This paper examines print media coverage of the death of Reggie White, one of the best defensive linemen in NFL history. It argues that the racial politics of the football community in the United States played a significant role in how White was eulogized. Death, especially when unexpected as in White’s case, and the eulogies that attend it are natural times for epidietic speech to honor the deceased; and it is common that positive elements of a person’s life are emphasized family and friends come to grips with their loss. In White’s case, his death fell on a Thursday, just before an NFL playoff weekend with multiple games on multiple television channels, and offered a vast medium to present White’s life and achievements to a mass audience of football fans. In the vast majority of the tributes, sportswriters and NFL representatives focused on White’s strong Baptist faith and community work and ignored homophobic and racist comments he made to the Wisconsin legislature after his retirement in 1998. The heroic language used to describe White’s athletic gifts is legitimate; the extension of this heroic lens to his off-field behaviors is strongly racialized. The selective memory revealed in these articles suggests a desire, or I would suggest a need, to create an African-American hero figure that all football fans can admire. White’s homophobia is overlooked and attributed to his faith, while his use of racial stereotypes is attributed to his outspokenness. Both these qualities are figured as heroic, and implied to be inherent to an African-American man. Moreover, set within a modern context where African-American professional athletes are routinely seen as, undereducated, dangerous, violent criminals, White provides an apologetic figure that repairs the image of the black player and soothes the conscience of the white football establishment. It is ultimately this racial imperative that drives the heroic rhetoric of the late Reggie White.