As fans we all have our sports heroes.

Personally, my list includes a few players, all of whom have extenuating circumstances putting them on that short list.

• Michael Jordan: I cried my six-year-old eyes out when he retired the first time.
• Ken Griffey Jr.: The best baseball player I've ever seen and he didn't cheat to get there.
• Peyton Manning: I grew up in Tennessee and cried when ESPN stole the Heisman.
• Tee Martin: The quarterback who won us a national championship. Enough said.

Of course, those guys were all people I hoped to be as a kid. Like many young boys in the world, I wanted to be the superstar athlete.

Once I grew up and realized that wasn't a possibility, the idolization of athletes stopped. I no longer aspired to be like the players I saw on TV. The person I wanted to pattern myself after was much closer to me. Not anybody famous.

However, on Thursday my "ban" on idolizing athletes was officially lifted.

This time it's not just a sports hero, though. It's the kind of hero I only had one of prior to this week, and that I may only have two of in my entire life. And it only took four simple words to make that the case.

Chris Lofton beat cancer.

During my senior year of high school I watched Lofton play as a freshman on TV every chance I got. Then Bruce Pearl was hired and I felt the duo might just be what the school needed to have a relevant basketball program.

The Vols were overachievers and Lofton was the ringleader. That alone made Lofton the defining player of my years at the University of TennesseeAnd boy was that an understatement. Pearl was the coach and Lofton was the star as Tennessee basketball ascended into the national spotlight. While other teams I pulled for were disappointing, a.k.a. 2005 Tennessee football and the New York Mets circa 2006 and 2007, Lofton and company never were.

They always played hard and they always achieved more than I ever hoped for. Even when the team fell in the Sweet 16 two years in a row, I was not disappointed. The Vols were overachievers and Lofton was the ringleader.

That alone made Lofton the defining player of my years at the University of Tennessee. And then the cancer announcement came and Chris Lofton became more than my favorite basketball player since Michael Jordan.

He became my hero on a personal level, even though the only conversation I've ever had with him was about five words long.

The picture at the top of this story was taken following the Vols win over Memphis in February. I can't remember what was said when I was with Lofton for those 30 seconds two months ago, but I'm sure it couldn't have been more than congratulations and thanks.

Therefore, I'm sure it sounds a bit silly for me to call a man just a year older than me a personal hero, but in order to understand that part one must know the story of my other hero.

At the same time I was a senior in high school watching Lofton battle on the basketball court, I was watching another battle much closer to home. I was watching my grandpa battle cancer.

It was December of 2004 when my grandpa was diagnosed with cancer and at first I thought it was just another hurdle to clear. We watched Tennessee beat Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl together on New Year's Day 2005 in a hospital room.

We had seen so many games together. We went to Titans games. We went to Vols games. We watched the games we couldn't go to on TV. I never dreamed that Cotton Bowl would be the last game we saw together.

I watched him battle the disease for a couple months before the night I finally realized he wasn't going to beat it.

My grandpa will always be at the top of my list of heroes, but he has some company in Lofton now It was at my grandparent's house, and I don't even remember the date. But I remember seeing a man I thought was indestructible beaten down and tired of getting back up. I went to the back of the house so no one would see me and cried harder than I ever have.

Still, he continued to be there as much as he could for me during the end of my senior year. He even made it to a few of the final soccer games of my career, including the district championship game when I was part of a team that ended our rival's stranglehold on the district.

It was less than two weeks after that game that cancer ultimately claimed his life. It only took five months for the disease to take down my hero. His heroism has only grown in my eyes as I have learned more and more about his life over the past three years.

My grandfather was a man who served in the Navy. He was at the center of making wearing seat belts mandatory in Tennessee. He was the smartest person I knew and he even wrote a book about a subject I'm sure he was the utmost authority on.

I won't give away the story, but it's called Spizzerinctum (meaning the will to succeed) and you can find it on Amazon. Trust me, it's worth the read and that's coming from someone who hates reading about anything other than sports. In my copy of the book, he left me a simple message.

"Cliff, you have the potential. Now, get the Spizz."

I have those final three words tattooed on my arm to remind to me to keep working hard at everything. And to clarify, I'm not someone who has a bunch of tattoos. It's the one and only thing I would have permanently put on my body at this point in time.

[Lofton] provides an example to me that anything can be beaten, and in all honesty that's not something I was 100 percent sure of until I learned his story

My grandpa will always be at the top of my list of heroes, but he has some company in Lofton now.

As someone who has seen first hand what cancer can do to even the strongest people, the fact that Lofton was strong enough to triumph over the disease and continue to play basketball is astounding.

He provides an example to me that anything can be beaten, and in all honesty that's not something I was 100 percent sure of until I learned his story.

I was at the campus bookstore on Thursday about an hour and a half before the story broke, and Lofton happened to walk in. I wish the story had broken two hours earlier so I could have dropped what I was doing, shaken his hand and thanked him.

Sure I would have been late for my English final, but who cares. It's not every day you get to personally thank your hero.

But in the off-chance that he happens to be reading, I'd like to say thank you, Chris.

You're an inspiration to me and so many others, and you will always hold a special place on my short list of heroes.