All That and a Bag of Mail

I finally get a day off from the radio show and I went to bed last night positively giddy about all the sleep I was going to get. I was thinking that I was going to sleep until like eight or nine in the morning. That I’d wake up with my brain so fresh I wouldn’t even know what to do. I’m not kidding y’all, I was so excited to wake up this morning with the sun high in the sky. 

And then what happens?

I wake up at 5:15 in the morning. I mean just totally wide awake. I’m sitting up at my desk right now working on the mailbag and the entire house is completely asleep. 

So here I am grinding away at the mailbag and the sun hasn’t even come up yet. 

This is my new life, I think. Now that the radio show is off and running I’m the dude who wakes up insanely early in the morning and watches the sun come up while everyone else is asleep. 

Except I already know that I’ll be amazingly able to sleep in on Christmas morning and my six year old is going to come downstairs and wake me up at four in the morning. I mean, I would bet so much money on this.

Anyway, on to the mailbag.

Tons of you on email, Twitter and Facebook:

“What are your thoughts on Grayson Allen’s tripping and the way it was covered by ESPN?”

“A Time To Kill” came out in 1996. In that movie there’s a famous closing scene where the Matthew McConaughey lawyer says, “Imagine she’s white,” as part of his closing argument. (The scene in the book was actually written in 1987 or 1988, which makes it even older in creation than when it became famous).

Here’s that video:

And twenty years ago it was a revolutionary moment in the movie and in our culture. “OH MY GOD, IF WE FLIP THE RACES THE OUTCOME IS ENTIRELY DIFFERENT IN OUR BRAINS!” (Even if that wasn’t even true for most of us at the time either. In fact, if you have to flip the races you were probably a huge racist.)

That movie was made twenty years ago and it’s like we’ve been unable to escape that moment in sports media.

This is what MSESPN does all day with its race-based commentary on every sports issue of the day. They constantly ask what would happen if a white athlete was black. And I think MSESPN has made a calculated decision to follow the mainstream media down the white men are devils pathway. You saw it with Duke Lacrosse, the UVa rape case, the Peyton Manning mooning and the Ryan Lochte story. I believe there was a conscious decision to treat these guys like war criminals even though all four men were completely innocent of any wrongdoing.

And I think that’s because ESPN’s deepest fear is being called racist. So they overcorrect on the liberal angle of sports and they enable guys and girls to make an entire career off of playing the “What if he were black,” card over and over and over again. Seriously, it’s a hysterical cliche once you see what’s happening. This is like 90% of ESPN’s commentary on race. 

So with Grayson Allen MSESPN went way over the top with his tripping story because then when another black athlete gets in trouble they can point to Grayson Alen and say, “Nope, we’re not racist, look at how we covered Grayson Allen.”

Allen’s an interesting figure because he’s really only famous because he’s a white dude playing at Duke. If Grayson Allen was a black guy and played at Kentucky would he be famous at all? Of course not. He’d just be another good black basketball player at Kentucky. He’s a late first round talent, at best, we’re not talking about a lottery pick here. There’s tons of first round talent every year at Kentucky. Grayson Allen would get lost in the shuffle if he was black and the vast majority of sports fans wouldn’t know him at all.

 

Instead he’s a white dude playing basketball at Duke and he’s the latest in a long line of white guys at Duke that both white and black people feel comfortable hating. I think this is largely racial, white guys feel more comfortable hating white guys who play basketball than they do hating black guys who play basketball. (Almost every deeply hated college basketball player over the past twenty years is white.) Add in the fact that Allen has a punchable face, a smug demeanor and plays like an asshole in a sport that’s otherwise dominated by black dudes and you have the perfect recipe for someone to stand out amidst a relatively boring college basketball landscape.

So as soon as Grayson Allen tripped someone the same predictable, what if he were black questions started to pop on social media. IF A BLACK GUY TRIPPED SOMEONE THEN HE’D BE A THUG! HOW COME THIS ISN’T A BIGGER STORY?! #WHITEPRIVILEGE 

Then Coach K. refuses to suspend Grayson Allen and that commentary gets raised again. 

The result is that Grayson Allen tripping some dude from Elon College turned into the lead story on MSESPN. The lead story! In the middle of football season when you’ve got the Patriots playing a dude who got his second DUI and Bob Stoops tossing out all sorts of bullshit lines about Joe Mixon, who broke a girl’s face in four places and is playing in the Sugar Bowl.

Hell, it even bumped an actual college basketball game between Louisville and Kentucky — which is probably the best rivalry in all of college basketball — off the lead highlights entirely.

All so MSESPN could focus on a single play between Duke and Elon. 

ESPN’s official Twitter account Tweeted seven times about the Grayson Allen tripping incident in 24 hours, they didn’t Tweet about Joe Mixon’s video or Bob Stoops’s comments on that video for three days.

The resulting outcry leads to an indefinite suspension for tripping a guy on the basketball court.

An indefinite suspension for tripping!

I guarantee you there are a bunch of college basketball players, most of whom would be black, that have gotten called for tripping three times in the past three years and we don’t even know who those guys are. Tripping’s a dirty play that should be a technical foul, but it isn’t particularly noteworthy in the larger scheme of an out-of-conference game that didn’t matter. If, for instance, Grayson Allen had tripped someone on UNC at a key moment in the game, okay, I’m sold on the newsworthiness, but against Elon just before Christmas?

Come on. 

But Grayson Allen does it, in a game that no one cares about, mind you, and it’s a major national story. That’s because MSESPN needs to have white villains to fulfill it’s “But what if he was black,” mandate.

So the next time a black guy gets in trouble for something they can say, “Nope, we’re fair to all the races. Look at how we covered Grayson Allen.”  

I’ll take more about this in later questions, but now we get a fun email interlude. 

“Clay,

The other day I had one of the weirdest things happen to me and I need your opinion on how to handle this. Myself and a friend own a piece of hunting property and next door to the property lives an old country guy and his wife probably between 60 and 65 years old. He keeps an eye on the property and always calls if something is out of order. Over the years he has randomly texted asking questions about the property or just wishing us a happy holidays. All in all a decent guy who has been helpful over the years. That all changed this Saturday when I got the following text.

“Hey buddy, I have took all meds doctors have gave me. none worked. do you have any guys that work for u that could take care of Donna. satisfie her needs.”

Last time I saw him he was looking very rough, so I thought he was dying and he was wanting to make sure his wife was taken care of after he was gone. They live on a big piece of land and it’s a lot to take care of. I immediately call him, but he doesn’t answer. So I text him the following.

“Of course we can. Please give her my number and tell her to call with anything. I am devastated to hear of your medical problems. Please let me know if I can do anything for u”

I then forwarded the message to my buddy who owns the property with me and he picks up on it immediately and calls me. One of his first words is “Dude he wants someone to bang his wife”. I then convince him that his mind is in the gutter and he is dying and wants to make sure his wife is taken care of. Then I receive this string of messages. It was like rapid fire.

“Donna needs sex”
“U do understand what I’m asking”
“U get my message. donna wants to be fucked”
“Can u help us. text me back soon”

I was floored. Who the hell texts that? I thought when you were that age sex was the last thing you wanted. Hell, my wife is under 40 and she will find any excuse possible to avoid getting stuck in a dark room with me. So this was the remainder of our text conversation over the next few days

Me: “Man I’m sorry about ur problem but I can’t help there”

Cecil: “If u have one of your guys that would b interested please let me know”

Cecil: “Never meant to put u n position”

Me: ” No worries. We are good”

Cecil: “Thanks my bro. just trying to help my wife”

“My wife have decided she needs more than I can give her. its her decision”

“Man my wife needs someone. I’m good with that. I want to take care of my wife. she needs someone”

So my questions is: How do I get him to quit texting me and what the hell do I do next time I see him and or his wife? Should we sell the property at a loss? Your advice would be appreciated.”

First, Merry Christmas to mailbag readers.

Second, I think I’d sell the property. 

Once an old man asks you to bang his old wife I’m not sure what kind of relationship you can have with him after that. There’s plenty of hunting land out there, it’s time to move on. 

The more fascinating question here is what would have happened if the farmer had a smoking hot wife? And you got the same texts.

Do you try and find one of your single or divorced friend’s to bang his wife? I think you have to, right? What guy turns down no strings attached sex from a hot girl like this. The biggest fear here is that the farmer is a closet freak and he’s somehow wanting to get involved. 

What if the farmer and his wife are freaks and he’s set up a gang bang for his wife and when you show up thinking it’s just going to be you banging the hot wife instead you see like five of your hunting buddies all there too?

Secondary question, how hot does the girl have to be for the average guy to be willing to participate in a gang bang? (Assume you aren’t first or last, just somewhere in the middle). I think the girl has to be a total smokeshow. Plus, what do you do when you aren’t involved in the sex act itself. My guess is you aren’t all in the same room so there’s like a gang bang holding pen in the living room or the den where everyone is just sitting around on couches hanging out. What do you talk about here? Do you sit around and just chat about the upcoming gang bang? Do you talk about sports? Deer hunting stands? The entire process of a gang bang seems like it would be steeped in absolute awkwardness.

Anyway, sell the property.     

Brad writes:

“Great show, love it.

I coached football & basketball at a large school outside Atlanta for 5 years. My last year coaching there our WRs currently play at Vandy, Missouri, 2 at USC, and WKU and our RB went to GT. Our best receiver on that team was a 6’3 white kid, Caleb Scott. His dad was an all-American WR and was a 2nd round draft pick in the NFL. The kid was a hurdles champ in track season. I did everything I could to get this kid recruited. When James Franklin was at Vandy, they sent a coach to scout practice. His direct quote to was “I like that kid a lot, but if I go back to Franklin’s office and say I offered a white kid it better be a kicker or I’ll get fired.” TCU and Texas Tech came through with offers and once Franklin left for PSU the new Vandy staff offered and he committed to Vandy and has started for 3 years-and torched the Vols secondary deep more than once.

My question is, is there a place with more assumed and accepted racism than sports? Every white receiver is Wes Walker regardless of size/skill set. Every white basketball player is a shooter regardless of athleticism. Why is this the case? Isn’t this the same argument that people have made about the black quarterback? Is the argument really that white people are innately lacking the same level of athleticism as the black population? Why is this allowed to go on? Are you carrying that flag for the oppressed Caucasian race?”

I think this is where you have to go with statistics — black people are better at basketball and skill positions in football than white people are. I don’t think it’s racist to acknowledge or recognize this. There’s a great book called “The Sports Gene,” that analyzes issues like this and I think it’s one of the best sports books I’ve ever read.

Failing to acknowledge what we see in front of us is one of the problems with the way we talk about race in America today, we assume that if you talk about race in any way other than claiming that all people are equal and racism is bad that this equates to racism. But look around you, there’s a difference between treating all people equally under the law — which should be the goal of the United States and every other civilized country — and arguing that all people are equal in every talent.

That is, every single one of us of every race and gender in America is born with a set of unique talents. Our goal should be to maximize those talents that we have. The country’s goal should be to implement policies ensuring that all citizens have the best opportunity possible to maximize all of our talents. But our talents are not equal. 

For instance, I’m much better than most of you at dick jokes. That’s my talent. 

Now let’s dive into how we analyze talent in sports, which provides an interesting window into racial dynamics.   

Racism, to me, at its most basic level, is arguing that someone can’t do something because of what they look like. That’s plainly unfair, unwise, lazy and counterproductive; we can’t see what talents lie inside someone simply by how they look from the outside. Arguing that an individual person can’t do something because of his or her race is the very foundation of racism.

But arguing that based on the clear evidence in front of you on the football field that black people are better at, for instance, playing cornerback than white, Asian or Hispanic people isn’t racist.

Unless, that is, you believe that there’s some huge cavalcade of white, Asian and Hispanic cornerbacks that NFL teams are overlooking because they’re biased in favor of black people. I don’t believe this because I believe in the hyper competitive NFL that anyone who has talent will be used if it helps a team win a game. I mean, hell, there hasn’t been a white corner start in the NFL since Jason Sehorn over a decade ago. If there was a huge pool of free agent white corners don’t you think Bill Belichick would be playing them already like he has with white wide receivers? (I honestly think Belichick noticed that white wide receivers were undervalued based on their race and started to use them in games because he viewed them as an undervalued asset. Probably because most coaches were afraid to start white wide receivers because it’s easier to start black guys at wide receiver and lose games than it is to risk losing games with white dudes at wide receiver.)

I’m not a statistical expert, but what are the odds that for over a decade there would be no white cornerbacks in the NFL and it just happen by chance? The numbers have to be insane when you put them out there statistically. (Remember there are hardly any white corners in major college programs either. When was the last time you saw a white cornerback start a game in the SEC? I honestly can’t even remember ever seeing it.) We’re talking about 64 NFL roster spots a year all filled by black guys, who make up just 12-13% of the American population.  

In my mind that has to be related to race.

And that’s just cornerbacks, by the way. The NFL is 70% black at all positions. The more athletic the position, the blacker the starting line-up percentages are. The NBA is 75% black. Given that only 12-13% of all American men are black, that’s an insane percentage for a group of minorities to come to dominate just by chance. Especially where, as here, the economic rewards for success are so high. In theory every man in America who has the athletic ability to play corner in the NFL should be trying to play corner in the NFL. 

When you look at the statistics, a black guy in America today has an infinitely higher chance of playing pro basketball or pro football than a white, Asian or Hispanic guy does. If you believe that football and basketball are meritocracies where the best guys play regardless of their race, which I do, then the odds of that happening by chance are virtually zero.

Indeed, the other arguments for why this happens just make no sense to me. I don’t think black guys are working harder than white, Asian or Hispanic high school cornerbacks. I certainly don’t think this is random chance and I don’t believe that bias favors black guys. I think black guys are better at playing basketball and football than white, Hispanic or Asian guys are in America.

And you know what, I think virtually every sports fan in America agrees with me if he or she is being honest. And do you know how many of them are willing to write or say this in public? Hardly any.  

Why is that?

Because we don’t talk about race honestly in this country.

Merely acknowledging something that involves race and sports makes the vast majority of fans and media commentators so nervous that they won’t even say it in public. Which brings me to my big question, how can you address the racial divide in this country when so many people are so terrified of even mentioning race in any way other than saying they hate racism?

Put simply, you can’t.  

Evan writes:

“I’ve been following your coverage of the Joe Mixon story for two years. I’m still shocked by the lack of coverage now that the video has actually come out. So, I hate to do this, but I have to ask in “A Time to Kill” fashion – what if Mixon was white and the girl was black?

You couple this with the non story about 10 black Minnesota players gang banging (or raping) a girl and it seems like a HUGE double standard exists.

You’ve touched on both of these, but would like your thoughts if both the Minnesota and Mixon stories were all white players?”

I’ve talked about my “A Time To Kill” theory on my radio show. So people have started to take note of what MSESPN is doing here. And now people are starting to ask interesting questions, what if you flip the race of black athletes and make them white, something that no one at ESPN ever does because it doesn’t fit the liberal orthodoxy of white men being the devil. 

And it gets pretty interesting in a hurry, doesn’t it? 

Ten black football players were accused of gangraping a white girl at Minnesota. The story got virtually no mainstream attention outside of basic news reports about the potential for a boycott. There was limited, if any, commentary about the larger societal issues and opinion pieces about the importance of this story were virtually nonexistent. 

Now what if you made those ten players white and made their alleged victim black?

Wait, that’s Duke Lacrosse, one of the most covered stories in the history of sports. They shut down the Duke Lacrosse team over an entirely made up story by a black stripper when she claimed that she was raped by white guys. 

Nothing at all happened to her. 

At Minnesota we know there’s a white girl alleging that she was gangraped by ten black dudes — and we know the sex actually happened and that the girl immediately said she was raped after the incident but that no charges were filed by authorities after conducting an investigation — and no one hardly utters a word at all. There are no protests, there are no fevered opinion columns, virtually nothing at all happens.  

If it had been ten white guys accused of gangraping a black girl, we knew the sex happened, and the authorities had declined to prosecute, as happened with the black guys here, Minnesota’s campus might have burned down. I’m not even kidding about this. Whatever team the white guys were on would have gotten shut down and you probably would have had to call in the national guard to stop the protests and rioting. People would be running around screaming #whiteprivilege to the high heavens. This would be the lead story on MSESPN every night.  

But ten black guys are accused of gangraping a white girl, don’t get charged with crimes, and there’s hardly a single opinion piece written about it and there’s virtually no public reaction on campus. 

Stories like this happen all the time. 

Recall that in the Vanderbilt rape case one of the black football players peed on the victim after raping her and said, “That’s for 400 years of slavery, bitch.” 

Did any of you even see this mentioned in any major media articles or stories? Of course not. It doesn’t fit the narrative that the mainstream, and mostly left wing media, wants to report, about white men behaving badly. 

As for Joe Mixon, if a white football player had broken a black girl’s face, a student on campus mind you, on video in this exact same manner, and not been kicked out of school and received just 100 hours of community service as punishment, everyone in the mainstream media would lose their minds. MSESPN would have covered this story for a week straight as clear evidence of a racial double standard in college athletics. 

The president, athletic director and Bob Stoops would have definitely all lost their jobs when this video came out and we saw, over and over again, a white guy punching a black girl. 

Instead, a black guy breaks a white girl’s face in four places and most people don’t even care. 

A racial double standard is alive and well in the media today, there’s no doubt at all. The mainstream media wants to find black victims and white criminals. When they can find it, they cover it as aggressively as possible. But when black men are accused of crimes against white women in sports? It gets almost no media attention at all. 

The result is major media stories in the world of sports and college where white men haven’t even done anything wrong, either at all, or in a major sense — Duke Lacrosse, the University of Virginia “rape” case, Peyton Manning’s mooning, Ryan Lochte getting robbed outside a Brazilian gas station, and Grayson Allen tripping a guy on a basketball court — but the media coverage is so breathless you’d think that a white guy is getting away with the crime of the century.

MSESPN drives almost all of this coverage. They’re powerful and they’ve decided that white men are the real criminals even when, as in the above examples illustrate, they almost always aren’t.

It’s important to understand what’s going on here.

…

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of the Outkick crew.

Rest assured that you can always count on one thing from me — I treat everyone like an asshole regardless of their race, gender, or ethnicity.

It’s the most fair I can possibly be.