Haley Madden

Marcus Spears had to miss his son's first college game for work. Problem is, his work is ESPN. So in the middle of Monday Night Countdown they cut live to the arena in Austin, more than 2,000 miles away, and let him watch his 17-year-old walk out of the tunnel while the whole country watched his face. He almost didn't go to Seattle at all. He told the producers he was thinking about skipping the trip so he could be in the building. He got in the day before and said he felt terrible about it. Then he talked himself down with one line. "My wife and myself have prepared him to be where he is," he said. And when he says his wife helped prepare him, he means it pretty literally. Aiysha Spears was the 7th overall pick in the 2003 WNBA draft out of LSU. Marcus went in the first round to the Cowboys two years later and played nine seasons in the NFL. Their oldest, Cari, was the national high school volleyball player of the year and is now an All-American at Texas. Marcus Jr. was ESPN's No. 1 player in the entire class of 2027, and he graduated a year early so he could get to Austin at 17. The youngest, Miko, is coming up in volleyball too. So you've got a house where both parents were first-round picks and two of the kids became top recruits in the country in two different sports. That kind of thing basically doesn't happen. He did get to see his son play once before Monday, at an exhibition at Madison Square Garden the weekend before. The opponent that night was St. John's, which happens to be where Aiysha started her own college career back in 1999. When the live shot came up, the guy who breaks down NFL film on TV every week told the crew he was about to cry, and said the kid had worked his butt off to get there. Then Junior came off the bench, and the first time he got on the floor he blocked a guy driving to the rim. A minute later he bullied his way into the paint and finished through contact for an and-one. "He'll be fine," his dad had said.