NFL: "A sport where player careers last only three and a half years is built on disposable black bodies, indifference to brain damage, and a country-club dismissal of black brain power."

Ladies and gentlemen, just about the only sports writer who genuinely matters, precisely because he doesn't refrain from contextualizing tails that wag dogs.

The NFL Has Fired Almost All of Its Black Coaches, by Dave Zirin (The Nation)

The firings reflect a league that is actively hostile to black progress.

The day after the end of the NFL season, when teams fire allegedly underperforming head coaches, is known as Black Monday. This year that nickname was a tad too “on the nose.” Of the seven NFL head coaches fired earlier this week, five are African American. That leaves the league with only two black head coaches, Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin and Los Angeles Charges coach Mike Lynn. In a league that is 70 percent African American, the number of black head coaches has never even hit 30 percent.

There are also of course still no black owners, and “the Rooney rule” that owners interview candidates of color is completely toothless. A sport where player careers last only three and a half years is built on disposable black bodies, indifference to brain damage, and a country-club dismissal of black brain power. It is this reality that compelled Michael Bennett of the Philadelphia Eagles to write in his 2018 book (which I co-wrote):

If the NFL were really integrated these [ownership, coaching and executive numbers] would be different. The NFL needed what’s called the Rooney Rule just to require owners to sit down with Black coaching candidates. They needed a rule just to talk to us. Not hire us. Talk to us…. We are integrated only on the level that people see on the field, yet all sports celebrate this half-view of integration. When Major League Baseball memorializes Jackie Robinson, they leave out that he wanted to be a manager or executive but they would not give him the opportunity.

But why should anyone be surprised that we’ve arrived at this point in 2019. This is a league whose owners gave upward of $8 million to the shady Trump Inauguration Committee. This is a league that is still signing quarterbacks who were terrible in college, let alone the NFL, while denying Colin Kaepernick employment because he dared to speak out for racial justice and against police violence. This is the league that has almost certainly been harassing Carolina Panthers safety Eric Reid with repeated drug tests, for the crime of continuing to demand justice on behalf of his friend Kaepernick ...

"A rank hypocrite and a user of teenagers. In other words, a typical, big-time, top-tier NCAA football coach."

A book worth reading, but you won't, will you?

It's another of my periodic reminders that Dave Zirin is among the select few sports writers worth reading, for the simple reason that he refuses to view sports outside a broader societal context: Our games, and the games we play.

Bob Stoops and the Geyser Cesspool of College Football, by Dave Zirin (The Nation)

The 2014 video of Oklahoma University player Joe Mixon breaking the jaw of a female student is exposing, yet again, the rot of college football.

It is an insult to cesspools to call Division I college football a cesspool. Cesspools serve a legitimate societal function as a gathering point for putrid waste. College football sprays that waste like a geyser, contaminating everyone it touches. Every year there are examples of putrescence. In fact, the endless parade of scandals are critical to keeping the system afloat. Our eyes are so glazed over by the annual flip book of impropriety and misconduct that we don’t recognize how we have normalized a sports system that has become anything but normal. (This makes college football very similar to a certain recent presidential campaign.)

Money? Indeed, and Zirin follows it.

A question that those who might not be familiar with the geyser cesspool that is college football might ask themselves is how Bob Stoops can live with himself. It’s easy. He makes $5.5 million a year in a state where one in four people under 18 live below the poverty line. He makes $5.5 million a year at a school where adjunct professors make $17 an hour and in a state where first-year public-school teachers make $31,000 a year. He makes $5.5 million a year, while his players make meal money. But Bob Stoops is not here to educate. He’s here to win football games and ensure that football in Norman, Oklahoma, maintains its place as a tent pole of the neoliberal university.

Previously:

The corrupt NCAA monopoly: "American society is lying to itself about the virtues of its favorite form of entertainment."

"A billion dollar sports enterprise where the athletes aren't paid a penny."

Zirin on "Louisville Basketball and the NCAA’s Political Economy of Misogyny."

R.I.P. Malone and Dawkins, the "two original prophets of justice about the sham amateurism of NCAA basketball."

Here's how to make top dollar as a public employee in your state.

At first I thought this was a joke.

Sadly, it is not humor, but real. Thanks to W for the link.

Infographic: Who’s The Highest-Paid Public Employee In Your State?

In May, a reporter at Deadspin released a carefully compiled map of the United States’ highest-paid public workers. After Reuben Fisher-Baum culled through state salary databases and various media reports, he tallied the findings.

The list of highest-paid active employees counts 27 football coaches, 13 basketball coaches, and 1 hockey coach. The leftover ten include five college presidents, a medical school chancellor, a medical school department chair, a medical school plastic surgeon, and a law school dean. (The math gets you to 51 positions because Minnesota’s football and basketball coach are each earning $1.2 million.)