National Football League

Bennett's white cowboy hat a simple gesture with powerful message

Published Jan. 26, 2015 10:22 p.m. ET

Mike Garafolo

If you know Michael Bennett, you wouldn't think twice about his showing up to Super Bowl week wearing a white cowboy hat.

A unique personality who rode a bicycle around the field after the Seattle Seahawks' NFC Championship Game victory eight days ago, Bennett probably fashions himself a modern-day cowboy roaming the Southwest this week, you think. And given his imagination, you figure he's the one who would wear the white hat -- a hero arriving on the scene to take out the villain and save the day.

Except that's not what the hat's all about. In fact, up until recently, it didn't even belong to the Seahawks defensive end. It was the property of Mark Alexander, a resident of the Alief community in Houston whose son was a friend and teammate of Bennett in high school.

Alexander battled cancer until his death earlier this month at the age of 59. At Alexander’s funeral -- or more accurately a two-hour celebration of life -- the hat was sitting on a table. Bennett was looking it over when Alexander's wife, Jan, asked if Bennett wanted to have it.

"This was his favorite hat," Bennett said Sunday during a moment of reflection after he met with a large group of media at the Seahawks hotel, shortly after the team arrived in Arizona in advance of Super Bowl XLIX. "He grew up in Texas, lived in New Mexico -- lived all over -- so he spent a lot of time doing the rodeo and everything, so he loved this hat. His wife gave it to me and I said I'm going to wear it the whole week."

You might have already seen the hat.

“@MarcSesslerNFL: Michael Bennett: Biggest challenge of Patriots offense is their 'up tempo' attack. pic.twitter.com/Qiwm3KoAcX”>>>Love the hat
— David Kromelow (@dkrom59) January 25, 2015

It's a wide-brimmed lid with a black horse-hair band wrapped around the crown. Bennett was wearing it last week during interviews at the Seahawks facility. You will see it again at Tuesday’s Media Day and beyond because it's Bennett's way of paying tribute to a man who was beloved by the community in his native Houston.

Alexander was a generous soul who kept the neighborhood together. According to Bennett and his brother Martellus, a tight end for the Chicago Bears and a participant in Sunday night's Pro Bowl as a member of Team Carter, Alexander was a selfless individual -- a giving parent, a mentor, a community advocate and a father figure to the Bennett brothers. Alexander found the time to serve others personally despite a busy professional life as a researcher, inventor, geologist, author of a yet-to-be-released book on JFK, oil man and founder of his own financial company. Even in his dying days, Alexander was fielding calls and sending emails to further a clean-energy project about which he felt passionately. The goal of that project is not to make money; it is to solve energy issues in third-world countries to help their economies and their ways of life.

During his speech at the memorial in Houston last Monday, Martellus referred to the entrepreneurial Alexander as a "poor man's Willy Wonka. He didn't have Oompa Loompas running around. Well, he did have Oompa Loompas, but it was just us."

An all-too-brief life that seemed a fantasy was instead an uplifting reality for the Bennetts.

"Yeah, he told us all this stuff as we were kids growing up, as long as we knew him -- freshman year of high school -- and we didn't believe most of the stuff he told us," Martellus said in the locker room following the Pro Bowl. "But have you ever seen 'Big Fish'? That's how it was at the funeral. All those people showed up: 'I'm a rocket scientist.' 'I work at NASA.' 'I was with them when the shuttle crashed.'

"I was like, 'What is going on?' He told us all this outlandish stuff, and it all wound up being true."

Even those closer to Alexander were shocked by the impact he had on those around him. Jan said she's been comforted the past few weeks by a number of young men who have come by the house to be with her because of the role Mark and the family played in their lives.

Mark Alexander (left) with son Rio and Michael Bennett.

A small group of boys, including Michael and Martellus Bennett, would spend their afternoons with the Alexanders after football practice during high school, so when they heard of Mark’s death, they knew it was time to go back and be with Jan once again. They've sat with her, watched tapes of their old football games and made sure she hasn't been alone.

So it was for Michael and Martellus, who took time out of their week to travel to Houston for the memorial service on Martin Luther King Day -- a fitting tribute to a man who, as Martellus said, "saw no color."

"Both of those boys are really like children for us," Jan said by phone Monday. "Their dad is very strict, but our house was a house they didn't have to explain -- 'Oh, we're going to the Alexanders.' It was OK. There wasn't anything else that had to be said."

Mark earned that kind of trust from others, even in his business dealings. His son, Rio, who has worked closely with his father since graduating college in 2012 and will continue handling his father’s business interests, said Mark wouldn't follow through on a business deal if he thought someone else was going to come out on the short end.

"He only believed in deals where everyone was a winner. Otherwise, it created angst and bad feelings, and that risks your future dealings with people," Rio said. "When we met with former Ernst & Young accountants and they reviewed his book of trades, one of them said, 'Mark, you're the only guy I know who walks into a s**tstorm and comes out squeaky clean.'"

It shouldn't have been a surprise, then, that business associates and friends alike turned out in droves for the memorial service.

"It was crazy. (Jan) was like, 'I knew he helped people out, but I didn't know he helped this many people out,'" Michael Bennett said. "Just seeing all the kids that had kids now, they're 30-plus, and their kids came to play with him. Whenever they came to town, they stopped by his house to have dinner with him.

"I'm a multimillionaire, and he never once asked me to pay for dinner. I just thought that was cool."

Michael also found it cool the way Alexander served the Alief community. When a woman knocked on Alexander's door one day to ask for a ride to work, he didn't hesitate to drive her there and pick her up. There were apparently countless other similar stories.

For Michael, the Alexander house served as a second home. Martellus said Michael would often get kicked out of their house for being late (when Michael Sr. refused to let his tardy son in the house one night, Michael Jr. slept outside), so he would pretty much stay for weeks at a time with the Alexanders. Mark Alexander even gave Michael a key. Sometimes, Mark wouldn't even know Michael was in the house until he shut the door on his way out. Jan would often come home to find Michael on the couch with his shoes off, taking a nap.

Mark Alexander was close enough to Michael Bennett that he attended Bennett's wedding in Hawaii in 2012.

It was at the Alexander home where Michael and Martellus found the encouragement to accomplish their goals. For Michael, one of them was to play in the NFL, though he wasn't a highly recruited football player and went undrafted. Thanks in part to Mark's encouragement, Michael became a starter with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2011, signed a one-year deal with the Seahawks in 2013 and then re-signed with Seattle on a four-year, $28.5 million deal last offseason.

Not a bad haul for a guy who didn't hear his name called on draft day and had to settle for being consoled by Mark.

"He was at my house like he was getting drafted," an emotional Michael said during his speech at Mark's memorial. "He was like, 'Mike, man, I've been telling you you're one of the best since you were a kid. Just keep grinding.' When I first signed, he called me again and said, 'Mike, I see something in you that none of these other coaches see.'"

Martellus was always considered a top football talent, yet Mark spoke to him about his other interests -- art, science, books, architecture and anything else that would spark their active brains. Martellus kept notes on their conversations in a spiral notebook. Mark could also tap into Martellus' offbeat sense of humor, such as when he taught him how to properly order fried chicken -- "the full woman: two breasts, two thighs, two legs but no wings because we still want her to fly away." (Though Martellus still gets his chicken that way, Mark's 33-year marriage to Jan revealed his ordering protocol was a joke and not sound life advice.)

"This year, I came out with my first animated film. He was one of the first people who told me I could do it," Martellus said during his speech at the memorial, his voice cracking with emotion. "Everyone else was caught up in the pigskin, watching me run down the field, stiff-arming people. I looked good doing it, so I don't blame y'all for watching and I always wore my pants one size smaller so my butt looked nice, too.

"But with Mark, when he came over the house after the game, we went straight to talking about, 'Hey, what are you working on? You got any books? Art?' Every single thing I'd dreamed of in life, that's what he was interested in."

Late in the NFC Championship Game, the Seahawks were trailing the Green Bay Packers 19-14. Michael Bennett spoke to Mark Alexander, asking him to make something happen if he was truly in heaven.

Something happened, all right. Packers tight end Brandon Bostick flubbed the recovery of an onside kick. The Seahawks recovered. Bennett then asked for another favor and a sign his friend was in heaven. It came in the form of a touchdown to give the Seahawks the lead.

So during this week, with all of the talk of deflated footballs, alleged preferential treatment for the New England Patriots from commissioner Roger Goodell, potential repeat champions and other things that are trivial in the grand scheme of things, the least Michael Bennett could do for the memory of his friend is wear his favorite hat.

Already, it's made a difference to Jan, who will attend Sunday's game along with Rio as guests of Michael.

"Yeah, she appreciated it. She saw it on TV and called me, crying," Bennett said. "She said it means a lot to her that his legacy was living on and people were taking notice.

"A lot of times people die and no one really knows about it. The fact I'm saying stuff about him makes it even better."