Note To People In The Spotlight: Good Journalists Like Good Stories More Than They Like You

By Steve Sailer on February 3, 2013 at 2:24pm

Here's an article by prominent ESPN columnist Rick Reilly on how it's a crying shame that 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick hasn't met his genetic mother in all the years since he was adopted at one month old, and he should really pick up the phone. Yet, when Reilly brought the subject up to Kaepernick last week at a Super Bowl media event, Kaepernick wasn't interested in taking a journey into the depths of his emotional being with the newshound a few days before the Big Game.

But it would be such a great story!

Rae, my 23-year-old daughter, is adopted from Korea. Sometimes I look at her and feel for the woman who gave her up, who never got the joy of knowing her, raising her, watching her. 

The 49ers' 25-year-old starting quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, is adopted, too. I wonder if he sometimes feels for the woman who gave him up, who didn't get the joy of knowing him and raising him. 

That woman does get to watch him, though. 

She'll watch him again this Sunday, as he plays in the Super Bowl against the Baltimore Ravens. Her name is Heidi Russo, a 44-year-old nurse from Thornton, Colo. He's declined her requests to visit or talk. She accepts it, but she aches for more. 

Wouldn't you? She was 19, unmarried and nearly broke when she gave him up. She cared for him for five weeks while she looked for an adopting couple who were (A) set for money, (B) had other kids and (C) loved sports. Heidi stands 6-foot-2, and the birth father, now absent, was also 6-2.

My impression going back to Bart Starr 45 years ago is that Super Bowl quarterbacks tend to have roughly the same personalities (just jock version) as astronauts. Occasionally, you see a quarterback in the Super Bowl like Jim McMahon of the Bears 27 years ago who likes extraneous tumult, but not often.