Sunday, August 30, 2009

Breaking-ish: Taylor Mays Is...Jewish?

I presume that USC football fans knew this, but I didn't until I read about it in the New York Times' profile of Taylor Mays this morning: Taylor Mays is Jewish.

Not "mom-is-Jewish-but-otherwise-nonobservant" Jewish, and he puts football ahead of the High Holidays, but he is bar-mitzvahed and did some Hebrew-schooling.

(Why does this matter to me? Longtime readers know that as a Jewish sports fan, I keep my radar out for high-level college and pro Jewish athletes, because they are fairly rare -- and awesome.)

Some questions:

(a) How did I not know about this until now?
(b) Like Jon Scheyer, can I like the player but loathe his team?
(c) Is Taylor Mays the greatest Jewish football player ever?

I think someone needs to create a tribute T-shirt that features a generic football player wearing the No. 2 and tackling someone, reading "I Had A Blast At Taylor Mays' Bar-Mitzvah!"

For those of you who have been to bar-mitzvahs in your time, you know the proud tradition of the bar/bat-mitzvah T-shirt every kid receives.

-- D.S.

UPDATE: The more I dig into this, the more it is obvious that this has been well-known news about Mays for a long time. I am shamed for not knowing this earlier.

3 comments:

Steve said...

you forgot (d) Who gives a shit if he's Jewish?

Michael Pemulis said...

Greatest Jewish football playter of all time? Come on! How can you forget former Houston Texans great Sage Rosenfels?

Gregg said...

Sage is not Jewish.He lived on my street when he was in Houston. His grandfather was but he was not brought up Jewish nor were his parents. He did live in a Jewish neighborhood in Houston if that counts.