What Had Happened Was Trending stories on the intersections of race, sports & culture

Daily Dose: 9/28/17

Adidas and Nike are both getting subpoenaed

2:04 PMHef has left the building. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner died Wednesday night at the age of 91. While Hefner was best known for his men’s magazine, with its nude centerfolds and … ahem … titillating bunny costumes that helped spearhead the sexual revolution of the 1960s, he was also a champion of liberalism (abortion rights, marijuana legalization), most noteworthy a donation to black comedian Dick Gregory in 1964 to help find murdered civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael “Mickey” Schwerner. While Hefner will be lauded for that work, alongside helping make sexuality mainstream, he also has one glaring stain on his legacy. Since 2016, Hefner’s been involved with comedian Bill Cosby’s highly publicized sexual assault allegations, with two women accusing Cosby of raping them at the notorious Playboy Mansion, with Hefner allegedly being complicit in one of the assaults.

Nike is in some stuff now, too. The large shoe brand company has been pulled into the ongoing federal investigation of corruption in college basketball. According to ESPN and ABC News, a division of the Nike basketball department has been served with a subpoena by the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York as federal prosecutors look into sports brand companies paying college athletic programs to steer high-profile high school basketball players to Adidas-brand schools. For a company that has been accused of running illegal sweatshops, violating child labor laws and outsourcing American jobs to poorer Asian countries, it’s doubtful that Nike did anything wrong.

Speaking of which, the jig is up for Rick Pitino. The Louisville men’s basketball coach has been identified in the federal prosecution of college programs as “Coach-2,” who according to court records, helped funnel $100,000 to the family of a recruit and spoke directly with an Adidas executive just days before said recruit committed to Louisville. Had this been Pitino’s first infraction, he’d be given the benefit of the doubt. But the 65-year-old coach was caught up in a federal extortion case in 2010 for having sex with a woman who was not his wife for, in his own words, 15 seconds, and caught up in a NCAA investigation in 2015 for overseeing a program that offered strippers and escorts to recruits. And for all that hard work, Louisville risks vacating its 2013 national championship and on Wednesday lost two ESPN top 50 commits and a top 5 recruit cut the Cardinals from his school list.

Ray-Ray tried to have it both ways. Retired former Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis tried to have his cake and eat it too when he confusingly dropped on two knees rather than the customary one during the national anthem Sunday, joining 13 Baltimore players in what they called a protest of President Donald Trump’s recent comments on anthem demonstrations. He later told Showtime’s Inside the NFL that he “dropped on two knees — both knees — so I can simply honor God in the midst of chaos,” when he simply could have A) not been on the sideline for a team he doesn’t play for anymore, B) not try to make a show of “unity” about himself or C) simply not put one or two knees on the ground if he didn’t agree with players not standing for the national anthem. Playing both sides of the field has made more than 50,000 people call for the removal of Lewis’ 3-year-old statue outside M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore.

Daily Dose: 9/27/17

Getting these tweets off is now a longer process

4:25 PMAlas, I didn’t get a win on Around The Horn on Tuesday, but Friday is another day. I’m sending out my NHL fantasy league draft notices on Wednesday, and I’m really excited about it.

Twitter might have ruined itself. On Tuesday, the company announced that some select users will be able to expand their tweets to 280 characters. Why? LORD KNOWS. The entire living reason why the site was so good was that everyone had to work within the limitations to communicate, and we all eventually got used to it as the one thing that was worth it: brevity. By moving to 280 characters, visually and in practice, the entire platform changes. Remember this day in the internet universe. We are forever changed.

The national anthem at sporting events is driving people mad. Now it’s become this thing that basically allows folks to make any random statement, no matter what it may be. Colin Kaepernick’s initial efforts to draw attention to police brutality in America have now been completely co-opted by the league. Now, a combat veteran who won a contest to be the Baltimore Ravens’ national anthem singer is resigning. In addition, Northwestern football has randomly decided to lock arms before their next game. Meh.

Smoking kills. We all know that. But that doesn’t mean that plenty of people don’t do it. And if you know black folks, you know that we like menthol cigarettes. They’re more harmful, and for quite some time tobacco companies have been accused of targeting the black community. Now in Minnesota, leaders are asking convenience stores to ban the sale of menthols, thinking that will help curb the sale of the items to minors, which is a big problem.

Don’t think that NFL players don’t know what their owners and fans think. And for the Carolina Panthers, that situation is more prevalent than most. Their owner is a former NFL player, and North Carolina is a state with quite a few military families and thus military bases. As a result, players were afraid to express themselves surrounding the national anthem. The team and management are now trying to ease tensions, and that season is officially off the rails.

Free Food

Coffee Break: There’s nothing cool about getting dragged off a plane. It’s embarrassing, often physically injurious and emotionally demoralizing. But if someone has an allergy to a dog that they can’t provide documentation for and those dogs are on the plane? Tough situation.

Snack Time: I don’t have kids. Which means I don’t have to deal with little things that you only use for babies then never again. But, if you’re in the world of sports bottles, you might hate that world.

Dessert: Yep. This is funny.

 

Daily Dose: 9/26/17

Kyrie Irving claims he was trolling with his ‘flat earth’ theories

3:16 PMTuesday’s another TV day, kiddos. I’ll be on Around The Horn at 5 p.m. on ESPN. Bob Ryan’s on the show today, so the likelihood of career win No. 2 is pretty low, alas.

Donald Trump is not an NFL owner. He’s the president of the United States. He wanted to be a sports owner, but that didn’t really work out. It’s a shame, too, but he actually probably would fit right in with those guys. Alas, they don’t want him and Monday they showed him that. Now, he’s saying that he thinks the NFL should create an actual rule to prevent players from kneeling during the anthem. Seriously, Puerto Rico is about to get washed off the face of the earth, and this is where we are in the White House.

I drink a lot of milk. This is a known fact. Every time I show up in a meeting room with a quart of it, people recoil in horror as if I’m somehow doing something not considered reasonable in polite society. Anyway, milk comes from cows, and I drink it in the “whole” variety. But these days “milk” doesn’t even really mean much, outside of something being a form of dairy liquid squeezed from another product. Almond milk is surely something you’re familiar with. Cockroach milk might be less familiar to you, but that, I can live with. But pea milk? NOPE.

Kyrie Irving ain’t fooling anyone. A while back, when he said during a podcast that he believed that the Earth was flat, most people believed him. Why? Because most people aren’t in the business of lying about basic scientific facts as a way to call attention to themselves. Now, he’s claiming that he only did that as an “exploitation tactic” — whatever that means. First of all, I don’t believe this, whatsoever. But even if I did, it doesn’t change how I feel about flat-earthers, anyway.

If you paid players to play major college sports, you’d have way less controversy. But, alas, this is the world we live in, so when the FBI gets involved to tell us that a bunch of schools having been paying players for years, we’ve got to act like we’re outraged. I, for one, am not. But folks are getting arrested, including big-time people from big-time sneaker companies. Of course, if all this is true, it fundamentally changes the entire purpose of the NCAA, which is fine by me, too.

Free Food

Coffee Break: Oh, and if you’re wondering why people are protesting at NFL games, look no further than Pittsburgh to explain. A fire chief in Pennsylvania posted on Facebook that Steelers coach Mike Tomlin was a “no-good n—–,” which should give you an idea of how old that guy is.

Snack Time: If you’re looking for a hockey team to root for this season, you might want to take a look at the Winnipeg Jets, who we can say at the least, are very woke.

Dessert: Mark Cuban wins the day, y’all.

Daily Dose: 9/25/17

Prayers for Puerto Rico

12:25 PMHappy Monday, kiddos. If you missed #TheRightTime on Friday, I explained why I feel that extending the nets at MLB ballparks will drastically affect the experience of any baseball game. Take a listen here.

President Donald Trump officially launched his beef with the NFL on Sunday. He did the usual throwing out of Twitter broadsides, and the league’s players responded much in kind. Even New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady said that Trump was doing too much. But one guy who works at the Buffalo Bills stadium was so mad about national anthem protests that he quit his ACTUAL job at the facility. That aside, let’s be careful how we use the word “unity” surrounding what the NFL is doing now, because, well, it’s not even really about that.

It’s a sad day in Nashville, Tennessee. And not because Vanderbilt got absolutely destroyed by Alabama, or because the Tennessee Titans couldn’t pull one out against the New England Patriots. A masked gunman entered a church parking lot and shot and killed someone and injured a handful of others inside the church. Obviously, this could have been a much bigger tragedy, but thankfully a church usher stepped in to confront the gunman. It’s not yet clear what the motivation for the shooting might have been; there will be a civil rights investigation.

Puerto Rico is part of the United States. In case you weren’t aware of that. Because some people aren’t. The island territory that’s brought so much to the culture, from music to sports to fashion, etc., is so completely devastated from Hurricane Maria that it’s starting over from scratch. Their crops have been completely banged out, the place is nearly unrecognizable, and now they’re worried about the status of a dam, whose failure is apparently imminent.

Everybody loves Darren Sproles. The little man who managed to make it in the NFL for so long after being a star at Kansas State was such a genuinely great story in terms of his success in hanging around the league. But on Sunday he was dealt a blow that will basically end his career, which is awful. The Philadelphia Eagles running back broke his arm and tore his ACL on the same play, ending his season. He was within earshot of 20,000 career all-purpose yards. Sad.

Free Food

Coffee Break: Baseball has a long season, so you’ve got to run a lot of short-range bits to keep yourself entertained when you’re on the road. You can mark down “Blue Jays players wearing Blue Jays players Snuggies” as an instant classic.

Snack Time: Offset has been doing a whole lot in the past year, and that doesn’t even include Cardi B. But, since you need it, here’s a list of his best guest verses of the year.

Dessert: Never forget the Little Rock Nine.