I frankly don’t get all the controversy about Richard Sherman’s behavior at the end of the NFC Championship Game. He was excited and angry at the same time, and he talked a bunch of trash. So what? The way people were talking about it, I’d thought I’d missed him hurling racial anti-gay epithets and pushing reporters. I guess people think he lacked sportsmanship, but I don’t understand the intensity of the reaction.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
I LOT of the intensity came on Twitter where a lot of my fellow black folks anticipated white, racist reactions to his rant and actually seemed to gleefully await it. Some went in search of it…and found it.
Some came due to how weird it was in that moment. It came out of left field.
Now, it’s a racial issue and blow so out of proportion.
People have gotten really used to the milktoast cliche-land sports interview. They had also just won the game (on a play that he made) and I think a lot of people expected him to be happy.
However, Sherman is a guy on his way up, super competitive and really smart about what and how he says what he does and he wanted to make a name for himself. He did.
I’m looking forward to the big game. There will be a bunch of build up around Manning vs. the Seahawks secondary, and that’s pretty right on. Should be a lot of fun.
Exactly. You don’t get from the crap schools in Compton to becoming an honors student at Stanford without being really, really smart. Sherman is – he’s done a couple of “behind the scenes” type interviews where he walks people through the study & game prep work that he does, and it’s staggering. The word “thug” has been coming out a lot today for three reasons: he speaks his mind, he’s aggressive on the field, and he’s black. The people who use it are, among other things, idiots.
Thing is, he’s a student not just of the game, but the entire NFL culture, and he plays it like a virtuoso. The outburst yesterday was as planned as any TD dance – end of game, just after a huge play, and he’s not panting, his words are clear, concise, without hesitation, looking right at the camera. Ten seconds, and bingo! He’s a huge story for the next two weeks and during the biggest TV event of the year. Wanna guess how much money that little outburst will be worth for him? It’s not a small number.
Sherman knew exactly what he was doing, and if the tradeoff is a bunch of people think he’s a jerk vs. never having to work for the rest of his life after football if he doesn’t want to, I’ll bet he sleeps just fine with his choice. Laughing himself to sleep.
Oh, and I’ll put money down now that post-playing career, he’ll wind up as a commentator ala Barkley, and he’ll be very, very successful at that, too. Like him or hate him, he’s probably the smartest guy in most of the rooms he’s in. I’ve noticed in politics the last few years that some people get really agitated when the smartest guy in the room happens to be black. If he’s also a dreadlocked black guy from Compton who’s a freakishly good athlete, it must be almost as bad to those folks as if, I dunno, we elected a guy like that president.
In support of what you’ve written here, I will say that yesterday I had never even heard of the guy. Fast forward 24 hours, and not only do I know his name, but I have learned a whole lot about him AND watched the clip of the exchange after the game. Victory!
It just occurred to me that Sherman has lot in common with the Boz. Both waaaay outspoken, not out of control but always with some long range goal in mind.
Best take on it I have seen so far. I am an occasional football fan – only the 49ers, and only post season. I live a mile from Stanford stadium, my late husband had season tickets, and I had still never heard of Sherman. I have now.
a black guy was loud. in america that’s enough to shoot him. cute how you pretend so innocently to not get it.
The reaction is just like when Serena went off on the line judge.
Well, I don’t get the big deal about football in general. Heck, I live just two hours north of Seattle. Everyone’s going nuts over the game and I’m just rolling my eyes. Perhaps I’m too old and cranky to see the relevance of a bunch of freaks running around on a fake field playing a completely pointless game that makes no difference in the world.
This is of course completely distinct from the truly significant exploits of my University of Arizona basketball team, an amazing collection of skilled and talented athletes displaying courage and character as they utilize carefully honed skills for reasons good and noble and glorious.
I’m a huge Niners fan. That was a painful loss, all the more because the rivalry has been very intense recently, the loss was so close, and because the ‘Hawks talk so much s*** in comparison to the Niners, who talk very little. If Kaepernick gets that ball up a few inches, all of Sherman’s “I’m the best!” boasting wouldn’t have gotten him to the Super Bowl. We’d be talking about a whole different group of things, instead of Sherman’s “choke” gesture and trash mouth.
There’s something I find extremely irritating about pro sports and the way they’re covered. The difference between winning and losing is usually very narrow at the highest levels; the teams are usually pretty evenly matched. Yet the winner gets to talk about how they and their teammates, coaches, in this case FANS, have better character and wouldn’t quit, blah blah blah…
Barry Bonds had been a great player for over a decade, but had never hit in the post-season. The press and fans assigned this result to something about Barry as a person, rather than the small sample size it represented. So, when Barry had the greatest World Series in the history of baseball, what, did his character improve? Oh, but the Giants blew a big lead in Game 7 and were just edged out. So now Barry’s still a “loser”, because he didn’t “lead the Giants to victory”?
It’s insufferably stupid. Much of the time, luck can be as significant a factor as skills, coaching and “character” in determining winners and losers at the highest levels. That makes for less satisfying post-game narratives, though.
There’s a history between Sherman and the Niners. I don’t know all the details but something happened between him and Crabtree at an off-season fundraiser last spring. Sherman also was suspended by Harbaugh at Stanford for a game for fighting with a teammate so he apparently has a beef with him too.
The long and short of it is that Sherman is an emotional guy who has a personal grudge against the guy he covered in the most important play of that game yesterday. Unfortunately for the Niners, he is also the best defensive back in the NFL. His last play sent his team to the Super Bowl.
Partly, I think fans expect grace from winners, maybe even a thanks to Jesus or God, and thirty seconds after a game may not be the best time and place to find grace from everyone.
That said, a black man shouting in public in America raises the hackles of racists.
As a 49er fan, I didn’t like him being a major part of my team getting beaten, but if by some miracle he ended on on the Niners’ roster next year I’d welcome him with open arms. (If anyone’s familiar with the history of Deion Sanders, 49er fans hated him when he was with the Falcons, loved him with the Niners, and then hated him again when he went to the Cowboys.)
As an aside, most sideline reporters could be eliminated from telecasts without the viewer missing anything. There was a line from an Elvis Costello song that goes “with a microphone in one hand and a checkbook in the other” which could kind of apply.
I think that’s mostly right, in that we expect “winning with grace”. And my guess is that if they caught Sherman in the tunnel to the locker room, it would have been a different interview.
Sherman talks a lot of trash. I’m a Falcons fan, and he got into with Roddy White, so I was thrilled when the Falcons beat them and shut him up. My suggestion to the Niners fans is maybe to beat the Seahawks next time.
I don’t know how much race plays into it, though. Sherman violated the football rule about team before player. He made the victory about himself and Crabtree. The Seattle front seven won that game more than he did.
Maybe the intensity has something to do with race, but Sherman and Pete Carroll both said that it wasn’t “him” last night.
I think he screwed up, in that this is the story for the next two weeks, and it really should be about the Seahawks. It’s overblown all to hell, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t screw up.
The sideline reporters are almost always attractive women. How this staffing decision matches up with their job duties I do not know. It’s not like the standard production of the broadcasts allows exploitation of their beauty, they’re usually bundled up against the cold, and they only appear on screen a few brief times per game, so even the “Ooh! Pretty girl!” moments are few and far between.
BTW, Chris Hayes hosted a great discussion of this thing tonight. My favorite perspective-giving moments: a video clip from an ESPN show last March where Sherman tells the insufferable sportswriter Skip Bayless, “I’m one of the best 22 players in the world. I don’t think you’re the best 22 (at) anything…In my 24 years of life, I’m better at life than you.” When Bayless responds by asking Sherman if he’s better than defensive back Darrelle Revis, Sherman says, “I’m better than YOU.” Comedy gold.
Then, they have this great quote by former Pro Bowl running back Priest Holmes: “It’s like I have to become another person. It’s like I have to become a warrior…then, five minutes after the game ends, y’all are asking us questions about how we feel and what we think about this play, and what it’s like to lose, and we’re supposed to talk like none of that just happened.”
Just saw that here on the West Coast.
Sherman is not much of an ambassador but he’s a fine defensive back.
I’m thinking that the folks so excited about this “news” likely haven’t got a clue about goings on in Syria, New Jersey and the Central African Republic.
You could see Marshall was losing control of his emotions. So Erin Andrews seeks him out for an interview. Then she was scared. Wow that’s news!
I don’t think Andrews was even scared – except that Sherman might drop some FCC disapproved Anglo-Saxon words on her.
What made it so interesting was how unusual it was. Last weekend, Peyton Manning had a good postgame interview where he was asked, “What was on your mind when X?” And he replied, “What was on my mind? How soon can I get a Coors?”
Candid, funny, unexpected. Manning is an icon.
Sherman?
Candid, proud, unexpected. Sherman plays the game wrong. Not football. The game of media relations.
Well, he was doing a near-perfect impersonation of a frightening, angry psycho, but I see that the “it’s all racism” sentiment has kicked the butt of the “jock culture is dangerous” sentiment. Because contrarianism.
If the concern is that an athlete comes off as a “frightening, angry psycho” just after millions of people have watched an entire game in which 22 highly skilled athletes are paid large sums of money to act like frightening, angry psychos as they inflict violence on each other, I don’t think you can separate those two things out. Most of the Sherman criticism is that his behaviour was, in essence, unbecoming. But if you’re going to criticize it you have to throw in everything else that had happened over the previous three hours. “Jock culture is dangerous” is IMO a much more legitimate argument than “Dude was rude and out of line.”
And if we’re talking the dangers of jock culture, lemme tell ya…for an unrelated event I was in Pioneer Square (the bar-filled historic Seattle neighourhood adjacent to the stadium) Saturday night, and I’d trust any roid-addled professional athlete, who at least gets paid a lot to channel his rage appropriately, over the thousands of roving drunks wearing football gear who were staggering and driving around whooping it up. Those cretins – and every city has them – are far scarier than the athletes.
…and yet every other football player since the invention of the post-game interview has come across better than Sherman did. Were all those others not playing football for 3 hours prior? Or could it be that they are, to a man, less self-centered and have greater self-control?
There’s a reason they interview the winners: they’re the ones who are in a good mood. Unless they have a problem.
Gee, generalize much?
See my comment above. Sherman had perfect self-control, and he knew exactly what he was doing. His comments didn’t – almost by definition can’t – hurt his team, his teammates apparently all love him, and he’s one of the best in the game at a position that requires exceptional teamwork with his teammates in the secondary. So your allegation that he’s “self-centered” or lacking in “self-control” or “has a problem” are based on what – ten seconds on TV in an utterly artificial interviewing ritual normally designed to be completely meaningless?
You didn’t like his schtick. Fine, that’s fair. But there’s an awful lot of people making psychological analyses – not to mention racial stereotypes – of Sherman today that hadn’t even heard of him yesterday – let alone know him personally. I hate it when people do this with public figures like politicians, and it’s if anything even more obnoxious when it involves people in the entertainment industry. It always says a lot more about the critics than it does about the people they’re criticizing.
Generalize?
It is a fact that grace is grace and grace is expected when talking (even to yourself) after a competition.
That is what people “generally” do and when they don’t people “generally” are put off by it.
I find it “interesting” too that the people I’ve heard give Sherman a pass are “generally” younger than — including Boo bro. I don’t know what that means. 🙂
“Sherman had perfect self-control, and he knew exactly what he was doing.”
I’m so glad you are able to read minds. Those of use without that ability are forced to rely on evidence, like Sherman’s apology the next day. Let me reiterate: SHERMAN APOLOGIZED THE NEXT DAY.
“His comments didn’t – almost by definition can’t – hurt his team”
Gee, generalize much?
“his teammates apparently all love him”
Gee, generalize much?
“it’s if anything even more obnoxious when it involves people in the entertainment industry”
At last, the Justice for Mel Gibson movement has begun! Or is it the Kanye’s Not Really an Asshole movement?
Considering that one of the league’s best players was just imprisoned for murder — two of them! — a decade after another one of the league’s best players arguably got away with it, I don’t think Richard Sherman is the problem people have been claiming he is.
And there have been no shortage of players – including some pretty famous ones – who’ve had issues with rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence. But it’s cool – they give really polite on-the-field postgame interviews.
Well, certainly the way to stop violent behavior off the field is to give untrammeled anger and vindictiveness a pass when it is openly expressed.
I just hope Manning doesn’t pick him apart – he’s been shredding defenses all year…
Complaints about Sherman are racist?
Maybe some racists are complaining abiout him. That’s probably true. But he was staring into the camera ranting as it has been done for decades on WWE wrestling events. With and for the same effect.
The issue is two-fold: 1) the NFL is not the WWE. It is actually real, not manufactured competition and associated drama and 2) There were ten other defenders on that last play and countless other plays in the game that led to the victory. His comments were completely out of proportion to the very reason Erin was talking to him in the first place.
At minimum the only reason Crabtree was thrown to was the the QB thought he was more open than the other receivers being covered by Sherman’s teammates. And if his teammate hadn’t caught Sherman’s deflection for the interception the Niners would have had another shot at winning.
I also don’t accept his “getting caught up in the moment” excuse. He is a professional and a human being. We watch only because we appreciate people performing at a high level under high duress. Sorry, but that includes the handshake after the game and be graceful in the after game interview. Neither can be easy, especially after a loss, but it can provide us all with a lesson for our own humdrum lives.
Why else would we watch?
Finally, if he was my teammate (and I had football teammates like him over a few decades of playing) I would have told him to STFU. He is making everyone’s job harder
I do agree that a lot of the complaints are pure racist. However, when I saw that interview live I was shocked because it is so out of place in modern sports. Someone above mentioned pro wrestling, which is a reality show, not a sport. And yes, I guess we see that kind of ranting and bragging these days on reality shows or anything where they are trying to attract an audience. But in competitive sports you don’t – every athlete is taught from an early age how to give the bland interview in which you say the right things. Those who don’t – and the last one I can remember was Michael Stich, who was a German tennis star briefly in the early 1990s – and he was quickly given the Crash Davis course in bland interviewing.
The Sherman rant was a throwback to the days of Muhammad “I’m the Greatest” Ali, which is now almost 4 decades ago.
So, yeah, it was shocking. So given that Sherman is black the reaction from the wingnut racists is a given.
But to keep it in context – what Sherman said was entirely normal when the media is not watching – that’s a great example of the typical trash-talking that goes on during the game on the field.
Typical trash talking. I guess. But it wasn’t always like that.
I played competitive football for 29 years and the last ten was uncomfortable because my 20-something teammate would not stop trashtalking even after a three year gain on a 2nd and 7 play. I was constantly telling the to shut up and get in the huddle.
Ironically the NFL pregame show on Sunday had a whole segment on trash talking. The ex players and especially Dione Sanders had a few choice words. One talked about veterans asking younger players (with gold teeth and such) how many years they’ve been in the league and then asking if maybe it was time to look into the dental plan. Sanders claimed he never trash talked because he wanted his opponent to discover for himself that he had been beaten by the best.
Frankly, from my experience, it is more demoralizing and defeating to be beaten by someone I respect than someone I hate because it seems even more hopeless. Even worse is being beaten in a workmanlike manner by an opponent who barely acknowledges I am there. To me that seams like a better winning strategy.
Yeah, I saw Sanders’ little show of disapproval for trash-talking. That was quite the embroidering of personal history he did there.
Deion may have been respected for his top-shelf coverage and kick return talents, but that dude was despised by his opponents for his theatrical showboating. He is NOT an appropriate ex-player to deliver this message. In fact, his chiding of trash-talking on Sunday night was just an extension of his grandiose personality. I love him as a commentator, but I can figure out when he’s selling me bogus goods.
My favorite on this issue was Jerry Rice. If anyone’s purely dominant performances would have backed up trash-talking, it would have been Rice. Instead, he gave this wonderful quote (paraphrase): “When you score a touchdown, act like you’ve done it before.”
I should add that Richard Sherman’s trash talking is pretty much the apex of the genre. Very few players have the balls to put those kinds of words on the air, partly because of the blowback, but mostly because they’ll hear about it endlessly on the way down.
However, I disagree that it’s been four decades since we’ve heard this kind of trash talk. In the last two decades alone, you have two top-echelon shit talkers in Randy Moss and Deion Sanders.
Football has been, for at least 25 years, America’s leading religion.
I think it’s hilarious. These post-game interviews are meant to be 100% pablum while viewers take a leak and clean up the empties. How did Sherman not get the memo? I mean I always figured that they spent as much time memorizing the acceptable cliches as they did on formations and coverages.