'Stephan had a passion for boxing,' she said. 'He really loved boxing from the time he was a little kid, 5 years old--loved it with all his heart. Whenever I talked to him about stopping, he said, 'Stop asking me to quit. I've never been in jail. I've never done drugs. Let me pursue my passion.''"

Johnson death is painted as a tragic act in the morality play whereby an unreasoned devotion to sport ends up costing an athlete the ultimate price.

Ainge and Rivera, by contrast, are credited for their restraint, for sacrificing lucrative and successful careers in sports for the considerations of faith or family. But the irony in this distinction is that only athletes who have already achieved greatness can opt out with the laurels of commentators.

Stephan Johnson fought Paul Vaden even after he had been placed on indefinite medical suspension and had been blocked by the Association of Boxing Commissions from stepping in the ring until he passed neurological tests. Turns out, Johnson shouldn't have been fighting at all, but he needed the $10,000 purse and boxing was his only livelihood--his passion by default.

Ainge and Rivera can afford to quit because their beliefs lead them elsewhere, and the sports world fabricates a disingenuous belief in its own insignificance by praising them.

Johnson fought because he didn't have a financial choice, and the media transformed him into a martyr, a victim of boxing's brutality and all-encompassing greed.

But sports needs people like Stephan Johnson. It depends for its persistence and appeal on athletes who are willing to sacrifice the real world--whether in the form of high school or college grades, family responsibilities or personal safety--for the sports world.

It's hypocritical and distasteful when pundits find themselves compelled to valorize an athlete's preferring his personal beliefs or needs to his team's. There's more to life than knockouts or home runs, they remind us. Yet the impulse to conflate sports with life--in the quest for role models in athletics, in the prurience with which the media exposes the private lives of sports figures--is the lifeblood construct of sports journalism.