Sapp might be right

Prancing through the opponents’ warm-ups. Kicking a pylon. Bumping a referee. Calling Paul… Prancing through the opponents’ warm-ups. Kicking a pylon. Bumping a referee. Calling Paul Tagliabue and the rest of the National Football League officers “slave masters.”

That’s what Tampa Bay defensive end Warren Sapp has done in the past few weeks, all but the last resulting in fines from the league. On Sunday, Sapp sat down with ESPN’s Michael Irvin, a former pro, to talk about his comments. In the interview, he said that the league was against any form of self-promotion by players and interested only in what it could market as being “for the shield.” He pointed out that players can no longer take their helmets off, and most people don’t recognize the faces of major football players, as opposed to basketball players, many more of whom are identifiable.

In other words, the league hates Sapp, not because he breaks its rules, but because he’s more interested in himself than making money for the league, and that, even if it’s not about race, it is about the people on top versus the people working for them.

And he’s absolutely right.

I don’t like Sapp and I don’t support his actions, which I think are the opposite of what sports are about. His defense of those actions – that football should be entertainment, so who cares, as long as it’s fun – is ridiculous and shows a lack of understanding about professionalism.

But he stumbled onto something true, and it’s something that is true beyond the NFL. Whether or not Sapp meant his comments to be about race, the people on top are all white, and the people below are, largely, not. And the way the people on top get richer is when they tell the people below exactly what to do.

People don’t like to talk about the fact that the vast majority of professional athletes are not white, and that the vast majority of the owners, commissioners, general managers and executives are. And it’s hard to see how paying someone millions of dollars to tackle someone else getting paid millions of dollars could ever be construed as keeping that person down.

Except that the guy paying those checks is getting many, many more millions. And it’s in his interest that the people he’s paying do as little to draw attention to themselves as possible. After all, don’t he treat his people good?

Or look at college athletics. Can you name a black athletics director? And there, none of the athletes are getting paid anything. They’re not even allowed to talk to an agent. But they’re allowed to make millions of dollars for the men in that big, clean, white office at the top.

How about the hip-hop industry? “But,” one might say, “rap stars get paid millions to talk dirty to a backbeat.” And it is all so the record executive, who is white, gets his tens of millions.

Wait, I’ve got one more: the next time you get pissed off at a Pitt food service worker for making your sandwich a little too slowly, think about all of the people making money off of that worker. Think of how little of that money the worker will ever see. And why not say it: that worker is probably black, and the person making that money is definitely white.

The NFL has very clear punishments for offenses. Bumping a ref is $15,000. The second time, $25,000. So why did Tagliabue tell Sapp he was lucky to not be suspended? Sapp’s a great player on a great team. He’s also someone people love to watch. Love enough to pay Tagliabue for it. Who, again, is lucky Sapp’s playing?

One might argue that any player would be punished the same way, regardless of race, as long as he had Sapp’s history. All Bill Romanowski did was break his teammate’s eye socket this year, after a 15-year career of temper problems and continued unprofessionalism.

The NFL didn’t fine Romo for that little scuffle, which put Marcus Williams out for six to eight weeks. They did fine him in 1997 for spitting in the face of opposing receiver J.J. Stokes – $7,500, half of Sapp’s latest fine. But if you want history, Romo has been fined by the league for punching Tony Gonzalez, kicking Larry Centers in the head, ripping Eddie George’s helmet off and three separate illegal hits.

The only fine of Romo greater than Sapp’s? Breaking Kerry Collins’ jaw in 1997, which cost him $20,000. Collins, for the record, is also white.

But, really, can you expect the league to care about white men ending black men’s seasons when there are black men out there kicking pylons and bumping into referees?

Again, the NFL’s hardly the founder of the ideology – they just perfected it. That’s why there’s no response to Sapp’s statements. Who cares what he says, as long as he shows up to play and people tune in to watch? And all Tagliabue needs to do is sit back in his chair, light another cigar, and, as Ralph Ellison said, keep that black boy running.

Greg Heller-LaBelle is the editor in chief of The Pitt News.