This is inspired by a WIlliam Rhoden column I saw the other day.
All through the college basketball season, and especially at the start of the NCAA tournament, I’ve been hearing commentators and prognosticators saying things like “LSU is a very athletic team,” or “Duke has trouble against teams that are athletic.” The word “athletic” has been thrown around so much in the sports media that, many times, I’ve wanted to scream at the radio or TV, “What the hell are you trying to say???”
What does “athletic” mean? Does it mean they’re very fast? Very agile? Have great endurance? What?
Rhoden is a black sportswriter, so naturally, he views the whole thing in racial terms (in his mind, a very “athletic” team is usually one that has a lot of black guys!).
But I’m more inclined to think it’s a matter of laziness and sloppy thinking on the part of commentators. Don’t know much about George Mason’s team (who did, until a few weeks ago?) but have to offer a soundbite? Just use meaningless cliches, like “They’re a very athletic team.”
Well… duh! Of COURSE they’re athletic, they’re ATHLETES, for Pete’s sake.
Any chance we could ban the word “athletic,” and force commentators to say something enlightening? Or at least, to say what they really mean?
I don’t know why this is difficult. “Athletic” means they have a lot of raw natural athletic talent - fast, agile, can jump high, etc. While the college basketball players are all more athletic than the average person, in terms of basketball, nobody would call JJ Redick particularly athletic (he’s not particularly fast or agile - he won’t beat you off the dribble, for example), whereas say Adam Morrison is.
It could mean “Not brainy,” a team that doesn’t play particularly smart ball, but wins through purely physical skills.
Several qualities could compensate for a lack of athletic abililty in athletic competition: braininess, depth, experience, competitive spirit, coaching…a team that lacked all of these, and still won, might be a team whose athleticism is dominant.
It is a vague term, but basically, “athletic” is a description of the style an player has. Usually, it means that, when they do something difficult, they make it look easy. Michael Jordon made it look easy, whereas Kurt Rambis did not.
To put it in different terms, it’s like Fred Astaire vs. Gene Kelly. Astaire always made it look like he wasn’t sweating a thing; Kelly always looks like he’s working hard. Both were great dancers, and both work hard, but with Astaire, the hard work isn’t as obvious.
It does tend to be tied to Black athletes, but that’s mostly a reflection of differences in culture, not race.
He meant it exactly the way it’s phrased. In sportswriting, “athletic” very often means “black.”
Not always, and posters have provided examples where it might not, but there’s a definite correlation, at least to my perception over 25 years of being an extremely avid sports fan; sportswriters and broadcasters seem to emphasize black athletes’ “athleticism” more than with white athletes, and tend to emphazie white athletes’ hard work more than black athletes. The example that’s often used is Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, who were contemporaries and equally great players; the talk about Bird was always his hard work and the talk about Johnson was (usually) his alleged athleticism. Yet according to anyone close to him, Johnson was probably the hardest working basketball player of his time, a man who took practice very seriously. It’s one thing to say Michael Jordan is athletic and Kurt Rambis is not (who?) because Jordan is a megastar and Rambis is a career scrub, but the Bird-Johnson thing is a bit harder to explain in terms of on-court results.
A more current example; one often hears Steve Nash’s work ethic spoken of very highly (and rightly so, he works very hard) but never Allen Iverson’s, even though Iverson is short, weak, perpetually playing with a nagging injury, and yet is one of the hardest working basketball stars to ever play the game.
I’m not sayiing all sportswriters are racists, or even any (at least deliberately) but there’s (in my humble opinion) a definite difference of perception. I could come up with a zillion examples - Whitaker and Trammell, say. Black quarterbacks who can run are athletic; white quarterbacks who can run still have their brains emphasized (Steve Young is an obvious example, or Doug Flutie during his CFL glory years.)
Well, I’m not astorian, but I suspect I know what he means. Black sports columnists, especially nationally prominent ones, tend to take some issue in sports and then write about it as a racial issue. See" Wiley, Ralph. Some also have the annoying habit (although not Rhoden or many others) of trying to work slang into their columns - I guess as some sort of sad attempt to pretend they’re still in touch with “the street.”
The athletic/brainy stereotypes still exist, but I think that announcers are more conscious of it being code for black/white nowadays.
Some of Rhoden’s column was dumb because he was saying, “at this level, they’re ALL athletic.” Well, no duh, but some players can still be more athletic than others. You know what they mean when they apply it to Tyrus Thomas.
I also disagree with astorian and Neurotik’s stereotyping of black sportswriters (“so naturally, he views the whole thing in racial terms”). That’s a pretty unfair assessment of Rhoden.
Probably. I’ll be honest, I don’t read a lot of Rhoden so I can’t give you an example of his writing style. All I really know of him is what he’s said when he’s on “The Sports Reporters.” It was a vast generalization, with lots and lots of counterexamples of black reporters/columnists that don’t do that I’m sure (for instance, I’ve never noticed JA Adande over at the LA Times doing any such thing).
I think this is spot on. Some players excell on the technical aspects of a sport (the ‘fundamentals’). Others are naturally gifted, and excel in the athletic aspects. Everyone in the pros is athletic and has good technical skills, but may be heavily weighed to one side or the other on the scale.
As a white guy, I have no problem stating that black guys are Much more athletic than white guys (on average).
To me, there are three components to being a great basketball player:
Athleticism
Basketball IQ
Hustle and Desire to Win
#1 is something God gives you that cannot be manufactured. Either your legs have the ability to jump out of the gym or they don’t. Exercise and practice can only do so much to increase your abilities. “Athleticism” is like a physical IQ. You can get better by “studying” but your body has a threshold.
If you don’t have #1, you need a lot of #2 and #3 to succeed. This is usually where Larry Bird fits in to the discussion. Though he was 6’10", he wasn’t a strong athlete. But he could shoot lights out and always made the right play when necessary. So any time there is a great college player who is not athletic (usually he IS white), he gets the Bird comparison. This is not fair, as Bird is in a class that is usually not attainable to even “athletic” candidates.
What makes MJ the greatest is that he excelled at all three components. Not only did he have strong athleticism, he was equal or superior to Bird in #2 and #3. It is just about having more weapons in the arsenal.
But one thing to note about Jordan is that in his second threepeat, Jordan lost a lot of athleticism due to age. Did his productivity falter? No. He increased his outside shooting and altered his game.
I’d argue that Jordan was better after his comeback than he was in the first threepeat.
The problem with the NBA today is a lack of focus on #2 and #3. Most kids see sportscenter and focus solely on the dunks. Because they are so athletic, they can coast on physical ability an do not need to develop the fundamental skills that give a player a balanced game.
But GMs know it is better to draft an athlete and teach him to shoot than to draft a great skills player. Because ya can’t teach athleticism.
No, pizzabrat, he’s talking about context. I doubt that many sportswriters are racists. I would think that most racists would avoid covering sports, actually, considering how diverse they are and how many black players there are. But there are many unspoken racial issues in sports (and everywhere else), and those issues inform the way sports are covered. So when a black athlete is the topic, you’re more likely to read about his physical prowess and leaping ability, while coverage of a white athlete is more likely to be about how he “plays the game the right way” and “plays smart” and “hard” and “with heart.” It’s rarely, if ever, a conscious choice, but it’s often unexamined. It’s probably a case of old euphemisms becoming internalized.
I mean, seriously, what am I missing? You both are saying the exact same thing which leads to an obvious conclusion that, for some reason, you are unwilling to make. How is “context” or “consious choice” supposed to be significant?
I call bullshit on this one. Deciding to use slang, and/or examining the interaction between race and sports, is not a “natural tendency” of black sportswriters. I also reject the implication that the writers that have done so are employing specious reasoning, or are voicing their concerns in the wrong forum. To assume he sees it as a race issue because he’s black is irrational, and insulting.
Because I’m not calling anyone a racist, much less making a dumb generalization about the group called “sportswriters” that I cannot support. I agree that different athletes are often discussed in different ways, but I do not think that is the case because the writers are racists. The reason I mentioned “context” is that this is not something that ‘just happened’ in sports; I am sure athletes have been discussed in this way for quite some time and that the terminology was created by coaches and scouts, not writers. Thus, the writers aren’t responsible for creating these terms, nor for the subtext they often carry. I am saying this is the result of the culture they live and work in.
There is a little bit of code language, but what I don’t understand why it is viewed as a slight on the black athletes. If anything, it is a euphemism to protect the feelings of the white kids.
If you say, “He has incredible athleticism and can jump out of the gym”, it is comparable to saying, “That girl is really hot and has a GREAT figure!”
If you say, “that kid may not be athletic, but he has great fundamentals!”, you might as well be saying, “Well…she’s got a great personality…”