By now everyone knows the sordid saga of former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown, the uber talented yet notoriously mercurial player. Brown signed with the Oakland Raiders as a free agent during the NFL offseason, after some acrimony in Pittsburgh, and Raiders fans were excited to see Brown catch passes for their team on Sundays.
But almost immediately problems began to emerge. Brown injured his feet by stepping into a cryogenic relaxation chamber without the proper footwear. The Raiders were not happy.
Then Brown demanded to wear his own personal football helmet, which the NFL had retired from service earlier because it wasn’t safe for concussions and head trauma.
But Brown persisted, saying he would hold out and not report to practice or exhibition games if he wasn’t allowed to wear the helmet he wanted.
Which is exactly what Brown did. He missed the entire preseason, and there were reports that Raiders Coach Jon Gruden and General Manager Mike Mayock were considering releasing Brown.
Then came the ultimate showdown. Brown and Mayock had a verbal confrontation in the Raiders’ training complex, and Brown reportedly called Mayock a “cracker” — Brown is black and Mayock and Gruden are white — and threatened to punch him.
Brown was then summarily suspended, indefinitely.
It was at this time, in early September, that I was avidly listening to WFAN, my local New York City sports talk radio station. I love WFAN, and it’s the home of such icons and pioneers of sports radio as Mike Francesa himself, aka The Sports Pope.
But it’s also primarily a suburban station. Most of the calls that come in, particularly on the most important shows, such as Mike’s and Joe and Evan’s, are from the suburbs. Long Island. New Jersey. Westchester and the Hudson River Valley. Connecticut. Very rare is the call from the five boroughs of New York City.
That means that most of the callers are also, by extension, white men. And you know what? In nearly three days of listening to WFAN, I didn’t hear even one caller show an ounce of sympathy for Antonio Brown, or refer to him in anything other than animalistice, racist terms.
Such as: “Mike, this guy Brown’s a maniac. He’s a clown. Get this bum out of the league.”
“This guy used a racial slur against a white man. Why can’t we do the same against a black man Mike?” This caller was not alone in evincing a strong desire to use the N-word and finding it unjust that he couldn’t.
Then there was: “This guy doesn’t know how to act right.”
And finally: “This guy’s a crazy, an entitled, pampered, showy, flashy, loser.”
Not one caller even attempted to get inside the mind of Antonio Brown to see what his mindset was.
Sports media on TV, Cable and the Internet were not much better. These outlets are also dominated by white men, and the news articles and opinion pieces tended to skew towards Antonio Brown being an out-of-control black man who didn’t realize how lucky he was to be able to make millions of dollars playing a children’s game.
Really? I thought we moved past this reductive line of thinking in the 80’s. I mean is Jeff Bezos an out-of-control tax dodging white man who doesn’t realize how lucky he is to develop garbage shopping apps and preside over a trillion dollar company? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, but you would never hear him referred to this way in the mainstream media. Thus the double standard.
In the end, the Raiders ended up releasing Antonio Brown, one day before the start of the NFL season.
The New England Patriots, whose General Manager and Coach, the iconic Bill Belichick, notorious for reclaiming hard-case NFL players and turning them around, promptly scooped up Brown and signed him to a one-year deal.
Brown will reportedly make his NFL debut in Week 2, one week from tomorrow.
So what did I learn from this whole saga?
- American football fans are incredibly racist.
- The American sports media is racist to its core
- The NFL is a morally bankrupt organization that exploits black bodies until they wither, and then tosses them aside.
That about sums up my take on the Antonio Brown drama. Thanks for reading.
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