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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore—not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-’90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

Chills

By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Apr 9 2010, 2:00 PM ET Comment

I still get them watching this. The lovely thing is that my whole fam is into football. I was watching this game with my son when the Titans got the ball at the one. When they got to about their own 30 or so, I yelled to Kenyatta, who was in the other room study, "Baby, come watch this, I think Vince might be about to do something." As a sidenote, my son loves Vince and had been asking all season when they were going to let him play. 

So we watched this together. What I most remember is how my son's eyes looked when Britt caught that past. Fishbowls. Big as fishbowls. We have a family football memories--me and Kenyatta driving up 95, listening to the Music City Miracle. It was such a weird thing to experience via radio. You couldn't hear the announcers, just the stadium roaring and we kept wondering what had happened. Seeing Devin Hester, a few years back, return to touchdowns against Denver. Watching the boy break down and cry after Tom Brady came back (as he so often does) and assassinated some hapless team on their way to 16-0. 

It's funny watching this now. You see a few errant passes, and you see how this could have gone another way. That's to take nothing away from Young. I think that's generally true in a lot of big football games.



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