The Perception of Black Athletes in Sports Media: How Much More “Blount” Can ESPN Be?

Ahhhh, the editor’s note on Ivan Maisel’s article about Oregon Ducks head coach, Chip Kelly, speaks volumes as to ESPN’s worldview:

Editor’s note: Ivan Maisel was embedded with Oregon coach Chip Kelly for the Ducks’ entire time in Boise.

This is not war we’re talking about here. But I’m sure the “editor” thought it was cute, if not cheeky, to use the term “embedded” to indicate that Maisel apparently spent at least Thursday through Monday around the Oregon Coach.

But this is NOT war. And embedded, as the Iraq War is viewed today, has only negative connotations. It is a reminder that the U.S. military sought to tightly control how Americans saw the war and what Americans were to know about the war. It is a reminder that the U.S. military feels its maneuverings should be beyond the perusal of its citizens and the governing body in alleged control of its finances. It is a reminder that the U.S. military does not want its citizens to know what war looks like – that death is involved; that bodies are blown to bits by bombs and high-caliber weapons; that air strikes leave body parts strewn across acres of land; that it is the U.S. military doing most of the killing; that U.S. soldiers are dying in a country in which we don belong – or have any understanding of how it might feel.

Embedded means we never glimpse mercenaries from Eric Prince’s Blackwater Company – now renamed “Xe (“zee”) Services” – killing innocent Iraqi citizens.

Embedded means the press is willing to pander to the image their subjects wishes to portray.

Embedded means lies and secrecy.

So, what was the message the University of Oregon hoped to disseminate to the public through its football team’s head coach, Chip Kelly? The obvious answer is who knows because the story between Oregon and Boise State was the Broncos, not the Ducks, despite it being Kelly’s first game since taking over as Oregon head coach from Mike Belotti. Boise State’s 65-2 blue turf home record was on the line. A win versus a top 25-ranked Pac 10 team meant automatic national prominence for the Broncos. A win also meant Chip Petersen’s team gained an inside track to a BCS bowl game despite not playing in a BCS conference. Finally, a win meant every WAC conference team would play its heart out the rest of the season in an effort to defeat Boise State.

Maisel’s being assigned to cover Oregon was blind luck for ESPN. And definite misfortune for LeGarrette Blount.

The message Maisel was given by Oregon and Kelly was, Chip Kelly is the right man for the Ducks head coaching job. Kelly showed his humble side, his sarcastic side, but mostly his fiery, but fair sides to Maisel. And the ESPN reporter succumbed to his embedded status, hook, line, and sinker, writing a glowing, albeit sappy and relatively meaningless feature article on Kelly.

Perhaps the Big Subliminal needs a favor from the university’s largest benefactor to the athletic program, former Ducks long-distance runner and Nike magnate, Phil Knight.

Except.

Sophomore defensive lineman Ryan Hout ran by Oregon running back Le Garrette Blount and tapped Blount on his helmet and slapped and slightly pushed Blount on his shoulder pads, talking all the while. A source close to the Boise State team told this author that Hout’s primary words to Blount were, “Hey nigger, we just beat your ass.”

Blount then turned and hit Hout in his jaw. When his adrenalin died down Blount removed his helmet in anger, seemingly with himself for his act. As he approached a section of Boise State fans, all of whom were male and very few were students. As he approached the fans an Oregon assistant and two stadium security guards approached Blount. One of the men in the stands said something to Blount which set him off again. A few moments later, Blount was slapped hard in the face by a Boise State fan. He was then hauled off by the three men who surrounded him plus a policeman and taken to the Oregon locker room.

Kelly’s reaction gave Maisel his story:

“I had the TV feed from the Oregon Sports Network, then I watched a copy of what ESPN had,” Kelly said Monday. “After I watched the whole thing, he wasn’t suspended for the punch. It was the combination of the whole thing.”

Kelly met with Bellotti, then with university president Richard Lariviere. He went over the incident with several assistants, including wide receivers coach Scott Frost, who had escorted Blount off the field and, along with police and stadium personnel, helped to bear-hug him away from the altercation with fans.

“And I met with LeGarrette,” Kelly said. “I wasn’t going to make the decision before talking with everybody that could let me know what transpired and how it transpired.”

Was there anything Blount could have said that would have changed Kelly’s mind about suspending him for the season?

“No,” Kelly said, “but it’s only fair. There could have been a mitigating circumstance. I wanted to find out, Was there something that I was unaware of?”

At 1:30 p.m. Friday, Kelly and Bellotti sat in front of a news conference to announce the suspension. Blount may remain in school, receive on-campus counseling and participate in practice, if he so chooses.

“I love LeGarrette Blount,” Kelly said Friday. “What I told LeGarrette when we met together is I don’t want people to see the LeGarrette Blount that they saw last night. That’s not him. That moment last night will not define him as a person. We’ll provide him with instruction if that’s necessary for him to succeed. He’s going to practice with this football team. He’s going to get student support services. He’s going to go to class. … If this is a teachable moment for him, then he can bounce back.”

In essence, Kelly decided to kick Blount’s butt and pat it at the same time. The coach placed a foot at each end of the spectrum of punishment. Blount may not play anymore at Oregon, but Kelly is doing everything he can to help him.

Kelly publicly thanked Monday all the people who have been in contact with him. He has named only former Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden, former NBA player Kermit Washington and Miami head coach Randy Shannon.

“I wanted to give him support and tell him, ‘Hey, you’re not the only one who went through it,’” Shannon said Tuesday morning. Shannon served as the Hurricanes’ defensive coordinator in 2006 when the team engaged in a midgame brawl with players from Florida International.

“When these things happen, it’s out of frustration,” Shannon said. “You have to remind your team, ‘It’s one game. It’s not a conference game. You have 12 more games to play. You lose and keep going. If you put yourself in that situation, you embarrass yourself, your mom, your dad, your university and your teammates.’”

Shannon and Kelly have never met.

“It’s hard to coach these days,” Shannon said. “I told him, ‘Whatever you need, I’ll be there for you.’”

Kelly didn’t want to address what Shannon or anyone else said to him. In four days, he received an education that it takes most coaches years to accumulate. It’s not something that he would wish on anyone. But you can’t be a selective participant.

Blount attended practice Tuesday in street clothes. He watched his teammates prepare to play Purdue on Saturday.

On Thursday, a few hours before the game, Kelly began to describe how much he loves to coach. “I get irked when [a coach] tells me he’s grinding,” Kelly said. “You know, ‘This head coach really makes us grind.’ Seriously? You’re watching video! In an air-conditioned room! We’re griiiinndding.”

By Monday, Kelly looked and sounded as if he had been grinding. Or ground down himself.

“We all need to move on,” he said.

Maisel paints Kelly as a benevolent leader of young men who teaches them lessons through the “butt kick” and “butt pat.” Maisel tells us Kelly pushes his team hard and demands unity. Keely is teaching his charges hard lessons through his words and by example. Or so Maisel, the embedded journalist would have us believe.

Ivan Maisel would have us believe the Chip Kelly is the archetypal head coach.

There is only one problem with Maisel’s pro-Chip Kelly propaganda piece: it turns out Kelly isn’t so fair or righteous or even-handed in his approach, after all. And a series of small quotes reveals Kelly’s outlook toward the Blount incident —– and it reveals  to the reader much about the lie that is the journalist who allows him or her self to be embedded in or with anything on which they are reporting:

“I had the TV feed from the Oregon Sports Network, then I watched a copy of what ESPN had,” Kelly said Monday. “After I watched the whole thing, he wasn’t suspended for the punch. It was the combination of the whole thing.”

Kelly met with Bellotti, then with university president Richard Lariviere. He went over the incident with several assistants, including wide receivers coach Scott Frost, who had escorted Blount off the field and, along with police and stadium personnel, helped to bear-hug him away from the altercation with fans.

“And I met with LeGarrette,” Kelly said. “I wasn’t going to make the decision before talking with everybody that could let me know what transpired and how it transpired.”

Was there anything Blount could have said that would have changed Kelly’s mind about suspending him for the season?

“No,” Kelly said, “but it’s only fair. There could have been a mitigating circumstance. I wanted to find out, Was there something that I was unaware of?”

“No, but it’s only fair?! ”

Chip Kelly made up his mind about what to do before LeGarrette Blount ever spoke a word to him:

Was there anything Blount could have said that would have changed Kelly’s mind about suspending him for the season?

“No,” Kelly said…

“No.”

Mitigating circumstance or not, Blount was going to be suspended from the Oregon football team. If the source – who is White and requested he remain anonymous – accurately quoted Hout, it mattered not whether Blount reiterated Hout’s words to his coach or not, whether those words were deemed to be a mitigating circumstance or not,  Ivan Maisel, through Chip Kelly tells us LeGarrette Blount was already gone from the Oregon football team.

Unfortunately, ESPN, as it is wont when it comes to Black athletes, never fails at overkill. The Thursday night between Oregon and Boise State was on ESPN. All game and postgame footage belonged to ESPN.

The message from the incident after the game was controlled so tightly by the network that the initial video that showed Blount being hit by the fan was removed by Google-You Tube at ESPN management’s request on the grounds that posting the video was copyright infringement. Not only were there other videos with ESPN footage on You Tube, videos that showed Blount hitting Hout but not the fan striking Blount remained on the video website. However, when it became obvious that it was nearly impossible to stop the video at the exact moment Blount’s face was struck, ESPN management no longer requested that videos of the entire incident be removed.

That morning Skip Bayless dutifully predicted that Blount should and would receive a season-ending suspension. By the afternoon Bayless looked like a mind reader as Blount’s playing days with Oregon were over. Print copy poured from the laptops of ESPN sports writers and columnists, culminating in Maisel’s feature article and Gene Wojciechowski’s lengthy column predicting the end of the college football world. In it he even stoops to calling Blount’s actions a “thug moment”:

The American Football Coaches Association, which pushed for the pregame handshakes in the season openers, should have known better. Players are hypergeeked in the minutes leading up to kickoff. And now you want them to meet at midfield and act nice?

Oklahoma State coach Mike “I’m a man!” Gundy, the famed ranter, took a pass on the gesture. So his team didn’t shake hands with Georgia’s players Saturday. I have no problem with that. I mean, isn’t that what team captains are for — calling the coin toss and shaking hands?

Gundy feared the possibility of a pregame melee. Sad, but true. That’s where we are these days: one spark away from a football wildfire.

Blount’s thug moment is now part of his résumé. He apologized after the game. He later apologized to Hout. He since has sought the advice of former NBA player Kermit Washington, whose punch to the face of Rudy Tomjanovich still shadows him almost 32 years later. Actions. Consequences.

Interesting that “thug” has been used solely with Black athletes and used to describe Black men and their acts by enough known blatant racists that the word is no longer used except by those who do not care if we perceive them as, or call them racists.

And with all that control, including a writer assigned to write a propaganda piece about Chip Kelly, ESPN columnist Gene Wojciechowski was allowed to have his phrase “thug moment” remain as his description of Blount’s postgame actions. No context, no seeking to provide insight into Blount’s thinking.

Just straight-shooter racist verbiage.

An embedded writer? A columnist using a term now widely accepted as racist?

How ESPN’s management wants the public to perceive Black athletes becomes clearer with each passing day.