The Message Of Sean Taylor

"Many of the people who made opinions and made statements about Sean Taylor," added McNeil, "didn't know Sean Taylor."

Complicating matters was the fact that one of the most controversial statements about Taylor's death came from someone who did know Taylor. Rolle threw chum in the water the day after Taylor died by saying there was more at play than a botched burglary. He identified Taylor as a target and said his boyhood friend was "scared" whenever he returned to Miami over the last three years. Two days later Rolle backtracked, telling SI that what he meant to say was that, because of his success, Taylor was always under a microscope when he returned to South Florida. "I'm not saying that people were actually targeting him to kill him," said Rolle, who hadn't spoken to Taylor in about a year. "I'm not saying he had enemies, because I don't know whether he had enemies or not."

THE NEGATIVE portrayal of Taylor and the innuendo surrounding his murder almost certainly wasn't malicious, but rather another example of the media's rush to explain what had yet to be explained, the desperate need to be quicker and louder than the next news outlet.

Didn't we learn anything from the Duke lacrosse case about rushing to judgment?

"I looked at this from a lot of different angles—from being an alumnus of the University of Miami, from being a former professional football player, from being a publisher of a media property," says McNeil. "And I think that because there wasn't a lot of information being shared, everybody's imagination was allowed to run free.

"But at the end of the day, we have to remember that his family is at a loss, I'm at a loss because I knew him, his friends and his teammates are at a loss, and the NFL is at a loss. To me, this hurts on a number of different levels because this kid had so much potential, not only as a player but as a person."