In Sunday’s game at Tennessee, underneath his Carolina Panthers gear, assistant athletic trainer Jean-Baptiste Laporte wore a shirt with a large image of the French flag.
He wasn’t making a statement. He wasn’t trying to get around NFL rules. But he needed to wear it for his mother and childhood friends who live in Paris, within miles of where several of last Friday’s terrorist attacks occurred.
Laporte, 37, has lived in the United States and worked with the Panthers as a trainer and physical therapist for three years after spending 10 years in Montreal.