Tough to root for Tank

What do you do when the guy in the black hat becomes the hero? How do you deal with that? Tank Johnson made the play that might have saved the Bears' season Sunday, sacking Seattle's Matt Hasselbeck in the final 30 seconds to keep the Seahawks out of field-goal range. Now the Bears are in the NFC Championship Game.

That cannot have made everything right. If you're like me, and you think Johnson embarrassed the team and shouldn't even be playing, then you have to do a major act of separation, cheering with a smirk maybe.

If the Bears beat New Orleans on Sunday and advance to the Super Bowl in Miami, this hero still doesn't know if the judge will allow him to leave the state.

Through it all, the thing that amazes me is that Johnson made the play at all. I mean, think of the things going through his mind.

He said Wednesday in front of his locker at Halas Hall that he had gone through anxiety issues. Of course he has. The arrest. The raid on his house. The guns, allegedly without the proper paperwork. Hundreds of rounds of ammo. His kids on the front page, carried away by authorities to safety. Drugs. Complaints from neighbors. The warning from the Bears. And then the next night he went to a club anyway with his best friend, who was shot to death.

All of that was only a few weeks ago. How can he possibly stay focused on football?

''I have the opportunity to play,'' he said. ''The season's not over. Any time you're given the opportunity to continue to play at a level this high, it's not very hard to focus.''

A few weeks ago, Johnson risked hurting the Bears' season out of stupidity. The Bears suspended him for only one game, a meaningless game at that. Why such a light punishment for a guy who had been arrested for the third time? General manager Jerry Angelo said the playoffs never came up in discussions about the punishment. The Bears thought it was best for Johnson to work with the young man.

Or something like that. The real reason is this: With Tommie Harris hurt, they needed Johnson for the playoffs. With a healthy Harris, Johnson would be off the team now.

If you want to believe that Johnson has made some personal growth here, then go ahead. Someone gave him a chance, albeit for all the wrong reasons. And then he made the play.

He said football has been his haven. The sack seemed to be a validation to him.

He has apologized to his teammates, who seem to have forgiven.

''The guys have been very supportive,'' he said. ''I just come to work every day and focus on work. When I'm at work, I'm giving it all for the Bears. That [other] stuff is personal issues, and I'll take care of that with my family.''

He even sounds selfless when talking about the possibility of getting to the Super Bowl, saying that ''so much is at stake, you want to do what you can for the guy next to you.''

But consider this: After the game, Johnson spoke with a reporter from the Denver Post, who asked about the recent death of Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams. Williams was shot outside a Denver nightclub after an argument. It was just two weeks earlier that Johnson's friend, William Posey, was shot in a downtown nightclub.

''It sounded all too familiar,'' Johnson told the Post.

''This senseless violence has got to stop.

''The world is too violent. It's perpetuated too much on television. Take violence off television. Stop portraying what's cool as killing and stealing. A lot of that stuff has got to stop.''

Huh?

See, a big part of the argument for letting Johnson play is that athletes are not role models, that the only thing that matters is what they do on the field. I don't buy that. They shouldn't be role models, but they are anyway. People are watching.

Did you hear what Johnson said? He said that people are influenced by what they see on TV, that they see violence as being cool, and that leads to real-life violence.

But Johnson was the violence on TV. And then he made the big play. He was the hero.

Johnson told the Post that he had been portrayed in Chicago as ''a monster.''

''You've got to take life however it comes,'' he said. ''As a man, I'll deal with it, and I'll move on.

I'm not sure anyone cares now. We don't want to care. Not with the Bears just one more victory from the Super Bowl.

That's the separation. You almost have to do that today. I don't think the standards of behavior are too high for athletes -- no one is demanding that they be angels -- but too many athletes can't meet them anyway.

If you want to cheer for your team, then you just have to find a way to blank it out.

Johnson said that when he's playing for the Bears, practicing with them, he's able to think only about the team. Well, if he can do it. ...

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