For years, Charles Singletary tried to hold his children to 19th century religious standards. Sports were deemed sinful, which meant that the youngest son had to cultivate his love of football - whether rooting for the Dallas Cowboys or playing the game - on the sly. Even as he did an end-around his father's rules, Singletary searched for a way to honor his family. His father, he pointed out, got caught in affairs and walked away from his marriage and his place in the ministry.
The patriarch's increasingly loose grip on the family helped open the door for Mike to play football, but his older siblings saw little benefit. Good guys, good hearts, but really dumb decisions. When he looks around the 49ers' locker room, he says, he sees some young men just like his brothers, let down by their fathers and uncertain of who they are. He wishes that more men viewed fatherhood as their ultimate calling. Mike and Kim Singletary met at the Baylor University library and almost instantly became friends.
They went for walks, talked about everything imaginable, each feeling completely at ease with the other, she said. But for a long time, romance seemed out of reach. It was the late '70s. They were in Waco, Texas. He seemed to have fame in his future, emerging as a top-flight linebacker for the Baylor football team. She didn't see how they could have a life together, making an interracial marriage thrive.
But when I looked for someone who was just like him, I realized there wasn't anybody else. After they started dating, she said, they heard alarming tales about bias against interracial couples in the NFL. A team might not pass up a talent like Singletary's, she said, but the paycheck could always reflect an owner's politics rather than the player's performance.
In addition to everything else, she had to worry about holding him back. Singletary sought counsel from wise elders. He talked with Baylor head coach Grant Teaff , who was supportive and offered to help persuade doubting family members. One of them was Singletary's mother. When he sat down to talk to her, Singletary suggested that they call the family minister in to join the conversation. She just knew he was going to say Mom was right.
I expected to hear it, too. The minister arrived and asked an array of questions, much as Coach Teaff had done. Do you love her? Does she love you? Do you share the same values?
And then, the big one: Can you imagine your lives without each other? They married in May He also is known for his trademark sunglasses, which he wears for medical reasons. At age six, while trying to untie a knot in a toy gun holster with a fork, he accidentally severed the cornea in his right eye when the fork slipped. While his vision was saved, the accident left that eye extremely sensitive to light. Devin Singletary and Mike Singletary may share the same last name, but they are not related.
Devin is the son of Devonn Singletary, Sr. Mike Singletary and his wife, Kim, raised seven children. Mike Ditka is widely considered one of the better coaches in NFL history. And every player handles it different, every player handles emotion different. But I just have to make sure that I manage what they do during the week and that's about the best I can do there.
On whether he liked to see the emotional ownership that some of the guys took before the game:. It's been a growth experience for our guys, in many different ways. And the best thing that I can say about our guys is the way they work. And the way they continue to believe. So I think, being in this situation where we're fighting for our lives every week, it's really stretching our guys. It's making them be more accountable, it's making them stretch a bit more, and I think for us, I think it's been a good thing.
See, to me it, when you're playing the game, I don't know if you ever played a sport that you really love, but when you do things that you love it brings out passion and everybody shows it in different ways.
I can be standing with another guy and he is just as passionate as I am but he doesn't show it like I do and I may cry and he may not show one tear. He wants to play. That's the best thing we could do.
On what tests Gore will have today that will help him determine his status for the rest of the season:. Hopefully it's not, but we just have to wait. I thought he did enough to win and to me that's the most important thing. It's mostly really the close games, the ones that come down to the last minute, the ones that come down to the last field goal.
And those are the ones that really frustrate you. But you know, I've done that all my life. But the most important thing is what you do after you wipe the tears away. It's not the fact that someone cries. It is extremely important what they do after that, after the disappointment.
So that's the thing that I think separates, you know, when you continue to move on and get better or you stay where you are and listen to the circumstances around you. On what allowances he makes for preparing for another game during a short week such as this:.
We have to rest them and at the same time get the most mental reps we possibly can. Right now, being later in the season when guys get really banged up in a Monday night game, the best thing that comes out of a Monday night game is who wins. At least the emotional part of it that can help you heal a little bit; you feel better the next day or after the game. And believe it or not that goes a long way in the healing of guys and making them feel that much better toward the following week.
So, I think that's a huge part of it. The next part is just making sure that within the short week that the guys are really getting their rest and really understanding the significance of having their legs in this Green Bay game because it's going to be a war, it's going to be a tough football game and we have to be ready emotionally. We have to be ready physically and mentally. On whether he is doing anything different from the first short week after the Monday Night game against the Saints earlier in the season:.
The fact that we lost that Monday night game I think sometimes as coaches and players, you wrestle with that maybe a day or two longer than you should.
Where in a situation like we had last night where we win the game, it's very easy to put it behind you and get right on to Green Bay and move on. Learn what you can from that game that we played last night, you feel good about what happened, and make the necessary corrections and move on.
On whether he has to sit Baas down for the upcoming Green Bay game because he had a concussion last night:. Wait a minute, do you mean the game last night? There are certain tests that they have for the severity of the concussion. I think he had a concussion the week prior and I thought it was a severe concussion because of what I saw, but he played last night.
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