Gainesville Columnist hits a new low

There's a current SID in the ACC who is a good guy and a friend - and he lurks here. Whenever I post something positive about Beamer, I get an e-mail that says something like, "Why don't you pull your head out of Beamer's ass?" or something like that. Mostly meant light-hearted but there's some seriousness to it.

I'll risk my pal's wrath here.

Anyone who has spent any kind of extended time around Beamer will tell you he's a very good guy. When I was working on a biography of him for now-defunct Sports Publishing (crossthread), I talked to a woman who flew in from California every year for his women's football clinic. Every year. She kept calling him Frank. It wasn't out of disrespect. That's how he made people feel around him. He was Frank, no different from you except he coached a football team.

His mom died on a Thursday night when VT played Maryland. At the urging of his three older siblings, he coached that night. Tech won big so most stories were about done but still, it was a Thursday night. We had deadlines. Yet when his PC was done, the entire media throng lined up as he came off the podum and shook his hand, some even gave him a bit of a man hug.

Shameless homers? Call us that if you want, I'll live with it like I'll live with the e-mail that is coming. I prefer to think it was a group of humans and professionals paying respects to another human and professional who treated us with respect and our professions with respect, even when we drove him crazy (which was fairly often).

Beamer has always been very self-concious about the scar, often positioning himself during on-camera interviews to obscure it as best he could. You had an easier time getting him to talk politics than you did about the fire, the scar, the whole deal.

After his mom died, he was very open about how much she meant to him and her strong influence in his life. She was a teacher and Beamer and his wife now collect books under the charity name Herma's Readers. He also had a freshman that same year she died, Macho Harris (now with the Redskins), who was burned in a fire at his home on the night Beamer was scheduled to make a home visit. After that, Beamer was a little more willing to talk about the fire and the aftermath. ESPN did an excellent feature (yes, I said that) on Harris and Beamer.

I don't know Pat Dooley and I don't know the guy who blogged about it. Dooley fessed up to his mistake, so there's that. But, Lord, how can you even think to ridicule a guy - a public figure or not - for something like that?