Chicks in the Huddle

Buckle up folks cuz we’re about to break our own golden rule.  For a second, we’re going to put our Reggie drooling, Jason David bashing, Falcons hating ranting on hold to get real.  We’re about to speak the truth -gasp!- about the unspeakable: the bedfellows of race and sports.  

(Warning: This post will include the f-bomb among other naughty words!)

Yeah race has been talked about before, but never before has it felt so relevant.  For those of you who’ve bothered to flip past ESPN or March Madness games in recent days, you’ve probably heard some talk on the topic of race.  But we’re not interested in getting bogged down in the back and forth of the presidential campaign.  We want to shed light on how race isn’t just an entity that creeps into our lives on those occasions when a celebrity makes a racially charged slip-up or when an associate of a public figure does so for that matter.  We want to talk about how race is often times injected (be it unintentionally or quite purposefully) in even the most innocent facets of our lives, including our love of football. 

While recently scouring the sports blogs to catch up on our NFL news (without having to endure the nauseating experience of watching NFL network), we stumbled on a story with seemingly no racial implications at all that seemed to cause an unexpected battle between black and white!  The story on Fanhouse was about Warrick Dunn’s public bad-mouthing of his former Falcons coach Mike Petrino.  Warrick called Petrino a “coward” and accused him of treating Dunn and other players “like kids.”  Dunn went on to say Petrino “wanted everyone to talk at a whisper whenever there was a team dinner, he didn’t like a lot of noise on the plane.” 

Though the article itself was mildly interesting, the real shit-kicker were the comments that followed.  Of course there were the ever-eloquent responses like “Dunn sucks” or “Petrino sucks.”   But somehow, as with many sports posts we’ve read in the past, the conversation turned racial…and ugly! 

One Rhodes Scholar who calls himself “Richard” writes: “Who can blame him for not wanting to hear a bunch of noisey (sp) blacks yelling at the top of their lungs. Learn some manners. Stop trying to talk over everyone else. What is this screaming when you talk all abou (sp)?? Is it a black thing?? It seems it is.” 

Will responds: “Richard, you sound like the ignorant idiot that has nothing to do but spew racist comments about African Americans. When you take off the hood, try interacting with some, maybe your intelligence level will rise above complete buffoon.” 

Ignorant Shit Starter says: “Warrick Dunn can’t talk about a white man like that.” 

Eric writes: “Hey Guys: I’m a proud white man, but give this racial BS a break. How did or does race factor into Warrick Dunn’s veracious comments concerning the coward, Bobby Petrino..??? It DOESN’T, so let’s give the race card a rest for God’s sake.” 

Jay: “Its freakin amazing that the majority (whites) seem to never think that crime, drugs, violent behavior does not exist in the community. Drugs, crime-violent and white collar, homosexuality, and pedophilia runs throughtout (sp) their community, but it’s easier to look across the street.” 

Paul: “White people do NOT have to diminish black people’s accomplishments. Blacks do a good job of that by the actions of many of their own and by the rest who constantly take up for the foolishness.” 

(Another and equally ignorant?) Paul: “You are mad because the majority of the black athletes have superior talent to other athletes, thus the big contracts. It all comes down to money. Don’t hate. Develop your athletic skills or improve your intellectual knowledge and move on up with the Jeffersons.”  

And finally, a fed up Brenda sums it up: “Treating each other with civility and a certain level of respect is what makes us different than animals…don’t reduce your position to being just another “dog in a dog fight.”   

“Blacks are noisy?”  (By the way Richard, there’s no “e” in noisy.)  Blacks have “superior talent”?  Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Maybe we can’t all “just get along” but can we all just simmer the fuck down for a second?  I mean c’mon.  I’d expect this kind of bigotry and bad-mouthing on oh say, Fox News’ website…but Fanhouse? 

The sad part is that what we’ve provided is just a sampling.  We could have taken up a full page of our OWN blog with the back and forth between the races in the comments section of another blog on a post that had absolutely nothing to do with race.  And by the way, this post and a majority of the comments came out before the whole Reverent Wright scandal blew up or the Obama race speech or anything else that might lead us to believe there was a valid reason for folks to be so on edge on any side of the color lines.   

What’s also interesting to note is that there are thousands of other posts of a seemingly innocent nature like this that have touched off an online battle between Black and White or White and Hispanic or Hispanic and Black, etc.  A lot of the perpetrators are likely high school idiots with nothing to do on a Friday night but stroke their teeny weenies while watching “Zack and Cody: The Suite Life” and start shit on the internet.  But some of them are also middle-aged cowards hiding behind a computer screen and letting out the feelings they’ve been suppressing all day in front of their co-workers.  I can’t say we’re even that concerned with who it is as we are with why it is.  Why did a post about Warrick Dunn disliking his coach bring out the worst in people, people who’ve likely worn jerseys of players who are of the very race they speak of with such disgust?   

We decided to conduct a highly non-scientific experiment to get a sense of how widespread the racial tensions lie in the sports loving world.  We went to you tube and put in the name “Terrell Owens”.  The first video to pop up in our search was the infamous T.O. “that’s my quarterback” video.  After we got a good laugh at T.O.’s expense, we started skimming the comments.  Sadly, it only took us four pages to find our first “n-word” reference.  Fast forward a few more pages and there the word goes again.  Hit the “next” button, there it is again.  (Maybe it was the same person posting under different names with the same asinine thing to say.)  I guess we can be excited about the fact that out of the 9 pages we flipped through, the word only popped up three times.  I guess…. 

Let’s give it another search.  Search phrase: “Tony Romo.”  We click on the third result in the search titled “Tony Romo: The white Michael Vick minus the dog fighting.”  The video shows Romo making an amazing run against St. Louis.  And despite the compelling nature of the video, almost immediately a pissing match breaks out over whether Romo is Mexican or Italian or mixed with German or Aztec, etc.  (We do believe phrases like “white trash” and “silly white boy” made special appearances a time or two.)  Granted, we asked for this by picking a video post that referenced any race in the title.  Still, doesn’t it strike anyone else as disheartening at how quickly good ole fashioned football talk can deteriorate to such a racially charged, incendiary level? 

Of course, it doesn’t end there.  As recently as last month, we found a thread on CBS Sportsline entitled “Blacks vs Whites: Better Athletes?”  Oh imagine the insightful, high-brow commentary that one stirred up.  We’re not naïve enough to think any of this is new.  In fact, we know racism is as deeply rooted in sports as it is in America.  And in many cases, that racism is displayed in words or actions that go far beyond the bickering of mindless numb-nuts on a message board.  But we do think it’s important to call it out.  We think it’s important to say that it’s not okay.  In fact, we’ll go out on a limb and call it gutless.   

While we understand that racism among sports fans will exist so long as racism exists, we can’t help but feel disappointed that fans can’t even dialogue about simple shit without it all boiling down to racial slurs and stereotypes.  Maybe it’s the competitive nature of professional sports that brings out the worst in its fans.  After all, we saw our fair share of heartless Hurricane Katrina-related signs being waved in the faces of Saints fans in the aftermath of that tragedy, with no regard to whether those fans lost loved ones or –everything- in the storm.   

Or maybe we are just being naïve.  Maybe we were actually silly enough to think that when you log on to a blog to catch up on a little football talk, you could do so without playing witness to an online race war.  Ignorant bastards…

(Whew.  It felt good to get that out.)