NFL stars smeared under lens of lockout
OPINION - There's a whole lot of speculation going on in the news these days...
So, it appears that they have already run out of legitimate news stories about the NFL lockout in just under two months.
This is the thought that I had yesterday after reading a story that came across the wire detailing the potential struggles of the unwed, divorced or never-married mothers of the children of NFL players. Bloomberg News dropped a story on Monday detailing how one woman, a nurse in San Diego, was going to have to potentially adjust her lifestyle if the father of her child — New York Jets defensive back Antonio Cromartie — seeks out legal means to lower his child support payments due to loss of wages.
According to the piece, NFL players — who get paid during the 17 weeks of the regular season — were “lining up to get child support and alimony payments lowered to reflect what would be reduced incomes” should there be no NFL season in a little over four months from now due to a labor stoppage.
However, the piece never mentioned the names of the players “lining up” to receive these reductions. It also should be noted that in an email with the writer, the nurse said that there has been no discussion between her and Cromartie about his ability to meet his financial obligations in the future.
There’s a whole lot of speculation going on in the news these days.
During the 10 years I covered the Washington Wizards for the Washington Times, I and some of the other African-American beat writers used to get a kick out of this kind of story when it popped up. We called them “stereotype stories.”
They were pieces that were fueled by stereotypes of black athletes, but sometimes they were often lacking in their veracity. In this case, the stereotype is that these football players, most of them black, have already run through the exorbitant piles of money they made and are now standing in soup lines or, better yet, waiting on welfare to deliver them from their dire condition.
Remember, these guys have not yet missed a single check. The checks — unless they are incentives payments — are delivered during the season, not now. Nobody in the NFL is used to getting paid in May. It simply doesn’t work that way.
But there has never been a problem in the mainstream media when it comes to configuring an image of African-American athletes as infantile and with no self control. Think about it. How often are there stories of ball players who wake up, play video games all day long, show up for a game and then hit the club to carouse?
Does this happen? Perhaps in some cases, yes. But this is not the norm, no more so than the out-of-control sex life led by former New York governor Elliot Spitzer — now working in a second career on CNN as if nothing ever happened — is typical of American governors.
In fairness, there is no denying that alimony and child support are some of the biggest drains on the wallets of professional athletes, especially after they have retired and the income is no longer what it once was.
But this piece probably would have had more of an impact and more relevance had it been written and reported when and if child support and alimony payments are missed. As the Cromartie situation indicates, right now this is not necessarily the case.
There is a way to remedy the dissemination of the “stereotype story” and, as usual, it has to do with power, authority and control (there’s a shocker).
In its latest analysis of minority hiring at more than 320 Associated Press member websites and newspapers, the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports found that 97 percent of sports editor and 86 percent of columnists are white males. These numbers are skewed and made to look even better because ESPN has two African-American sports editors and a whopping 23 African-American men and women working as columnists.
Editors and columnists are the gatekeepers, the ones responsible for the vetting and shaping of opinions and images. When you don’t have a healthy mix, something this institution has allegedly been trying to achieve but always failing to realize, it’s easy to display an unbalanced portrayal and half truths.
Which is exactly what Bloomberg has delivered here.
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