Too young to have all the answers

Athletes like Bears defensive tackle Tommie Harris speak, journalists breathlessly scribble their thoughts, and fans digest them as gospel.

As escapes from reality go, that's as good as any.

Seriously, we treat athletes as if they are sages on their respective sports, on other current events and on themselves.

It's a silly three-party game of pretend.

I mean, how often does CNBC feature a 20-something economist analyzing the stock market crisis?

(OK, maybe not often enough considering how wrong the elders have been on the subject. But hopefully you get the idea.)

The only truth is that most athletes are young people as confused about life as most of us were or will be at that age.

In addition to being a Pro Bowl player, Tommie Harris has been myriad other things since joining the Bears four years ago.

Harris is a professed devout Christian, has a stand-up comic gene not so deep inside him, and most of all can be as knuckleheaded as any 25-year-old.

But we frequently ignore that the teen years are formative and so are the 20s. So much is being heaped upon people at that age that earlier lessons wind up in a ball of confusion.

Yet we tend to approach 6-foot-3, 295-pound, 25-year-old defensive linemen as if they had all the answers. A really intelligent one acknowledges immediately that he doesn't, but you don't hear that very often and to be honest don't want to hear it.

Folks, athletes don't even have all the answers to all the questions about athletics. If they did, coaches would be clerks (insert your own joke here).

I didn't realize this when I was 25, but it's amusing now to hear a reporter ask a young athlete about some element of the game and the athlete say, "In a situation like that you have to - "

Stop right there, big fella, you don't have to anything. Options abound. Sometimes one is appropriate, sometimes another is, and the trick is guessing which is which and when is when.

Anyway, at 25 years of age somebody like Tommie Harris - a truly thoughtful man-child - will insist that a dumb penalty by teammate Charles Tillman was OK even if it cost the Bears a game.

He'll also shout at Bears head coach Lovie Smith over the release of college teammate Mark Bradley.

On impulse, issues at that age are all this and none of that.

Still, a player with limited life experience often has a better grasp of professional issues than personal issues.

It's so easy to forget previously learned values when going from small town to big city, lower income to exorbitant wealth, socially awkward to chick magnet, old kid to old adult.

Accounts indicate Harris is struggling to manage the transition. He was suspended for ignoring some responsibilities of an NFL player, he had a child out of wedlock, and by his own admission he strayed from his religious beliefs.

As often is said, 10 percent of life is what happens and 90 percent is how you respond. My impression is in time Tommie Harris will respond well and his emotions will catch up to his physique.

Still, as with most of us and most young athletes, it'll be interesting to see how he evolves from 25 years old to 25 years older.

mimrem@dailyherald.com