A great story about a football player going to great lengths to cast his vote.

Time out.

Before I tell you what we learned in Week 8, let me share an Election Day anecdote. And everyone who follows the NFL and plays in it should know the story of veteran Detroit defensive tackle Kelvin Pritchett, who thinks voting is so important that when his Florida absentee ballot didn't arrive in Detroit in time for him to vote Monday, Pritchett got on a plane in Detroit and flew to Jacksonville so he could cast his ballot.

Kelvin Pritchett is my player of the week.

"It's very important, simply because so many people have lost their lives and they fought for the right to vote," Pritchett said. "Your grandparents, your forefathers, didn't have that right. In order to gain that right, they fought for it. I feel like it's up to me to carry on that tradition."

That's a $1,100 vote, by the way. That's about the cost of the cheapest Detroit-to-Jacksonville round-trip ticket bought so close to flying time without staying over a Saturday night.

I'm not speechless. But it's close. This is the man the NFL should be holding up as a role model, the man who should be doing commercials.

OK. Sermon over.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/writers/peter_king/11/02/mmqbte/index.html