ALLIANCE, Ohio | You probably saw that dateline and remembered immediately that Alliance is where Chiefs legend Len Dawson grew up. Well, Alliance is only about 16 or 17 miles away from the Pro Football Hall of Fame. When Dawson was inducted into the Hall of Fame 22 years ago, he completed one of the shorter trips in pro football history.</p><p>And it&rsquo;s strange but today &mdash; the day that Derrick Thomas gets inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton &mdash; I find myself kicking around Dawson&rsquo;s old hometown and thinking a lot about Lenny. You know, it has been almost 34 years since Dawson threw his last pass in the NFL. And think about all he has done since he threw that last pass. He has been sports director at Channel 9. He has been the analyst voice of the Chiefs on radio. He was the original host of HBO&rsquo;s &ldquo;Inside the NFL,&rdquo; and he did that for 25 years. He was a broadcaster for NBC. He has been involved in countless charities, done countless speaking engagements, signed countless autographs, played in countless golf tournaments, told countless stories. He and his wife raised two children, and they have stayed around Kansas City for all these years.</p><p>The point is this: We have a full image of Len Dawson in our minds. He is 74 and living a full life.</p><p>Derrick Thomas did not get to live that full life. And so &hellip; the feelings about him are amplified and they stand at harsh extremes. Whenever any of us write or say something good about Thomas &mdash; such as this weekend when we celebrate his remarkable football career &mdash; we are inundated with angry e-mails and phone calls and rebukes from those who want to yell about the irresponsible way he fathered seven children with five different women. Whenever we talk about all the good he did &mdash; and he did a lot of good; he was always generous with his time and he was chosen the NFL Man of the Year in 1993 &mdash; we are furiously reminded of his bad habits and wild nights and marathon parties.</p><p>Whenever we try to honor the memory of a man who brought a lot of happiness to a lot of people, we are told by many that he was deeply flawed and his memory does not deserve to be honored.</p><p>This is the sadness of an athlete dying young. I don&rsquo;t ever need to look up how old Derrick Thomas would have been &hellip; he was born exactly one week before I was. That means he would have been 42 years old. Still young (I hope). Still with a lot left to achieve (I doubly hope). We can spend a lot of time guessing what sort of life Derrick Thomas would have lived when his playing days were over. We can have our own opinions about how he would have dealt with the mistakes he made and how he would have used his celebrity and how he would have handled all those quiet days after the cheering ended.</p><p>But we don&rsquo;t know. And we won&rsquo;t know. What we do know is that Derrick Thomas&rsquo; car slid on the ice just three weeks after he turned 33. He wasn&rsquo;t wearing a seatbelt. Police concluded he was driving recklessly. What we do know is that he died two weeks later in a Miami hospital.</p><p>The rest is presumption and politics and the way we see the world. Some will see him only as a symbol of a famous athlete who did not have any self-discipline. Some will see him only as a great football player who cared deeply about people. The truth is, Derrick Thomas was neither of those things. And both. He was complicated, just like everyone else. And he died before we really got to know him.</p><p>Of course, today is about football, and as a football player he was utterly unique. You know how football coaches after losses will inevitably chalk it up to the team&rsquo;s inability to &ldquo;make plays.&rdquo; They can&rsquo;t even tell you what <em>kinds</em> of plays they wanted made. They just wanted somebody, when the game was in the balance, to come up with a big play &mdash; sack a quarterback, force a fumble, fall on a fumble, create an interception by hitting the quarterback just as he&rsquo;s throwing the ball.