Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category
From Jerry Rice to Randy Moss and Beyond: Perceiving “Yesterday’s” Athlete and Today’s
It was only a matter of time before Randy Moss’ words caught up with him. After breaking Jerry Rice’s record for touchdown receptions in a season with 23 (Rice caught 22 in the strike-shortened, 12 game, 1987 season) Moss told the press that the record meant something only because, “shuttin’ you guys [the NFL press] up made it special.”
Jerry Rice on Sirius Radio said Moss’ statement was a “slap in the face” and added dismissively that, “that’s Moss.”
On ESPN’s Mike and Mike in the Morning radio-television simulcast Mike Greenberg and Sean Salisbury, sitting in for Mike Golic, criticized Moss for making his statement. The show co-hosts questioned exactly what the heck Moss was talking about. They felt the critique of Moss while at Oakland were and are warranted because he admittedly failed to perform at times for the Raiders.
Kentucky, Gardner-Webb and the New Nature of the Upset
I watched #22 Kentucky fail to put forth the effort to play a basketball game against a team with the nickname, Runnin’ Bulldogs. The Runnin’ Bulldogs would be Gardner-Webb University, located in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, population 3,866. Seriously, 3,866. The student population is approximately 4,000.
Last season the Runnin’ Bulldogs, a member of the Atlantic Sun Conference, had a 9-21 overall record and finished seventh in the 12-team conference. This season, so far G-W is 2-0 with a win over Alabama A&M and an 84-68 upset of Kentucky.
This was supposed to be Billy Gillespie’s coming out party at UK. It was his birthday, after all. Gillespie built Texas A&M into a national power through tough defense and disciplined offense. He was hired at Kentucky to bring this brand of basketball to Lexington. However, last night Kentucky only exhibited a distinct ability to roll over and play beta dog when under duress.
Spotes Notes: Gillespie Goes to UK; John Beilein Did What? Bron Bron Goes Oops (check back for here for more Spotes Notes throughout the day)
“Spotes” = Sports, as in “AYo, you play spotes? Which ones? I play cricket myself.”
**John Beilein took the men’s hoops head coaching job at University of Michigan. No problem, right? Wait. According to a New York Times article Beilein took the UofM job as a “leap of faith” without having ever visited the campus in Ann Arbor.
Hmmm, isn’t there a crime in that act? I seem to remember O. J. Mayo being raked over the coals in part for not visiting the USC campus before choosing to attend the university. As Jonathan Weiler so aptly puts it:
If Only Eddie Robinson Could Die Every Day
The saddest part of ex-Grambling head coach Eddie Robinson’s passing is that he can only die this one day.
If it wasn’t for Eddie Robinson dying today there would be no mention of his 408 victories. Remember, it was Robinson who broke Bear Bryant’s college football equivalent of Babe Ruth’s home run record, the most wins by an NCAA football coach.
Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno coach in the equivalent of the steroids era of collegiate football; at least 11 games played per season and most time 12 or 13; gimme or near-gimme wins the first two or three weeks of every season, and annual schedules with eight games at home. Yet, every major newspaper from USA Today to the San Diego Union-Tribune is quick to mention that John Gagliardi of St. John’s, Minn., passed Robinson and has 443 wins – in the “interest of fairness,” of course.
But, as once Robinson said:
“The real record I have set for over 50 years is the fact that I have had one job and one wife.”
If it wasn’t for Eddie Robinson’s passing no one would know that over 200 of his charges played in the NFL and four Buck Buchannon, Willie Davis, Willie Brown, and Charlie Joyner have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Today James Harris, vice president of player personnel for the Jacksonville Jaguars and former Grambling and NFL quarterback – the first black QB to start an NFL playoff game – would be in his office quietly thinking about the upcoming draft – unless one of his players was arrested. And today Doug Williams would be quietly going about his day instead of being interviewed by every major sports media outlet in the U.S.
If Eddie Robinson was alive today no one would know that in 1968 Grambling University played football on every major television network. No one would know that Grambling and Robinson were the subjects of a Howard Cosell documentary, 100 Yards to Glory.
If Eddie Robinson was only ill his sickness would be mentioned in passing and no one would know that of the more than 4500 student athletes Robinson coached, 85% graduated from college. No one would know that in his second season as a head coach his Grambling team was a perfect 9-0 and was not scored upon, a record never duplicated by any college team, anywhere.
Despite his monumental success as a head football coach, Robinson was only concerned about the future welfare of his players. This is what Eddie Robinson wanted the world to know:
“I tended to want to bring things out in a football player as a student. We were blessed to have some good football players, but when you graduate people, they seem to be good people. They get a degree, and they can go out and handle things.”
It is said that Robinson coached every athlete as if he wanted him to marry his daughter.
If Eddie Robinson was alive today the only news we would hear about football players would be how it is imperative that the NFL make an example of Pacman Jones and perhaps suspend him for the season; sports media driving public sentiment. All we would hear is how Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry begged NFL commissioner Roger Goddell not to be shelved. And we would be lied to and told that it was the players who initiated this non-solution to a problem that affects only 2% of all NFL players.
If not for Eddie Robinson’s passing today we would have no clue that there are positive black role models in football, or sports, for that matter. The big news elsewhere is the patently racist rhetoric that the paucity of black baseball players is because of Barry Bonds and his court-induced involvement in the steroids scandal that rules the day.
The fact is that there are positive role black models on every team on every sideline, on every bench, and in every dugout of every collegiate and professional football, basketball, and baseball program and team in America. The problem is that it is too easy to focus on some malaprop, to play on the existing ingrained racism and racial fears this bastion of “tolerance” called the United States supports and has a vested interest in fostering.
But if you asked most sports media outlet editors, no matter how large or small, why black athletes are so rarely shown in a positive light, they’d smile weakly, sheepishly, and guiltily. They’d shrug their shoulders and say, ‘We’d love to, but that’s not what the public wants. Positive doesn’t sell.’ Sure, go tell it on the mountain.
If only Eddie Robinson could die every day.
Welcome to the Masters and the World of Walking Ghosts
Come tomorrow avid golf fans and casual observers alike will turn their eyes rapt in attention to the PGA’s first major, the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Georgia. The 8 a.m. tee off time of Bill Mayfair and Ian Poulter will mark the 71st playing of the tournament and the course that Bobby Jones built.
Many watchers of the Masters will know most, if not every entrant to the tournament. Yet what no reporter, spectator, and no television viewer will know is what goes on inside the ropes. Despite our preoccupation with having vital information concerning the private lives of our favorite athletes, we know little of the lives beyond the course of golfers. Despite the media’s want for information in the way of the scoop or the investigative article, no one has come remotely close to peering behind the veil that lies between golfers’ public personae and the reality of their beings.
For all his crowing of his trials and tribulations, we have never seen John Daly in midstream during one of his famed alcohol binges. For all his acclaimed Las Vegas gambling junkets, defending Masters Champion Phil Mickelson has never been the subject of paparazzi who lurk in every hall and portico of every casino in the city that never sleeps.
It is as if those who fill us with picturesque tales of the on course exploits and foibles of some of the world’s most recognizable sports figures act more as keepers of secrets than men and women who seek to sate the hunger of an ever-voyeuristic public.
Golfers are the only sportsmen who are allowed to craft their own image as they see fit without so much as a tame query from the rest of the world; Sergio Garcia is the swashbuckling playboy of Michelob Light commercials and Aaron Baddeley is the young heartthrob of MacGregor Golf commercial fame. Otherwise, only Tiger Woods is seen as having more than one side to his personality – and we have no idea if anything portrayed in the myriad commercials in which he is featured are anything more than today’s version of hiding in plain sight.
Searching for insights into the players’ mental or physical states as they enter the Masters Thursday is a lesson in futility. After looking on the Internet for a morsel – a dust ball in a far-off corner – of information, I found nothing. Finally, I turned to old standby the New York Times and its renowned golf reporter, Damon Hack, for news.
The only piece of personal information among all the golf articles in the “Golf” section of the Times is a hackneyed Hack piece on Augusta native, Charles Howell III; worn news brought up to date only by the passing of Howell’s birthdays and Woods’ dominance of the course and the game.
It is said by many in the mainstream media and those on the Internet who ape the mainstream that the reason for the public infatuation with NBA is because its player’s faces are exposed for their immediate audience and all viewing the world to see. Every expression of the NBA player can be read, analyzed, and dissected at a moment’s notice. As a result, media members feel they have an added responsibility to tell the public what lies behind the expression – and bring those expressions to life in print. Additionally, since these players of sports ply their trade in the public domain, their private lives are fair game for reporters, television cameras, photographers, and the general public.
By the reasoning given for the mostly black NBA, PGA golfers – almost all white – then are the ultimate sporting public figures. Not only can we see their faces, but spectators actually traverse the same 18 holes side-by-side with the men they pay good money to watch in person. Yet these men, seen weekly by millions, tens of millions during the four days majors are played, walk unencumbered by the thought of who knows what bar they drank in Saturday night, or the speeding ticket they received last month. They walk confidently knowing no one knows how much money they lost or won in Las Vegas, or with whom they may have they spent their time there.
The Masters and the other three majors are the only sporting events where television networks pay hundreds of millions of dollars to air the event and yet we know little of the status of the figures participating in those events; we know more about a horse entering the Kentucky Derby than we do a human playing four rounds of golf. These men are, with endorsements, are among the wealthiest sportsmen in the world, but you won’t see their cars, their homes, or anything beyond the city in which they spend the most time during the offseason; the place they designate for the world to know as their home, whether it is true or not.
Come tomorrow when you tune your computer to one of many Internet sites carrying hole-by-hole updates of the Masters think for just a moment about one of the golfers in the Master’s field. Think about what you know of him, and then compare that lack of knowledge with a well-known athlete of your choice in any other widely-televised American sport; what you won’t know about that golfer is a bit disconcerting. Then again, perhaps it will be the realization of what you do know about the other athlete that will make you a little queasy.
That player of your choosing and many others may shoot unseemly 77s or 79s for the opening round. After, you may find that one of them tweaked his back a couple of weeks ago, or he’s suffering from a sprained wrist or knee. But is that the truth? Is that what’s really ailing him?
With golfers, that’s one “fact” we’ll never know.
Georgetown-OSU: Groundhog Day? No, More Like Valentine’s Day – the Massacre, That Is
When I was a kid, cub reporter for a group of newspapers in Northern Virginia I was the beat reporter for the George Mason University men’s basketball team. One night they were playing James Madison University at home. The game was horrid. It had no rhythm. It had no flow, no continuity. Just before the start of the second half a reporter next to me asked for my thoughts on the game. I said, “It’s choppy. They’re (nod toward the referee standing directly in front of me) killing the game.” Knowing that I also wrote a column once a week for the newspapers the reporter asked if I was going to mention that in my column. I told him I was. At that point the referee parked in front of me turned and said, “Who’s making the game choppy and killing it.” Slightly incredulous that the ref could hear me, but unafraid I replied, “You guys.” The referee glared at me and said, “If I so much as hear you speak I’m going to make sure you’re gone. You won’t see the rest of the game to be able to write about how bad we were.”
He continued with the glare for a few seconds, baiting me. I glared back, but said nothing. The following morning I wrote my column and mentioned not only the manner in which the game was refereed, but the exchange I had with the ref.
His name was Teddy Valentine.
Last night when I realized one of the refs for the Ohio State-Georgetown game was Teddy Valentine, I knew any opportunity to watch a real college basketball game was out of the question. I was right.
In one of the consistently worst refereed games I have ever witnessed the Buckeyes defeated the Hoyas, 67-60. Before I go further, I want to admit up front that I am an unabashed Georgetown fan; I have my reasons.
Despite my liking a certain team or player, I can put that aside when reporting on a game or detailing the actions or transgressions of an athlete – think Adam “Pacman” Jones. However, this game was statistically anomalous. It was cheapened and rendered meaningless – a near impossibility for a Final Four game – by the referee crew of chief Valentine, Dick Cartmell, and Mike Kitts. And it was Valentine who was the ringleader.
Valentine put himself and his crew in the perfect position to be discussed as much as the game itself. Let me explain why.
Read these statistics and tell me who won the game: “Team A” connected on 25 of its 51 shots, 49% from the field, including a horrific 1-10 performance by one of its best three-point shooters. “Team B” made 43.9% of its field goal attempts; 25-57. Team A had 17 assists on those 25 made field goals compared with only 13 for Team B. Team A shot 7-21 from three-point range, while Team B shot 4-14 from behind the arc.
Who won the game, Team A or Team B? Well, by those statistics, Team A wins 57-54. Oh, I forgot, Team A attempted only eight free throws, making three, while Team B attempted 18 free throws, connecting on 13.
Uh-oh, Team B now wins 67-60.
Eight free throws? Eight? Really, eight?! Ohio State committed 10 fouls the entire game – T-E-N! If you told me that a college basketball team committed 10 fouls in a game, I’d tell you you’re a liar. But the Buckeyes did – five fouls per half. Four of those 10 fouls belonged to center Greg Oden. Because of phantom calls on Oden (and boy did Valentine and crew blow four actual fouls by Oden, not to mention a bunny-hop before a reverse layin at a key moment in the second half), OSU was forced to use four guards on the floor for 30 minutes of the game. So, I’m supposed to believe that a four-guards on the floor team only commits a total of six fouls the entire game against a big, athletic opponent.
If you believe that’s the truth, I have some excellent waterfront “lowland property” for ya in Florida – real cheap!
To help put this anomaly into perspective, let’s look at the UCLA-Florida game. The smallish Bruins attempted only 13 free throws, while the taller, athletic Gators attempted 31 FTs. Even with only 13 FT attempts, Florida still committed 17 fouls; UCLA committed 26. The 43 total fouls are also representative of a cleanly-played college game.
Yet in the case of Georgetown-OSU, the opposite was true and the smallish Buckeye got away with – repeated assaults, mini-muggings. Back cut? Not when your opponent has a fistful of your jersey. Slide through the zone to establish high post position? Not when your opponent makes you run through a gauntlet of forearms and hip-checks. Why use your quickness to out-rebound your taller, stronger opponent 36-29, 19-to-nine offensive boards when a well-placed nudge in the back will do? And 25 total fouls? That is an unheard of statistic.
I don’t want to hear about Thad Motta’s genius in alternating between zone and man-to-man defenses. Georgetown faced that throughout Big East conference play and through the NCAA tournament. I don’t want to hear how the Buckeyes were comfortable playing without Oden because they had to play the first seven games of the season without him. OSU sure faced some gut-check situations playing against the likes of Youngstown State, Kent State, and Eastern Kentucky. The seventh and final game without Oden was against North Carolina and OSU predictably lost that game, 98-89; that’s with shooting a ridiculously hot 13-26 from three-point range.
So, yeah I’ll repeat, I’m a Georgetown fan. So, you can call it sour grapes if you want. I call the Georgetown-Ohio State Final Four game a belated Valentine’s Day special.
Bill Simmons Is At It Again, So It’s a “Black Jesus” Friday
(Some of what is written below comes from a comment I wrote over at StopMikeLupica.com and thanks to flywoniu23 for the video.)
—————————–
I’m tired of reading Bill Simmons (and others of his ilk, as Michael Wilbon would say) and his depiction of black athletes – and black people. However, somebody has to make absolutely sure that the watchers are watched, that people of all colors can see racism, even when it might be “unintentional.” Yet, with Simmons, who appears to be intensely self-aware. it’s difficult to believe that he’s not just trying to cloud his racism with some pithy rhetoric. And since Simmons is so well-known it is important to point out his racist tendencies. It’s important because others might just begin to perceive the same in themselves; because some people might just begin to recognize it in other circumstances; because some people might begin to articulate something that can be subtle enough to go unnoticed.
—————————–
The first thing that struck me in Simmons piece titled, “Down with the O. J. Mayo Era,” was that Simmons wants to frame his argument by playing both ends against the middle:
“Again, it’s not a black/white thing as much as a philosophical thing.”
If not, then what is this statement doing in your column?
After all, Love represents everything good about basketball (unselfishness, teamwork, professionalism) and Mayo represents everything we’ve come to despise (showboating, selfishness, over-hype).
This is the essence of racist portrayals; this juxtaposition has existed for more than three millenia: white (Love) equals good, black (Mayo) equals bad.
But then Simmons attempts to backtrack and explain that, though he knows well that his prior statement was quintessentially racist, he’s not a racist:
“If Love were black, this would be a much easier topic to discuss. But he’s white. So even though there’s a natural inclination to embrace Love’s game and disparage Mayo’s game — you know, assuming you give a crap about basketball and care about where it’s headed as a sport — there’s also a natural inclination to hold back because nobody wants to sound like the white media guy supporting the Great White Hope over the Black Superstar Du Jour.”
It is almost funny that as I write this I’m watching a 4 a.m. rerun of the NCAA “2007 Slam Dunk and three-point contest” on ESPN. If it bothers Simmons so much that Mayo is a showboat, that so many high school players are showboats, then why does he first not challenge his company’s television arm to put an end to showing NCAA dunk contests and high school basketball games on the air before he frames an argument in black and white?
But wait! Simmons rushes to the rescue and attempts to save himself from criticism with his very next sentence:
So here’s the answer to make it easier for everybody: There’s room for both guys.
Whoops! Not quite a save – looks like the puck trickled through the five hole, Bill. Simmons didn’t say, ‘So here’s the answer: There’s room for both guys.’ No no no. Simmons slipped . ‘So here’s the answer to make it easier for everybody.’ By adding everybody he is letting the world know he continues with his distaste for Mayo-like creatures compared to Love-like, “play the right way” athletes; he’s just hoping to placate us. But he attempts to further distance himself from his prior race-speak with this:
Is it alarming that a 19-year-old kid throwing himself a halfcourt alley-oop in the final minute of a 40-point win, dunking it, tossing the ball into the stands and getting thrown out of his final high school game, then soaking in a standing ovation could be considered a beautiful moment by some people? Probably not. That’s just our culture now. Rappers sing songs with their own names as the chorus. Wannabe celebrities intentionally leak sex tapes to make themselves famous. Rich teenagers make fools of themselves on “My Super Sweet 16” and don’t even get that they’re the joke.
So O.J. Mayo fits into all of that. It’s not a good thing or a bad thing; it’s just the way things are.
Just what the hell is it, Bill? Is it ‘just the way things are, not good or bad,’ or is it really bad? Yes it is bad to you, Bill. It’s so bad that you’ll tell us that the young players on your beloved Boston Celtics – all of them are black, by the way – are so lame that that:
During their 18-game losing streak, nobody ever got kicked out of a game, knocked someone into a basket support, threw a frustrated punch … hell, even the coach didn’t get kicked out of a game. There was a passive, pathetic, indifferent response to everything that was happening. Not a single person stepped up. As somebody who travels with the team told me, “If you were with these guys every night and saw how little these losses affected them, you’d never want to follow sports again … the losses just bounce right off these guys.”
Bill, if these young cats got in a fight, or necktied an opposing player a la Kevin McHale (against the LA Lakers’ Michael Cooper) you would have been the first person out of your seat crying about how out of control these young players are and how they have no idea how to lose with dignity.
Nice try.
But to be fair, you place the blame where it belongs: on the same players only when they were high schoolers!
Why? Because they’ve been playing 100-plus games every year since they were 14 years old. Because the final score never really mattered for most of those games. Because they were taught at an early age that it’s all about how YOU looked, not how your team looked.
The operative word here Bill is “taught.” If your prior assertion contains any truth it is true because “they were taught” that it’s all about how you look, not how your team looked. Just to let you know Bill, that’s a classic – it’s called blaming the victim. It’s not the fault of the system in which the players are raised, it’s the player’s fault.
Mercifully, your anti-everything that is stylish about basketball diatribe arrives at a a soap-opera obvious end. You blame the loss of Mayo’s Squad on Mayo, while Love started wondrous fast breaks with his George Mikan-like two-handed outlet passes:
Which brings me back to that McDonald’s game. When Mayo bricked the game-winning 3-pointer with five seconds left and soaked in those scattered boos and a few “ov-er-ra-ted” chants, do you think he was more upset that his team lost, or that he would have been the hero if he made the 3? Call me crazy, but I’m going with the latter. Meanwhile, Kevin Love’s team came out on top. He finished with 13 points and six rebounds and jump-started at least five-six fast breaks that directly led to layups or dunks. Looking at the stat sheet, you’d never guess that he was one of the key guys in the game. But he was. And that’s why I’m looking forward to the Kevin Love Era and preparing myself to hate everything about the O.J. Mayo Era.
It’s not a white thing or a black thing … it’s a basketball thing.
Sure it is, Bill. sure it is.
You know Bill, if you wanted to write about how great you think Kevin Love is, you could have accomplished that with out performing a drive-by disparaging of O. J. Mayo on your way back to Boston. And while you were writing out your abject hate for Mayo, did you ever stop to think why you and so many of your peers dislike this young man who most of you have never met? Did you ever stop to think that if Mayo was a young, white entrepreneur who eschewed a basketball scholarship to pursue his burgeoning business, you’d praise him to no end?
Did you ever stop to think?
————————-
A reminder Bill, you did write:
“If Love were black, this would be a much easier topic to discuss. But he’s white. So even though there’s a natural inclination to embrace Love’s game and disparage Mayo’s game — you know, assuming you give a crap about basketball and care about where it’s headed as a sport —
There’s a natural inclination to embrace Love’s game — if you give a crap about basketball???
Oh really?
Does this mean Mayo, as a point guard, can’t dribble with both hands, make the correct pass to the post, shoot with both hands, make the correct choice when leading a 3-on-2 fast break? Aren’t all those things part of being a fundamentally sound basketball player?
You know, I just posted an Earl Monroe video to my site because he was the old school player I saw on film (well, converted to VHS). “Black Jesus” as he was called could do everything a fundamentally-sound guard is supposed to do; but he also played with flair.
I wonder Bill, did Earl Monroe ruin basketball? Is Earl Monroe a punk, too? Is Earl Monroe one of those players you “hate,” Bill Simmons?
Did you ever stop to think?
————————–
Pieces related to this topic:
The Point Guard: Away From the Land of Fairy-Tale Lies, Into the Valley of the Sun
O. J. Mayo Knows More Than You Do
More NBA All-Star Week Fallout: Deconstructing Bill Simmons
addendum: This post was finished approximately 6 a.m. At some point late this morning or early in the afternoon, someone either hacked the post and changed the status of the post from “Published” to “Private” or reported the post as “Mature” and had WordPress webmasters alter the post’s status. In either event, the goal was/is obviously to keep it from being viewed, thereby silencing my critique of Simmons. This is the third time this has occurred with one of my pieces. The second was, not so ironically, with the “Deconstructing Bill Simmons…” piece, but I caught it early on. I am struggling to remember the initial post that had its status purposely altered. Should I somehow recall what the post was, I will let all of you know.
Serena Williams’ Burden
(I want to preface this piece by saying I waited and waited and waited for some blog to discuss this event. I waited for the New York Times to write about it; the Washington Post. The Miami Herald, covering the Sony Ericcson Open as a local tennis event did report the event. But that’s it… and people wonder why I’m so damn adamant about establishing continuing dialogue about racism – intentional, willful, allegedly incidental, or other.)
People think everything’s pretty damn cool on the racism tip. They try to say racism is an antiquated notion held by so few citizens of the U.S. that there’s no real reason to discuss it.
Tell that to black people. Better yet, tell it to Serena Williams.
On Monday, March 26, Serena Williams, a well-chronicled athlete, was playing Lucie Safarova at the Sony Ericcson Open in Miami. During many changeovers a white male spectator yelled at Williams, “Hit it [the ball] in the net like any nigger would.” Williams tried to put the heckler’s racial epithets out of her mind.
Finally Williams asked the chair umpire to remove the spectator. Serena had this to say about the incident:
“I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. It threw me off,” Williams, who lives in nearby Palm Beach Gardens, said of the abuse at her ‘home event’. “I shouldn’t have let it bother me because growing up in Compton, in Los Angeles, we had drive-by shootings, and I guess that’s what my dad prepared me for, but I’m not going to stand for it.”
According to the Miami Herald article on the incident:
“Williams’ sisters, Isha and Lyndrea, and actress Kristin Davis of Sex and the City, who was a guest of the Williams family, were sitting near the heckler and confirmed what Williams heard.”
What I wonder is what the hell was the chair umpire was doing all the other times Williams approached her chair for a change-over? If Serena heard the heckler, why couldn’t the chair? These are people who can hear whispers in the cheap seats and ask for quiet from the crowd, but suddenly the umpire couldn’t hear a man calling Serena a nigger?
However, I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s nothing new in the world of tennis – and it’s certainly nothing new in the United States.
See, the dirty little secret of the United States Tennis Association (USTA), the organization responsible for developing young tennis talent in the U.S., the organization responsible for putting on the U.S. Open each year, is that the organization has never given one penny in sponsor money to a young black professional tennis player – or a top-ranked black junior tennis player.
That fact is particularly galling since the U.S. Open touts “Arthur Ashe Day,” and plays the “minority card” each September at other public facilities in and around New York City during the Open; there are “clinics” – more like photo ops for white U.S. players – and exhibitions – more photo ops for top U.S. players like Andy Roddick and Mardy Fish. And no, James Blake never received a penny from the USTA.
Another portion, a lesser-known part of the dirty little secret is that in the early 1990s when reports first arose exposing the fact that the USTA does little in the way of developing minority tennis players, Pete Sampras, Michael Chang, Jim Courier, and Andre Agassi all received $50,000 checks each year from the USTA. But this was the same organization telling the world it didn’t have the funds to put into developing young black tennis players.
The USTA also threw tens of millions of dollars into renovating the U.S. Open facilities. When asked if some of those monies could have been put to better use like into developing minority talent, the response was that without the renovations, New York would be in danger of losing the U.S. Open tournament.
When John McEnroe approached the USTA for funding to restore the old Forest Hills grounds where, for decades, the U.S. Open was held until the new facilities were built, the USTA claimed it didn’t have the funds. They turned down John McEnroe! Why? Because McEnroe envisioned Forest Hills as a training facility for top-ranked U.S. players and minority players, especially black children.
Hell, why would the USTA fund programs for black youngsters when it allowed Lleyton Hewitt, at the U.S. Open on national television to get away with calling a black male lineperson from the United States a “nigger” during a match with James Blake, whose father is black. And do it on Arthur Ashe Court, of all places!
With that as a backdrop, the Williams incident in Miami doesn’t seem so out of place. Racism has long been tennis’ dirty little secret. And it remains tennis’ dirty little secret.
You know, for a sport that is extremely tolerant of older male coaches acting as Svengalis to young girls and ultimately having sex with them, for a sport that has a crew of lesbian players who actively recruit young straight female tennis players to “turn them out,” for a sport where parent-child abuse is off the charts, for a sport that invites expensive call girls for male players to choose from at its pre-tournament corporate mixers, it would seem like both arms of professional tennis, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) would tackle racism head on.
But then again, with all rampant decadence and abuse on the tour, racism, widespread as it is, fits right in with all the rest of the Babylonian aspect of the “Queen’s Sport.”
At least the ATP and WTA tours could be nice enough to hang, “Blacks need not apply” signs outside their corporate office doors.
Sports Goggles 