Randy Moss seems to be changing his sulking ways

Randy Moss continues to be an enigma wrapped in mystery, as they say. Not only for the Marshall Faithful but the sports world at large, including the carping media.

But now, the enigmatic mystery has taken a positive turn, pray God. Gone is the Randy Moss sulk, mumbled replies and the calculated snubs. Today a "new" Randy Moss, a smiling, gracious and generous Randy Moss, has arrived, reaching out to the public, arms opened wide, bearing a sparkling smile, with an open checkbook for children and his alma mater to join his family as beneficiaries.

For the children he's added an Inta Juice shop -- a current rage, I'm told -- in Charleston to generate funds for the state capital's youth athletics. For Marshall, he's teamed with Chad Pennington, his old Herd quarterback, and other former teammates, to do the same funds for various Marshall football support programs. The Green and White spring game tab is one example.

All this is on the hush, hush see? No fanfare! Why? Puzzles me. Good works deserve notoriety. For example, that large chunk of the cash Randy and Chad have earmarked for athletic scholarships is to be managed by something called the Gridiron Football Foundation. See? Two NFL super stars giving something back. Isn't that a switch?

Chad, of course, has always been the polished personality kid. He mesmerizes people as he did enemy defenses. But, Randy Moss, it's a new role. He's coming in from the cold, as they say in the CIA. Except for a covey of close friends he'd visit occasionally, he's kept his distance from The Faithful at large and the hallowed campus where he rose to national stardom and a nomination for The Heisman Trophy catching Chad's and Eric Kresser's passes. Why did he keep his distance?

Were the psychological scars suffered from that infamous high school racial fight? The "expulsions" from Notre Dame? Then Florida State? For his sins real or imagined before Bobby Pruett threw him a life raft to join him here with Eric Kresser, an underused stand-in for Danny Wuerrfel, at Florida.

Whatever they were, Randy Moss bore them without a whimper to mask his inner rage upon his arrival here. But, that all seems so long ago now that Randy Moss' personal life has taken its new direction; and, if there's happiness now in his heart, imagine the happiness that must be filling the heart his mother, Maxine Moss, in the real life heroine in the life and times of her son Randy.

She ran a tight, even-handed, disciplined home raising her third child and second son. But, it wasn't without its humorous surprises. Maxine recalled a neat one as the guest speaker at a Black Legends of Marshall luncheon I'd attended with Troy Brown a few years ago.

"We were expecting a girl," Maxine Moss told her large audience. "And because I'd just had a daughter a few months earlier we kept the nursery in pink even after she moved into another room. Well, surprise. When Randy came along it was too late for us to change the color scheme in the nursery. So, we kept it pink!"

The audience roared with laughter and applauded.

"It was quite a surprise," Maxine Moss smiled.

It would be the first of many.