A Gentleman’s view.

A ‘Wide Receiver’ is getting hammered by a man of serious words.

Personally, as a black man, I felt I had to write this piece even though sports is the one thing I watch as an artist watches all in life for input, it has not played a major role as it doesn’t for many men. Politics has a higher priority in my life, so this blog. There has been an exchange taking place between one black ‘Wide Receiver,’ Chad OchoCinco Johnson for the Cincinnati Bengals of the National Football League and one high profile white -national Sportswriter, Mark Kriegel for FoxSports. To bring everyone current, this football player has many commercials endorsements, and gets paid big money to catch footballs professionally, which suggests some serious physical attributes as a human being. Sometimes these individuals become convinced those talents and abilities extend themselves to the same level when endeavoring to exchange with others intellectually, this is most definitely not one of those moments. As I mentioned in my opening the need to comment as the brain of this wordsmith of a sportswriter hammers the unequal brawn of one physically gifted professional football player.

The issue at hand with these two seems to be the Professional Football Player having very little appreciation for the criticisms of the Professional Sportswriter, but that was not enough. In this generation of high technology, mass information overload, and overexposed personal lives, people have this need to tell the anyone who is interested what they are doing at various points in their day, like it matters to others. The problem is there are a lot of people who follow this type of information sharing on the internet through various social networking sites like Facebook, My Space, and the latest craze; Twitter. The athletic one decided to respond to comments made by the sportswriter by saying his comments sucked, the sports star with the most unusual name which happens to be the number of his jersey with the Cincinnati Bengals Football Team of the National Football League. He did this on Twitter of all places where there is a limit placed on the amount of character usage per tweet, but that was all he could come up with. It appears the Sportswriter took great offense at the limited creativity displayed with such a response from so big a star and called him out about it in the most intellectually derogatory way possible. Bottom line is this Wide Receiver is receiving very little and has been doing so since before 2003, this is not a great position for this man to be in as what he does for a living requires production that shows up in statistics and his look awful in this league. With this in mind, one wonders how at 31 years of age and what is considered to be the downside of most players professional careers, does this man have time to twitter with a new season coming up. He has time for running his mouth, for making all kinds of claims about his skills and how good an athlete he is and has not won one championship since joining the National Football league, not one! No Rings!

On first impression that would seem to be a white man who makes his living commenting on athletes and complaining about the big money and little production obvious nature of this exchange. As a black, man I am saying they have got it all wrong and this is because of limited abilities (again going to Kriegel’s point about skill set) they are focus in the short term thinking here. First, the population of America has shifted to the advantage of people of color, but in numbers only, power is still in the same hands it has always been in and that is of the white males. Maybe not appreciated but reality never the less; they never ever considered the possibility of competing with a black man for the highest office in the land, they are still waking up to that and the reality is that it most probably will happen again. This is after already accepting the fact that Hillary Clinton was expected to cream the lot of them anyway. Now throughout all branches of government, there is no end to where the competition can come from in the most powerful institution in our country today and they know the world is watching this transition with much amusement. This is but just another realm in which a once considered position of privilege and power is lost to people of color or gender which was once not a consideration.

This calling out on the carpet of this particular athlete for self promotion without production as with the other “Wide Receiver” on the hot seat with the District Attorney for NYC for a multiple illegal weapons indictment, is about their behavior, but more so in a major sense, the professional responsibilities that come along with the privileged opportunity of playing in the National Football League. One man carries an illegal and unlicensed weapon into a public venue and fires the damn thing, fortunately and quite capably shooting himself; the other man spends time getting paid over 6 million dollars a season in today in these financially difficult times which finds our Military at war in two countries and their family paying heavy prices to support them. This player’s team has not been to the playoffs in the last 6 years under the tutelage of Coach Marvin Lewis, who has 27 years of coaching experience professionally. A record of 46 up and 49 down, and not one championship won, not any. This finely tuned superstar football player who is supposed to catch footballs for a living as he is under contract and collecting extremely good money to do just that has received the most damaging of verbal dressing downs with great accompanying video by the writer. He asks a very important question; “Just what do you want to go down in history as: “a champion who was famous or a famous person who was always clowning” around about being a champion.

So what I am saying as you are representing the brothers and having been called out in a most derogatory, but well deserved manner, your options at 31 are but a few, but, here they are; first and foremost; simply no matter what else you do about this, shut the ….. Up, please, twitter me this no more. Do this just to save what little face you can from this exchange, let the public ask, let the public wonder. Stop talking about what you’re going to do, have done, dream of doing, and decide on what that is and take the necessary action toward that goal. I am going to be redundant here and say start with shutting the …… up! Then, spend some of that fantastic money you and your homies have been stealing from the State of Ohio, and hire and mentor at the same time if possible, some of the most eager and hungry young quarterbacks you can find for starters to throw to you all the time. You do whatever it takes to help Ohio join the short list of states having a national professional championship sports franchise there. You prepare to throw yourself into this project for at least the next 3 to 4 years for your team, for the teams state, for professional pride, for personal pride, or whatever else you can come up with to ensure no less than that achievement for the fans who contribute to your fine lifestyle while suffering unto to theirs wearing your jersey. Black’s male superstars are being put on notice here; white males aren’t going to subsidize you guys forever. You shut up you face, and put up some damn serious numbers and you do this in clutch moments with it really counts over and over again when it hurts and when it feels like you can’t go on no more. When you achieve that kind of pride for your team, the National Football League’s Cincinnati Bengals and the State of Ohio, then and only then, go see Mark.

© 2009, agentleman.