I
f you’re a real sports fan you probably spent last night cheering or jeering at your big-screen TV depending on how your team was faring in the heavily hyped matchup between #1 LSU and #2 Alabama.
The reason this game was such a big deal is that it was the first time in years the two best teams in college football were actually meeting on the field. This is because the NCAA has refused to adopt bracket-style playoffs, choosing instead the big-money bowl series, which results in the two best teams rarely meeting to decide the national championship at the end of the season.
But I digress….
For as it turned out, the game on my (not-so-big-screen) TV was little more than a sideshow to the animated debate I got into with friends. But it wasn’t as if we were missing anything; after all, with a score of 3-3 at halftime and 6-6 at the end of regulation, what little attention we paid to the game merely incited groans about what a snoozer it was.
For the record, though, I was rooting for LSU. And I don’t mind admitting that my only reason for doing so is that I have a greater affinity for Louisiana (famed for its multicultural heritage) than for Alabama (aka the “Heart of Dixie”). LSU won in overtime 9-6: all field goals – neither team scored a single friggin’ touchdown!
But like I said, the debate was the thing:
It began early in the game when one of my friends suggested that Bryant Gumbel would probably report on his HBO show Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel that LSU treated its black quarterback like a slave because its white quarterback was (then) being given more time on the field. (LSU has rotated the two at this position rather effectively all season.)
This friend was kidding of course. But there’s nothing funny about what inspired his tongue-in-cheek suggestion. Because in voicing his support for the NBA players in their ongoing (lockout) dispute with team owners, Gumbel said the following about Commissioner David Stern:
Stern’s version of what has been going on behind closed doors has of course been disputed, but his efforts were typical of a commissioner who has always seemed eager to be viewed as some kind of modern plantation overseer, treating NBA men as if they were his boys. It’s part of Stern’s M.O., like his past self-serving edicts on dress code and the questioning of officials. His moves were intended to do little more than show how he’s the one keeping the hired hands in their place.
(Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2011)
I won’t bother you with the back and forth that ensued during our debate. Uppermost among the few things you might find interesting, however, is that of the four whites and three blacks who participated, I was the only one who found Gumbel’s remarks not just racially polarizing, but patently absurd.
Mind you, I like Gumbel, and I too support the players’ demand for the lion’s share of the NBA’s profits. He’s a terrific news anchor / interviewer. And what’s more, there’s no one else in the business who is just as compelling analyzing sports as he is reporting the news.
But at times Gumbel strikes me as a stereotypical middleclass black who blurts out, in Tourette-like fashion, this kind of (the-man-is-keeping-us-down) bullshit in a self-consciousness attempt to preempt being called an Oreo.
Here, for example, is what he said in another commentary to incoming NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell about the relationship between the very strong, intelligent and competent black president of the NFL Players Union, Gene Upshaw, and then retiring NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue:
Before he cleans out his office have Paul Tagliabue show you where he keeps Gene Upshaw’s leash. By making the docile head of the players union his personal pet, your predecessor has kept the peace without giving players the kind of guarantees other pros take for granted. Try to make sure no one competent ever replaces Upshaw on your watch.
(Real Sports, August 15, 2006)
In any case, it did not take much for me to disabuse my friends of any sympathy for the notion that black men making an average of $5 million a year for playing basketball were being treated like plantation slaves.
[I object to] Reverend Jesse Jackson’s race-baiting assertion that the Cavaliers’ owner is reacting as if LeBron were his “runaway slave.” For, if masters paid their slaves the millions this NBA owner paid LeBron, the very concept of a runaway slave would never have become part of the American lexicon….
(LeBron abandons Cleveland for Miami, The iPINIONS Journal, July 13, 2010)
Without referring to this specific commentary (since nothing would be more insufferably conceited than referring to my commentaries during conversations / debates), I distilled the fallacy inherent in this quote as a means of dismissing Gumbel’s assertion. Indeed, can you imagine a more asinine and galling insult to our ancestors – who truly labored under the whip of plantation overseers – than to have this black multimillionaire TV host insinuating that black multimillionaire athletes are being treated just like them?
Frankly, it does all blacks a disservice for someone like Gumbel to propound the notion that the only way to criticize the way white men conduct their professional relationships with black men is by conjuring up the antebellum dynamics of slavery.
Meanwhile, I suspect the only real sports fans who weren’t watching last night’s snoozer of a football game were representatives of the NBA Players Union who were meeting with Stern and team owners in a last-ditch effort to hash out a new labor / profit-sharing deal. They failed.
Right now we’ve been given an ultimatum [to accept the owners’ offer of a 50/50 split on revenues and a package of harsh restrictions on team spending and free agency by the end of business on Wednesday or face forfeiture of the entire season]…
Our answer is: that’s not acceptable to us.
(President of the NBA Players Union, Derek Fisher, New York Times, November 6, 2011)
Hell, far from the lion’s share of the profits, the players are only demanding a 52.5 percent, which is more of a compromise than a demand considering that they were sharing 57 percent of the profits last season. Nevertheless, after four months of negotiations, it has come to this.
Players invariably say that they would play the game for free. Therefore, they should have no fear of the owners threatening to call off the entire season. By contrast, this would clearly amount to the owners – who are businessmen first and foremost – cutting off their nose to spite their face.
This is why the players should (and I believe they will) call the owners’ bluff. For to cave now would suggest that they really are nothing more than hired hands; i.e., instead of the indispensable partners they purport to be in the billion-dollar business that is the NBA.
Stay tuned….
Related commentaries:
LeBron abandons Cleveland…
* This commentary was published originally yesterday, Sunday, at 7:35