Living proof: Steelers' Tomlin tells college graduates to 'dream wildly'

According to NFL playing-time documents, the average third corner in the league played 57 percent of his team's defensive snaps last year. Let's look at couple of teams with good secondaries to see how they divvied up cornerback playing time, and that will make my point for me:

Third corners most often played more than half of the time, including New England's Randall Gay (53 percent), Hank Poteat of the Jets (54 percent) and the Raiders' Fabian Washington (53 percent).

I remember talking to San Diego GM A.J. Smith the night of the draft. "We got our corner,'' he said happily, referring to first-round pick Antoine Cason. You might wonder why Smith was so focused on getting his corner, with two good starters -- Jammer and Cromartie -- in house, even after losing Florence in free-agency to Jacksonville. "I'm a firm believer in this game today that you need three starting corners to win.'' Amen.

I had a cringing moment -- the entire plane must have shared it with me -- while boarding a packed United flight from Chicago to Los Angeles last week. A male business traveler, maybe 45, wouldn't take no for an answer as he tried to find a spot in the overhead bin for his wheeled luggage. That's obnoxious. But he actually found a spot with one small shopping bag taking up the space that his bag could fit in. He asked the man sitting below if it was his bag, and the man said it was. "Can I move it over to the side? It'll fit.'' Not an unreasonable request.

The seated passenger, a man of about 70, said no. "Don't touch it,'' he said. "They've been making announcements about checking bags. Just check it.''

Mr. Business Traveler turned to the flight attendant and asked for help. Again, the seated guy said, "Don't touch that bag.''

The flight attendant saw there was enough room for the small bag to be moved to the side, to allow the rolling bag to fit in the bin. "Sir, I'm just going to move your bag to the side,'' she said diplomatically, and she did.

"Son of a bitch!'' the seated guy spat out, staring at the businessman. "Son of a bitch!''

The businessman loaded his bag into the overhead bin and stood there for a minute, trying to decide what to do. He looked at the seated guy, who was still simmering. The businessman thought better of slugging the idiot in the jaw and sat down two rows behind him.

Can't we all just get along?