Was Taylor shooting a random attack?

Sean Taylor, the Washington Redskins safety and -- perhaps more tellingly in this circumstance, a University of Miami product -- is reportedly fighting for his life in a Miami hospital after being shot in his home early Monday morning.

Was this random violence visited upon Taylor by an intruder outside his South Miami Dade home as early reports are indicating?

Or was he shot in the groin at the backdoor of his million dollar home for some other reason? Taylor was no stranger to guns. And, sadly, University of Miami football players -- past and present -- are too often intimate with deadly violence. Violence and too many University of Miami football players are intertwined like strands of DNA.

It was little more than a year ago -- November 7, 2006 -- that Miami senior Bryan Pata was shot to death at his apartment. In July of last year, another Miami player, Willie Cooper, was shot in the buttocks by an intruder outside his home. His roommate, teammate and current New England Patriots safety Brandon Meriweather, returned fire. There was the infamous brawl between Miami and Florida International in 2006.

From there, the line of violence can be drawn through Taylor himself -- accused of wielding a gun at a man and repeatedly hitting him during a fight that broke out after Taylor and some friends went looking for the people who had allegedly stolen his all-terrain vehicles in 2005 -- to Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis' being tangled up in a double murder outside an Atlanta nightclub in 1999, to Lewis' roommate Marlin Barnes being bludgeoned to death in April of 1996, on down to stupidity like rapper Luther Campbell of 2Live Crew offering bounties to Miami players for big plays back in the 1990s.

The University of Miami football community's also had its share of random tragedy. Bills tight end Kevin Everett's near-fatal neck injury in the opening week of this season. Former Miami star Jerome Brown was a Pro Bowler for the Eagles when he was killed in a car accident at the age of 27 back in 1992. In 2002 and 2003, former Canes Chris Campbell and Al Blades died in car accidents as well.

As Taylor, the son of a Florida police chief and father of an infant child, fights to stay alive to see tomorrow, you think of them and pray for him. And yet, inevitably, you also shake your head at the violence surrounding individuals who played football for the University of Miami. So much that it's long gone past being a coincidence or a minor trend.

And it makes you look for a quote you remembered reading. The one from former Miami and current Carolina Panthers linebacker Jon Beason. The one he uttered in July of 2006 after Cooper was shot, "We're targets because we play for the University of Miami. ... These guys, they know who we are."