Dream Comes Later for One NFL Draftee

After Mel Kiper, Jr, ESPN's NFL draftologist and the smartest, most entertaining man on TV last week, crawled back into the Kiper Kave late Sunday, a lot of folks wanted to know what I thought of the NFL draft. And so:

How stupid are the Texans for passing on Reggie Bush?
Did everyone call Reggie Bush the next Barry Sanders? Well B.S. never even got within a Hail Mary of a Super Bowl. I ain't mad at the Texans. Yeah, we're gonna see charts comparing Mario Williams to Bush every week from the start of the NFL season until one of them reaches a Super Bowl. But I'll take the next Reggie White any day.

What do you think of Vince Young going to Tennessee at No. 3?
Good for him. The man was dissected like a frog in high-school science class. Every flaw (or perceived flaw) was exposed, analyzed and analyzed some more. He wasn't "All-Accessed” like QB Hollywood Matt Leinart, and no one called him the next Broadway Joe. Good for him. But now he really has to prove his critics wrong, and it won't be easy without Steve McNair around to school him.

Were you shocked Leinart went so low?
You mean dropped like my Time-Warner stock? Yeah, I actually felt for QB Hollywood as he sat in the Green Room like the ugliest guy at the bar during last call while a bunch of guys sitting at home were being picked and picked and picked. A year ago he would have banked the $24 million guarantee that went to No 1 pick Alex Smith. He'll have to settle for a measly three mill or so. That was a very expensive Ballroom Dancing class. But QB Hollywood will be fine. No. 1, we all wish we were him. No 2, going to Phoenix at No. 11 will be – and write this down – a Godsend.

Head coach Dennis Green is stupid-happy about landing QB Hollywood and Leinart will have the benefit of being tutored by former Super Bowl MVP QB Kurt Warner. Check in with Leinart three years from now.

LenDale White? Oops.

I'm glad the draft's over. It's 'American Idol' for guys with very thick necks and suits that don't quite fit. The "winners" have been chosen, but do we know whether they'll sell any records? No. And we won't know for some time. Yet the show still consumes us, even as we know only one in three of the young men selected over the weekend will ever start for an NFL team.

It consumes us so much we overlook the essence of the day- the moments when young men -- whether chosen No. 1 overall or as the very last pick in the very last round (Maine wide receiver Kevin McMahan, No. 255) - achieve a dream when their name is called.

One young man was chosen higher than anyone expected, but he did not achieve his dream. At least not yet.

Tamba Hali is a smart, soft-spoken defensive end from Penn State who was tabbed in the first-round Saturday by the Kansas City Chiefs, the 20th pick. At 6-foot-3 and 275 pounds he's a bit undersized for his position in the NFL. And his performance in the 40-yard dash at the NFL combines was universally described as "unimpressive." He was projected to be a second-round pick.

But who cares about a defensive end's time in the 40? They don't run wind sprints. They run through, around and over big hunks of muscle trying everything short of lethal injection to prevent them from maiming the quarterback. Herm Edwards, the Chiefs' new head coach, poo-pooed all the combine printouts and stopwatches and chose a guy who played with "toughness and passion."

"That's what this guy does,' Edwards told reporters over the weekend. "When you turn the film on, you turn it off and you go, 'Wow.'"

Hali was happy to be chosen by the Chiefs, though playing in the NFL is not his dream. That's reserved for something far more meaningful, more precious.

His dream is to save his mother, just as she once saved him.

His dream is to rescue her from his native Liberia, from where he himself was once rescued. From where, through the eyes of a child, he witnessed a tragic civil war and all of its hell.

He saw neighbors murdered and bodies stacked atop one another on the side of the road by rebels attacking his city. Planes crashed near his home. Gunfire filled the air. He was sequestered in huts, surviving with his family best they could, protected from being slain by kids barely older than him. Tamba Hali was still in grade school.

His mother and stepfather risked their own lives to get him to safety until they knew safety could not be found anywhere in their country.

Hali's father, Henri, had emigrated to the United States when Tamba was two, Settling in as a college and high-school teacher in Teaneck, N.J., Henri could sign papers to bring his children to the States, but because Henri and his ex-wife had remarried, he could not rescue her.

In 1993, Rachel Keita hugged her son at an airport near Liberia and put him, two brothers and a sister aboard a plane bound for new dreams. Tamba Hali was 10 years old. Mother and son have not seen each other since.

The civil war that ravaged Liberia ended a couple of years ago, though the nation has not yet healed. The nation recently elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as its first woman president and prospects are brightening, slightly.

Yet Rachel Keita still lives in a hut, along with another of Hali's sisters. Mom was shot in the knee two years ago while walking with friends in Monrovia. Three of the friends were killed. "By God's grace," says Hali, "she's still alive."

Mother and son talk by cell phone now, a couple of times a week. She knows little of American football, only what her son tells her. "She said it sounds rough," he says. Ain't that ironic.

Like almost every young man selected early Saturday, Hali is happy that he's hit the sports lottery and will soon be a millionaire many times over. But while most of his peers talked about buying momma a house, he could only think about getting his mother a new home. "I always feel [my mother's] in danger because she's in a country that's about 80 percent unemployed and just coming off war," he told the Kansas City Star following the draft., "You could walk somewhere and you never know what could happen. That's why I fear for her life."

Perhaps he'll be able to hire a lawyer with an expertise in immigration and maybe relieve his father from the debt he's incurred trying to reunite his family. He said: "I just pray and hope that I'll be led in the right direction to be able to help my family." Help bring together what war has torn apart.