A few years ago, I watched Philadelphia Eagle receiver DeSean Jackson catch a long pass against the Dallas Cowboys on Monday Night Football and run to the end zone unmolested but short of the goal line, he tossed the ball away, thinking he’d scored. He had not. The ball went out of bounds, I think, the Eagles got it back on the Dallas 1.
DeSean Jackson pulled the same boneheaded move in high school. Wikipedia says: “To cap off his high school career, Jackson was voted the Most Valuable Player at the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio, Texas, where he caught seven passes for 141 yards and passed for a 45-yard touchdown in leading the West to a 35–3 victory in a game that featured 80 of the nation’s top players. However, he was also involved in an embarrassing play when he attempted to somersault from the five-yard line for a touchdown, but landed on the one-yard line, leaving the ball there.”
Saturday night, Utah’s Kaelin Clay gave it up at the 1 yard line and then jumped around in the end zone like he scored but Oregon recovered his fumble and ran it back 100 yards to even the score.
Chaim Amalek:
Nebech, we are in gallus! Please send this poor player Moshiach NOW!
Maybe the reason these plays seem to be disproportionately the handiwork of black players is their disproportionate presence in the NFL to begin with. You know — like saying the reason Wall Street shysters are disproportionately Jewish is not that Jews are dishonest, but that Jews are a disproportionate presence on Wall Street.
Also, when Moshiach comes, the goyim will don these suits and fight with one another to see who is the fastest to fetch us a cup of water like they are now when they run with their pig skin ball.
In a Super Bowl, Leon Lett recovered a fumble and was running it into the end zone when he stuck it out in a premature celebration and had it knocked away.
Leon Lett went on to lose the Cowboys a Thanksgiving game against Miami by jumping on a live ball from a blocked field goal attempt when he should have let it be.
What do these players have in common?
The most famous fumble in Monday Night Football history was also committed by a black guy, wide receiver Dave Smith, in 1971.
The Kansas City Chiefs coming here for a Monday Night Football contest with the Pittsburgh Steelers sparked a memory of the most famous fumble in that storied series.
That occurred when Dave Smith of the Steelers decided to showboat before crossing the goal line on what would have been a 50-yard scoring pass by Terry Bradshaw and held the ball high overhead triumphantly.
Then Smith, to his dismay, lost control of the ball and it hit the ground and skidded through the end zone for a touchback.
I was covering that game for The New York Post. I recall talking to Joe Gordon, the Steelers’ publicist, in the press box, as well as members of the Pittsburgh media. That game was played on October 18, 1971. The Steelers lost to the Chiefs, 38-16.
Monday Night Football was a bigger deal in those days, and the TV ratings were unreal. Anyone who cared about football was watching. Smith’s name would live in infamy in football annals.
Smith may have been thinking about spiking the football, but he never got the chance. His premature celebration caused him to simply lose his grasp on the football. He fumbled the ball into the first paragraph of his obituary some day.
The Steelers should get video of that event and show it on a daily basis to their three young wide receivers – Antonio Brown, Emmanuel Sanders and Mike Wallace – in the hope it might convince them to cut back on their own showboating antics.
It’s unlikely any of these young men know about Dave Smith, or any of the early Steelers, but they should. Smith was good enough to lead the Steelers in receiving in one of his three seasons with the team. He had 47 receptions in 1971, the same season in which he fumbled the ball before going into the end zone in Kansas City. Ironically enough, he later played for the Chiefs, as well as the Houston Oilers in his four NFL seasons. The Steelers traded him to the Oilers midway through the 1972 season.
Smith had played football and basketball at Indiana University of Pennsylvania following a short stay at WaynesburgCollege.
Coach Mike Tomlin has said more than once that he was going to have a talk with his three gifted receivers and get them to stop doing their victory dances and more in the end zone after they score touchdowns, or even elsewhere on the field whenever they make a catch, but I have not been convinced that Tomlin’s message is getting through to them.
I am among the fans who hate to see players strutting about and thumping their chests whenever they do the slightest thing on the football field. It’s become a constant “look at me” exhibition.
Chuck Noll could not coach today because he couldn’t put up with such shenanigans and the attitude of most athletes.
From my blog post in 2013: Former Philadelphia 76er Center Daryl Dawkins: Hoops in Black and White (A Sociological Look at USA’s 2004 Dream Team Failure)
From Fox Sports: Once the black game moved indoors and became more organized, the pressure to establish bona fides increases.
If you’re not scoring beaucoup points, if your picture isn’t in the papers, if you don’t have a trophy (right away) then you ain’t the man, and you ain’t nothing.
Being second best in the black community is just as bad as being last. And if a teammate hits nine shots in a row, the black attitude is…’Screw him, Now it’s my turn to get it on.’
If young black players usually cherish untrammeled creativity, white hooplings mostly value team oriented concepts. ‘White basketball means passing the heck out of the ball,’ says Dawkins.
White guys are willing to do something when someone else has the ball–setting picks, boxing out, cutting in to clear a space for a teammate, making the pass that leads to an assist pass.
In white basketball, there is more a sense of dicipline, of running set plays, and only taking wide open shots. If a guy gets hot, he will get the ball until he cools off.
Why is white basketball so structured and team oriented?
‘Because the white culture places more of a premium on winning,’ Dawkins believes, ‘and less on self-indulgent preening and chest beating.’
STEVE SAILER WRITES IN AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE:
Darryl Dawkins, the former NBA center who called himself “Chocolate Thunder,” has become an insightful minor league coach. “Black basketball is much more individualistic,” he told Charlie Rosen of FoxSports. “With so many other opportunities closed to young black kids, … if somebody makes you look bad with a shake-and-bake move, then you’ve got to come right back at him with something better, something more stylish… It’s all about honor, pride, and establishing yourself as a man.”
Dawkins, whose showboating Philadelphia 76ers lost to Bill Walton’s Portland Trailblazers in an epic 1977 NBA Finals confrontation between the black and white games, now says, “The black game by itself is too chaotic and much too selfish… White culture places more of a premium on winning, and less on self-indulgent preening and chest-beating.”
Arguing that the best teams combine both styles, Dawkins pointed out, “In basketball and in civilian life, freedom without structure winds up being chaotic and destructive.”
In his book, Chocolate Thunder: The Uncensored Life and Time of Darryl Dawkins Dawkins describes the difference between “white basketball” and “black basketball.” According to Dawkins, “white culture places more of a premium on winning” while black culture indulges in too much “self indulgent preening and chest beating.”
“White guys are more willing to do something when somebody else has the ball—setting picks, boxing out, cutting just to clear a space for a teammate, making the pass that leads to an assist. In white basketball, there’s more of a sense of discipline, of running set plays and only taking wide open shots.”
