?

The article on Dan Quinn peaked the Irish in me to a level it hasn’t reached in quite some time. What justification was there for writing a long article on a second-stringer?

Sure he shows potential for football, but after reading the article, that is about as far as I would go. The kid, and that’s what he is, is mean-hearted, arrogant and very brash. Here is a kid taking every chance he could in high school to fight kids who were Hispanic. Why? Well, as his high school assistant principal Roy Reisner told The Times, it was because he was prejudiced. Quinn simply didn’t like them.

Yet, two paragraphs later, that same Reisner proclaims Quinn to be “special” and in need of “breaks” in his life.

Give us a break. There are hundreds of us in Los Angeles who do the exact same thing. Would Reisner expect us to view them as special , too?

Am I angry? You bet I am. Not at Dan Quinn, surprisingly. But at our society. A society which idolizes sports to the point of hysteria. Dan Quinn, because of his talent in football, has been led to believe that he can get away with being a mean, arrogant human being.

This is not a person to idolize, or write about. That is a man who is building himself up for a tremendous fall. And it seems that our society is below, yelling “jump.”

DAVID J. MECOZZI

Canoga Park