I have to add a comment to the controversy du jour leading up to the Super Bowl.
Richard Sherman, of course.
What was so wrong with this conduct, many casual as well as passionate football fans have asked. Well, he (Richard Sherman) didn't just tap Crabtree on the shoulder to congratulate him at the end of the game -- he patted him on his ass, and then went with the fake "helluava game, helluva game" bull schiesse. Big difference in my book, given the disparity in outcomes that was being dealt with by Crabtree at that moment.
The acknowledged rule is that your play on the field speaks for you in a moment like that, especially if you feel you've been disrespected leading up to the contest.
Scoreboard!
It saddens me that so many are backing up Sherman on this punkish move he pulled off. A move that was completely orchestrated. Not only was it unsportsmanlike, it was all me-me-me.
No, Clay Travis and others, it isn't a good thing that he went all WWF / WWE. And it doesn't have anything to do with class or graciousness. It's called respect.
Here's a smart black man from Compton (who has probably heard his share of "why you talking like a white boy?" in his youth) now perpetrating as a thug (and make no mistake, it was purposeful, and purposely thuggish) and acting all ignorant to advance his personal brand. By laying hands on, and disrespecting, another player.
And it's working.
That's sad, and damn near sick. ESPN and more than a few media folk have what they crave.
Sigh.
I love the player and his audacious nature on the field. He is the role model for what shouldn't be an aberration but much more of the norm. Academics and athletics do complement one another. But now, in keeping with this era when people seem to have lost all sense of decorum and boundaries and -- most troubling -- pay no apparent penalty for the forgetting or the disrespecting, he knowingly goes down the ignorant route.
I'll likely be cheering for the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. But give me Russell Wilson (and Percy Harvin), thank you very much. To hell with Richard Sherman. Contrary to what Michael Irvin (a Florida Boy I love, faults and all) and others have insisted, this kind of conduct is *not* what you get when you shove a microphone and camera in a players face directly after a physical and very important game. That's nothing more than a convenient excuse.
He's a professional, and he unquestionably knew better.
In my preferred outcome, the Seahawks put up mucho points and Richard Sherman gets toasted early and often by Peyton Manning with Russell-Wilson-to-Percy-Harvin proving to be the difference maker in the fourth quarter.
Seahawks, 38-35.
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