From (http://msn.foxsports...re-clash-011912)
"Look, we can tip-toe around it, ignore the big beautiful elephant in the room, or we can embrace the fact that Sunday’s AFC Championship contest is soaked in the white-black racial component that has driven American sports passion at least since Jack Johnson whipped James J. Jeffries."
Oh there's more. Abs, do I have this in the right thread?
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3 votes
Whitlock: Pats/Ravens about race
Started by
ivanvamp
, Jan 19 2012 02:50 PM
58 replies to this topic
#7
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- 2,450 posts
one campus at a time..
Posted 19 January 2012 - 03:26 PM
Wow, is there anything about this game that you won't start a thread about?
?? I've only started two threads about this game, and both involved writers. I was chastised by abs for putting my first one in the main forum instead of this one, and I put this one here. I've participated in numerous threads and started threads about other things related to the Patriots, but I've only started two threads about this game.
Do you have a problem with that?
#11
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now batting steve sal hiney. the leftfielder, hiney
Posted 19 January 2012 - 03:55 PM
He states that
Since the Pats are 10 of 11 (Chung is half African-Jamaican), what is his point?
He was trying to compare the Ravens' defense to the Pats offense since they would be the units squaring off. Silly, but I think that's why he mentioned it.
#16
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Posted 19 January 2012 - 04:40 PM
Ugh, Whitlock is a one trick pony, I stopped reading his articles 3 years ago. According to him, every single matchup or controversy in sports has got to do with race.
To be fair, I think tons of people still underestimate the impact of race, even (and maybe especially) in everyday stuff like entertainment and sports.
The best way to go about highlighting it, though, is probably not 77 consecutive articles referencing The Wire. He's stuck in Extended Analogy Hell.
#20
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- 13,193 posts
King of the Avatards
Posted 19 January 2012 - 05:21 PM
Flacco is Maury Levy.
What a throwaway article.
How did he make this about race? Flacco is white. Tom Brady is white. Deoin Branch is black. Wait, OMG, Wes Welker is white, this game is about nothing but race. There is no other storyline. I am glad Whitlock pointed this out to me.
#23
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- 9,401 posts
SoSH Member
Posted 19 January 2012 - 07:48 PM
When you're a bright guy who deliberately says provocative things, sometimes you step in it. I love Whitlock, but this time he is wrong.
The argument had surface plausibility 4 years ago when the Ravens were that much closer to their only championship and when the Patriots were mounting an offensive on two citadels -- perfection and the notion that defense wins championships. If you attended their regular season game in 2007 as I did, you would have found this sort of vibe and seen a not particularly good Ravens team fight as if they were in Rome 2000 years ago. It wasn't necessarily a black vs white thang, but it was an old school/new school battle -- though oddly enough both sides were villains.
The vibe now coming out of Baltimore is completely different. All the fire is directed inward -- toward their own teammate and offensive coordinator. They are desperate because they are led by 2 Hall-of-Famers who dearly want to retire -- one of whom has yet to win a Super Bowl ring and can't get out of the game fast enough out of fear of paralyzing himself or worse (Ed Reed/neck problems). And they are scared because they know they are bringing a knife to a gun fight in Fox and are far from confident that defense alone can still win championships.
So these are not the Showtime Lakers, and those who view them that way are living in the past. More accurately, the Ravens are the Celtics of a couple of years back -- still tough, very proud, but probably without enough gas in the tank to get it done. And they know it.
The argument had surface plausibility 4 years ago when the Ravens were that much closer to their only championship and when the Patriots were mounting an offensive on two citadels -- perfection and the notion that defense wins championships. If you attended their regular season game in 2007 as I did, you would have found this sort of vibe and seen a not particularly good Ravens team fight as if they were in Rome 2000 years ago. It wasn't necessarily a black vs white thang, but it was an old school/new school battle -- though oddly enough both sides were villains.
The vibe now coming out of Baltimore is completely different. All the fire is directed inward -- toward their own teammate and offensive coordinator. They are desperate because they are led by 2 Hall-of-Famers who dearly want to retire -- one of whom has yet to win a Super Bowl ring and can't get out of the game fast enough out of fear of paralyzing himself or worse (Ed Reed/neck problems). And they are scared because they know they are bringing a knife to a gun fight in Fox and are far from confident that defense alone can still win championships.
So these are not the Showtime Lakers, and those who view them that way are living in the past. More accurately, the Ravens are the Celtics of a couple of years back -- still tough, very proud, but probably without enough gas in the tank to get it done. And they know it.
#32
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- 4,197 posts
designated driver
Posted 20 January 2012 - 08:14 AM
Lazy article, and that's too bad because this match up does contain a lot of compelling side stories, one of which Whitlock even teased a bit with the "old-school defense" vs "new-school offense" in regards to the league and how it has shifted towards making passing easier for the offense. But it's silly to expect an expert race baiter like Whitlock to focus on the actual game when there's a splinter of a white/black controversy, even though when the Ravens have the ball their white quarterback will be lining up against New England's almost entirely black defense.
But why let facts get in the way of a lazy, tired, pointless article?
But why let facts get in the way of a lazy, tired, pointless article?
#36
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SoSH Member
Posted 20 January 2012 - 09:28 AM
I read this thread, then Whitlock's article. The article isn't very good, but it isn't as awful as people here are saying.
Funny thing, the Celtics/Lakers clash-of-styles analogy almost works -- except the Ravens are the Celtics (grinding, traditional, feeling cheated by the refs), and the Patriots are the Showtime Lakers (more rings, lots of offense, and a Hollywood-ready star player). If Whitlock had stuck with that and the Mad Men/Wire analogy, and left race out of the mix, it might have been a decent bit.
Funny thing, the Celtics/Lakers clash-of-styles analogy almost works -- except the Ravens are the Celtics (grinding, traditional, feeling cheated by the refs), and the Patriots are the Showtime Lakers (more rings, lots of offense, and a Hollywood-ready star player). If Whitlock had stuck with that and the Mad Men/Wire analogy, and left race out of the mix, it might have been a decent bit.
Edited by maufman, 20 January 2012 - 09:29 AM.
#37
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given himself a skunk spot
Posted 20 January 2012 - 09:48 AM
That (maufman's) analogy would be much better if the pats face the niners. The ravens have one ring and no Super Bowl appearances in eleven years. They're like the Portland trailblazers.
Edited by drleather2001, 20 January 2012 - 09:51 AM.
#38
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Posted 20 January 2012 - 09:54 AM
He'd have a better point if he mentioned their respective fanbases, or that the Ravens play a few blocks from the ghetto while the Patriots play in the middle of a bunch of affluent, 99% white suburbs. I'm fairly confident the Ravens have significantly more African-American fans as a percentage of their base. You could make an extended point that the teams' styles of play reflect this.
But he didn't. As far as the teams on the field, it's not about race at all.
But he didn't. As far as the teams on the field, it's not about race at all.
#40
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just a man and his girl
Posted 20 January 2012 - 12:58 PM
He'd have a better point if he mentioned their respective fanbases, or that the Ravens play a few blocks from the ghetto while the Patriots play in the middle of a bunch of affluent, 99% white suburbs. I'm fairly confident the Ravens have significantly more African-American fans as a percentage of their base. You could make an extended point that the teams' styles of play reflect this.
But he didn't. As far as the teams on the field, it's not about race at all.
I agree, this would've been a far more interesting approach. Race and sports can be an interesting and important topic, but too often it's written up more as math (let's count the number of white vs black players/coaches/QBs/etc) than sociology.
This article, however, is lazy and pointless. He claims race has "driven" American sports since Johnson-Jeffries a title fight in 1910. Can anyone really claim race has been the impetus behind sports drama over the past century? The fact that he had to invent matchups (Marciano-Ali was a movie, not a fight), shows how rarely rivalies have been predicated on race, or even really featured a racial subtext. Also, where is the tie-in between the teams' respective racial identities and their style of play. Whitlock says Brady leads a high-flying offense of white playmakers. Are white football players known to be high-flying? Meanwhile, the Ravens' mainly African-American defense takes risks to score points to compensate for an anemic offense. Do blacks take more risks to score defensive points? I had no idea that was a stereotype. Is it a white thing for a kicker to make several long-range field goals in overtime to make up for a weak QB?
The problem isn't that articles like this are written, it's that the genre lends itself to facile assertions rather than honest, provocative arguments.
#42
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Posted 21 January 2012 - 09:32 AM
That article is a piece of crap, but Whitlock definitely has his moments. He's a very bright guy and has a well-calibrated bullshit detector when it comes to other people's bullshit. His biggest problem is that he can be really lazy from time to time, and he rarely has anything interesting to say about the on-field aspects of the sports he writes about. He's much better as a media critic.
His podcast interview of Jay Mariotti a while back was pretty awesome.
His podcast interview of Jay Mariotti a while back was pretty awesome.
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