Edgerrin James the Father and Man Is “E-Raced” From Sports Headlines
September 4, 2009 by dwil
There are no excuses to be made; it is too late. The failure of mainstream or Internet sports news outlet to so much as mention the Edgerrin James story reported August 29 by USA Today‘s Nate Davis from an August 28 article by Michael Silver at Yahoo Sports, and mentioned at length here at Sports On My Mind on September 2 is proof that there is racism in sports reporting. There is no mention of the James story at ESPN.com, Yahoo.com (which usually does the best job of investigative reporting and reporting of this type of news), or at the infamous, NFL-affiliated, Pro Football Talk rumor blog. At Deadspin, which prides itself on breaking news stories or making them know before other major sports news outlets widely report them, the only recent Edgerrin James entry is:
Seahawks sign old and crappy Edgerrin James. This will not remove the stink of past running back options young and crappy Maurice Morris, or old and crappy Shaun Alexander.
At The Big Lead, seen as the Internet alternative to Deadspin, the most recent reference to James is related to Fantasy Football and is from ———- Mike Florio’s often-criticized here for the racist slant in its reporting of NFL news, Pro Football Talk.
And what is even more maddening is that there is no mention of the James story On BET.com, that is Black Entertainment Television.com. There is no mention of the James story within the web pages of BET.com or its sports blog, Playa Hater. There is no mention of the James story at AOL.com’s, Black Voices section.
“The story” is the mother of Edgerrin James’ four children, Andia Wilson, died in April after a long bout with leukemia. Last season James, then a running back for the Super Bowl runner-up Arizona Cardinals, was benched by head coach Ken Whisenhunt. Late in the season James was reinserted into the Cardinals lineup and had a resurgence that was the key element in Arizona’s run to the Super Bowl. What was left unsaid, at least in the press, was that James was dealing with Wilson dying and his fur children while trying to concentrate on his job.
There were no commendations coming James’ way for his monumental task. Since there has been no heart-string pulling E:60 story on James complete with a Jeremy Schaap interview (or even a Michael Smith interview), no somber Bob Ley Outside the Lines segment on James’ care for his dying partner and his children, no ESPN Sports Radio talk shows about James’s plight and how he put fatherhood first as a for-once pleasant anathema to all the negative stories about professional athletes.
How could every mainstream or mainstream-related sports news outlet outside of Silver-Yahoo and Davis-USA Today fail to pick up on a story where an athlete says:
“As football players, we’re so programmed to do well in our job that sometimes we forget about our house,” he said. “I look at my mom, who’s helping with my kids, and then I look at them. My kids don’t have that mom. When you really think of it like that – damn, it’s heavy.
How is it possible to fail to so much as mention a story where James stared an opportunity to revive or at least continue his career in the eye and turn down the chance because he refused to criss-cross the country by plane from Seattle to Naples, Florida where his children live. Edgerrin James refused because he wanted to continue to care for his children throughout the summer and perform the task his partner always performed, taking them to their various schools on the first day of the school year:
The offer Edgerrin James had been waiting for finally came over the weekend, and given that it might have been his last best chance to land with an NFL team this season and continue a drive toward Canton, logic suggested he’d jump at the opportunity.
Yet when the Seattle Seahawks suggested to James’ agent Drew Rosenhaus that the 31-year-old running back fly diagonally across the country from south Florida last Sunday, EJ said, “No way.”
As James explained Thursday night, “Monday was the first day of school. Trust me, I wasn’t going to miss that for anything.”
That accompanying his children to their respective public schools in Naples, Fla., was a deal-breaker makes sense when placed in the context of James’ heartrending offseason. On April 14 James’ four kids, all under the age of 12, sat with him in a Tampa hospital room watching their mother, Andia Wilson, die after a spirited battle with leukemia.
Wilson, his longtime girlfriend, had always been the one to handle the first-day-of-school frenzy while James plied his trade in Indianapolis or Arizona. This time, he was determined to be present – for his kids, for himself and for her.
“I had to be there,” he said. “There was no leaving.”
How could anyone think this was not enough of a story to mention?
How?
Where is Rob King – a black man who is the managing editor of ESPN.com – now? King was the man who removed a reference to Kevin Garnett as the free agent “Ace of spades” from a Bill Simmons commentary because he felt it could be connoted as racist – in his first official act as managing editor of the nation’s most popular Internet sports news website. King could be so sensitive that he would remove an innocent reference to Garnett as the top card in the deck of free agents from ESPN.com’s top writer’s column but is not sensitive enough to demand that his one of his writers pen a column about James, or find a way t piggy-back off of Silver’s article?
ESPN is known for that type of work: let another sports news outlet break the news and then appropriate it through the saturation of the story across all its mediums, from the Mike and Mike in the Morning radio-television simulcast beginning a 6.a.m. EST, through the daily telescast of Outside the Lines, through the reporter banter of Around the Horn, a “Five Good Minutes interview with James on the Tony Kornheiser-Mike Wilbon hosted Pardon the Interruption, to a segment on James on the 6 p.m. EST airing of Sportscenter.
That is, after all, the ESPN way.
Where is Jemele Hill’s answer to her own “Dear Young Black Men” column written during the one-sided Michael Vick media frenzy-debacle?
Where is Jason Whitlock’s column on James? “Big Sexy” as he calls himself, has constantly railed about “hip-hop culture” and it insinuation into the world of sports. So here, with James, is an opportunity to give us a glimpse of the other side of that sordid tale he so fondly garbles (but Jason, one question: how the hell did you get away with this monstrous dismantling of various members of the mainstream sporting press? I thought I was the only person who performed such duties?… (oh and the thing about comedy writing? I know it wasn’t your intention, but you actually paid me a great compliment because writing good comedy is, perhaps the most difficult authoring to pull off – ask Big Bill ——- Shakespeare, not Simmons. And I know you know how difficult it is to make someone’s mother laugh about a satire written about their son).
Seeing a column by say, Mitch Albom or Mike Lupica extolling the virtues of Edgerrin James is the last thing to be expected, though they too are quick to blast Black athletes for the most minute of transgressions. But what of Black columnists? Particularly Black columnists who have gone out of their way to make hay off Black athletes, like Mike “He set us back 50 years” Freeman, though, unlike many other Black columnists, Freeman does find a very real balance in his depictions of black athletes.
But the Edgerrin James story is not that of Al Harrington and his affordable sneakers or calling on New York governor David Patterson to pardon Plaxico Burress, as both of these men and their plights are well known. What Edgerrin James is doing is acting as a real man. He is not seeking fanfare for his actions beyond that which he already has as a professional football player. He is not attempting to parlay his actions into any sort of money-making venture.
Edgerrin James is being a responsible, loving father to his children while paying homage to the woman he loved for many years before she so tragically passed away.
As he has done throughout most of his NFL career, he is conducting his affairs quietly. that, when viewed in the context of america today are, comparatively, quite heroic. It is sad that, in this world of sports journalism, covering the misdeeds of athletes, real or perceived, carries with it such societal cache. It is even sadder that Black athletes are seen as the most preferred target of this type of coverage.
But what is saddest is that with all the hair-pulling and teeth gnashing abut the misdeeds of Black athletes is that when a story like Edgerrin James’ comes to light there is seemingly no room in today’s sports media world to make it shine. The only time a Black athlete receives the “heartstring-tugging” treatment from ESPN is when there is drug addiction, gang violence, or a underprivileged background involved.
And the only reason for this is ———— race matters.
i think the story hasnt been covered because james didnt want publicity for it. i always wondered why and how some of the most tragic personal stories about athletes become front page news.
if it was my wife, i wouldnt want to talk about it, even if it garners me sympathetic attention and help me land a job.
i have always felt if a public figure isnt doing anything illegal then their private life should remain private.
rey-
I’m in favor of athlete’s privacy, too. However, in this case, Silver already wrote it.
Following ESPN’s “coverage script” as I laid out, even if James told a reporter from ESPN he didn’t want to talk about his circumstances, they would go to his coaches and teammates for quotes and still do the story. That’s how they often cover negative stories when the athlete in question doesn’t want to comment.
And for Black columnists who get all up in arms when Black athletes do something negative, this is an opportunity to write a column about a black athlete doing the things they say they wish Black athletes would do. They don’t have to talk to James to write a column about that.
I’m also in favor of an athlete’s privacy. But, how many stories about athletes’ wives and family members being sick have we seen over the years, particularly from the Big Disney? They’ll give you a heart-tugging stories with all of the details. And all of those stories don’t include an interview with said athlete while it is going on.
D, we know the answer as to why ESPN hasn’t done a story on it. Until you put it up on the web site a couple of days ago, I didn’t even know that the mother of his children had died. A story like this just doesn’t fit ESPN’s business model of degrading black atheletes. A story like this isn’t going to move ratings for ESPN or traffic to their web site. A story like this isn’t the red meat for those that want to spit venom at black athletes.
kos
Well, yes. they believe it won’t push the needle. But they don’t really know because they never try with this type of story. The only heartstring Black athlete stories they do are the ones where someone’s parent is a crack addict, or their surroundings are super underprivileged (LaDanian Tomlinson, et al.), or there is gang violence.
@ kos:
“I’m also in favor of an athlete’s privacy. But, how many stories about athletes’ wives and family members being sick have we seen over the years, particularly from the Big Disney? They’ll give you a heart-tugging stories with all of the details. And all of those stories don’t include an interview with said athlete while it is going on. ”
Phil Mickeson’s wife and mother come to mind.
Man, they live for these type of stories—supposedly. Seriously, a football player who delays taking work so he could be there on the first day of school because the mother of his children died of cancer? ESPN lives for this shit.
The fact that we are hearing it here is yet more evidence of what those punks really stand for.
awb-
Since I’m following you from post to post (lol)…. yup. If it wasn’t evident before, it is now. And after this, I REALLY do not want to hear about how the Big Not-So-Subliminal is an institution without a racist agenda.
This story sounds tailor-made for Real Sports on HBO
Strong follow-up to your original column, D.
I’m in favor of any public person keeping his/her life private and the interviews and write-ups I’ve read of Edge over the years are that while he doesn’t go out of his way to seek publicity he is open enough to give good quotes.
I’m sure if Silver had hit him up for an interview after his children’s mother passed away he would have declined but it’s within the realm of reason for a competent reporter to ask why a Hall of Fame player had refused to sign with any team before the start of the season. That’s finding a story where the Big Boys (ESPN) think there is none.
Edge did what any real man would do regardless of his color or station in life and that is take care of his family. Nothing exotic or trailblazing but what a parent is supposed to do. The story is extraordinary nonetheless because outlets in and out of the world of sports keep up the constant drumbeat of the Black man in America as the personification of this country’s pathology. Simple stories like this need to be put out there to counter the pernicious lie that gains the traction of truth every day because stories like this are not put out more front and center.
My prayers are with Mr. James and his children but I get the feeling with a M-A-N like that as the head of his family that they’re going to be just fine.