James Harrison In Serious Talks With Steelers About Life, Being A Father

March 19, 2009 | Issue 45•12 | Onion Sports

PITTSBURGH—Steelers linebacker James Harrison is participating in prolonged closed-door meetings with team management, including coach Mike Tomlin and team owner Dan Rooney, over the path a man must walk in life, particularly if he is to be a hero to his son. "James is confident in his abilities as a player, but the Steelers must understand that he wants to be the kind of man his son would want to be in turn," Harrison's agent Bill Parise told reporters Tuesday. "It's a deeply complex issue, but I think Mr. Rooney agrees with James in principle about standing up for yourself and just wants him to be a bit more realistic about the nature of masculinity and a man's expectations for his children in an increasingly complex world." Harrison and the Steelers are currently deliberating over a clause in Rudyard Kipling's manhood-advice poem 'If' that would require Harrison and his offspring to "meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same."