As we close out a year in which the news media worked overtime to earn the public’s contempt, spare a thought for their little siblings at the Sports Desk. Sports hacks are just as liberal, insular and arrogant as their “hard news” colleagues, and their desire to be taken seriously means they inject politics and ideology into issues where they just don’t belong.
So here is a tour of some of the more idiotic things said by sports media types or by hacktivists commenting on sports related issues.
Take a Knee
San Francisco Forty-Niners quarterback Colin Kaepernick has decided to sit or kneel when the national anthem is played before games. He also practiced in socks festooned with pigs in police uniforms and he’s a Fidel Castro fan boy. (He’s also horrible at the job they pay him millions to do – the Niners have lost 13 in a row for the first time ever.) Naturally, this thrills the media.
When a black American protests the demoralizing practices of American government, there is always a white person eager to unfurl the welcome mat to Africa … We don’t yet appear to have settled the matter of citizenship – not even for our president, another black man backhandedly accused of harboring terrorist sympathies … As a result, modern patriotism has become Kabuki citizenship. It’s Joseph McCarthy; it’s the House Un-American Activities Committee … It’s American flag pins and the people who go nuts when a politician is caught without one.”
Wesley Morris, New York Times Sunday Magazine, “Colin Kaepernick and the Question of Who Gets to Be Called a ‘Patriot’” September 12, 2016.
Kaepernick’s courageous action for the black people who are being slaughtered in the street should earn our thanks … Carolina Panther quarterback Cam Newton asked out loud who he was to say Kaepernick was either right or wrong. That may sound reasonable, even rational, but it is precisely the sort of noxious neutrality, which, in truth, is never neutral at all, but supports those who stand against change. Newton may be superman on the field, but his response to Kaepernick’s cause of social justice has kryptonite written all over it.”
Michael Eric Dyson, “The Courage of Colin Kaepernick,” ESPN’s The Undefeated magazine September 6, 2016
Bathroom Brouhaha
North Carolina passed a law saying that people with lady parts should use public ladies rooms and people with man parts should use public men’s rooms. This annoyed all the usual suspects and the NCAA pulled a tournament out of Charlotte. But – surprise! – that wasn’t enough for some.
What does that have to do with sports? Not a lot. Only that many of our top sports officials have so far turned a blind eye, when taking action could mean a lot. I’m speaking of NBA commissioner Adam Silver, who could move to take next year's NBA all-star game away from Charlotte. I'm speaking of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who could urge owners to change the site of their meetings in Carolina next month … Since it's never too late to do the right thing, here's hoping all those guys may yet lead by showing lawmakers in Carolina and other states considering such measures that their bigotry has a price.
Bryant Gumbel, HBO, Real Sports, April 19, 2016
If the NCAA is serious, it is only a matter of time before [Mormon-affiliated]BYU gets kicked out of the association. And every other school with an anti-LGBT policy will be removed as well … It’s remarkable that schools like BYU haven’t been kicked out of the NCAA already, given the association’s claims of dedication to equality. BYU’s policies are far more sinister and discriminatory than North Carolina’s HB2 law. While the law bars discrimination protection and forces trans people to use the bathrooms of their birth sex, BYU’s policy outright discriminates against the entire LGBT community at every level and bans homosexuality altogether.”
Cyd Zeigler, Outsports blogger commenting on Vox's SB Nation site,| September 14, 2016
Unsportsmanlike Conduct on Trump
Somebody robbed the home of a N.Y. Giants player, and left racist messages mentioning Donald Trump spray painted on the wall. A single discussion of the incident from ESPN2’s First Take offers two the year’s worst quotes.
Donald Trump was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. That’s a fact. I’m not making that up. And that there was an appeal to white nationalists. How else can you say these things? This is not the first time that something like this has happened since the election and some reference to Trump was made – “Trump country,” “Trump’s America” – and to Donald Trump’s credit, he did, in a nationally televised broadcast at one point say it should stop, that’s terrible … Either he needs to do that every time something like this becomes public information, or if the idea is this is happening so much that he couldn’t possibly [denounce it every time], then he needs to address that, too.
Max Kellerman
Those ignorant, racist few out there very well may not epitomize everybody that voted for Trump.
Stephen A. Smith
The Race is to the Obsessed
Like so many modern liberals, sports commentators see racism everywhere. And like so many modern liberal journalists, they’re really sore they never got to cover Jackie Robinson or the Civil Rights Movement. So they have to show their virtue where they can.
It took the unraveling of a quarterback suspended by the high power of the league over air pressure and deceit, the crippling of a promising backup, and a pinch of pure serendipity for the New England Patriots to do what the franchise has never accomplished: start a black man at the quarterback position … Boston has long been stained with the blood of black men and women looking for freedom along its cobblestone streets … The city is also equipped with a long history of police shootings geared at mostly unarmed black adolescents.
Tyler Tynes, SB Nation, Why Jacoby Brissett Starting at QB for the Patriots Matters, September 22, 2016.
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… we need to stop ignoring the racial implications of the NCAA’s hypocrisy. After all, who is actually earning the billions of dollars flooding universities, athletic conferences, TV networks and their sponsors? To a large extent, it’s young black men, who are heavily overrepresented in football and men’s basketball, the two sports that bring in virtually all the revenue in college athletics … Athletics administrators and coaches, meanwhile, are overwhelmingly white. So by refusing to pay athletes, the NCAA isn’t just perpetuating a financial injustice. It’s also committing a racial one.
Sports Agent Donald Yee, College sports exploits unpaid black athletes. But they could force a change. Washington Post, January 11, 2016
