When keeping it bigoted goes wrong: The Jon Gruden Story
The Tuesday Talking Points!
With a nod to Peter Abelard's "Sic et Non," if it's Tuesday, then it's time for the Hobbservation Point's "Yes" or "No" analysis of the hottest headlines.
1. Did Las Vegas Raiders Coach Jon Gruden resign more so because of old misogynistic and homophobic e-mails than his racist ones?
Yes!
Consider that last Friday, reports surfaced that Las Vegas Raiders Coach Jon Gruden had issued ridiculously racist tweets aimed at NFL executive DeMaurice Smith, ones in which he questioned Smith's intelligence by spelling his name "DumbMorris," and ones that denigrated his humanity by comparing his lips to "big Michelin tires."
Sigh… 😠
Since 1619, two of the most worn out racist tropes that white folks have used against Black folks has been to question our intelligence, and to draw exaggerated depictions of our facial figures, especially the lips, all in their idiotic efforts to argue that Blacks were a sub-human species. Gruden's e-mails simply prove that he is just as idiotic and racist as his forebears despite his cliche'd self-defense where he exclaimed, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”
Nevermind that Attorney DeMaurice Smith was graduating with honors from private Cedarville College and the prestigious University of Virginia School of Law when Gruden was a benchwarming quarterback and average student at the University of Dayton. Nevermind that Smith worked his way through the legal ranks, serving with distinction as a Federal prosecutor before eventually leading the NFL Player's Association, while Gruden, the son of a football coach and NFL scout, used his daddy's contacts to get jobs that he was not qualified for and, like many mediocre white men have always done, rose up the ranks all the way to the point of winning a 2002 Super Bowl with...wait for it...Tony Dungy's team and schemes the year after Dungy, a Black man, was fired!
Indeed, such is the nature of American racism, the kind in which unqualified and overly entitled white men like Gruden get born on third base—and act like they hit a triple in the game of life! A form of racism, I remind, that allows Gruden's racist e-mails to emerge not just about Smith, but also about former President Barack Obama (the Columbia and Harvard Law grad whose intelligence Gruden questioned), and the police brutality protests led by Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid—but calls for his job were few and far between last weekend.
No, Gruden's job only was in jeopardy once the e-mails of his repeatedly calling NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell a "faggot" and a "clueless, anti- football pussy;" the ones calling then Vice President Joe Biden a "nervous, clueless pussy," and still others in which he disparaged Michael Sam, the gay former defensive end for the then St. Louis Rams, dissed women serving as referees in the NFL, and traded nude pictures of women, including two topless ones of Washington Football Team cheerleaders. Those ones are the e-mails that cost Gruden his job.
Suffice it to say that Gruden, clearly, is a deplorable human being, but the teachable moment here is that his deplorability on misogyny and his homophobia trumped his deplorability on race. Which, one could argue, doesn't matter if one less entitled, feeble minded, mediocre white man is canceled from his high paying position due to his anachronistic, knuckle dragging views on life in the 21st Century.
But I submit that it does matter because thinking back, Keyshawn Johnson, a former star receiver who played under Gruden, told us LONG ago that the coach was a bigoted jerk, but because Gruden had the complexion for the protection, he made millions and thrived as a sports journalist and coach despite his pernicious mindset.
A mindset, I conclude, that is shared by many other mediocre white male coaches, executives, athletics directors and the like across the youth, high school, collegiate, and professional ranks—coaches who are safe for now ONLY because their e-mails or private conversations have yet to be revealed...
2. Is Lamar Jackson the poster child for when racism backfires on scouts, general managers, and coaches who pass on talented Black quarterbacks by questioning their ability to play the position?
Yes!
Over the past 20 years, Black quarterbacks like Michael Vick, Russell Wilson, Colin Kaepernick, Deshaun Watson, and Patrick Mahomes, to name a few, have become extremely prominent in the NFL as dual threat quarterbacks who can run as well as being able to pass the football. Such was not always the case, as I remember quite well how 1993 Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Charlie Ward of Florida State University, a friend of mine whose 51st birthday happens to be today, had NFL execs refusing to commit to selecting him high in the 1994 NFL Draft.
Ward, a star point guard in basketball, was taken in the 1st round of the 1994 NBA Draft and enjoyed a stellar career for the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets.
Still, when Lamar Jackson was winning his own Heisman Trophy back in 2017, despite the success of Vick, Wilson, and Watson, a number of NFL execs used old school arguments that Jackson should switch to running back or wide receiver due to their concerns that he could not throw the football well enough on the professional level.
Well, as my old friend (and Florida A&M University Hall of Fame football player/sports media figure) Vaughn Wilson wrote this morning, Jackson clearly is having the last laugh! Writes Wilson: "Every NFL team except the Baltimore Ravens passed on Lamar Jackson in the first round of the 2018 NFL Draft. His mom was there to encourage him. The NFL scouts had decided that he could not be an NFL-style pocket passer and that he could only be a running quarterback. Last night Lamar Jackson went 37-of-43 for 442 yards passing. They never saw it in him, but he did. The moral of the story: BELIEVE IN YOURSELF WHEN NO ONE ELSE DOES! The second moral: MOMS ARE AMAZING!"
Amen—and lest we forget!
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