Rob Oller commentary | Jesse Owens' flaws ultimately don't diminish the man

View Slideshow Request to buy this photoJesse Owens drank beer, smoked and fooled around on his future wife.

Typing those facts still does not come easily, not when you grew up idolizing Owens as more hero than human, more myth than man. For a good chunk of my adolescent life, I pictured the Olympian running in spikes, a halo vibrating over his head every time his foot flicked the cinder track. Owens did not fly so much as flit; a celestial sprinter barely touching the worldly surface.

I kept wanting to believe the Buckeye Bullet was flawless, wanted to remain naive, even as historians peeled the onion on his life, and even as Owens, a man of deep faith, reminded those worshiping him that the…