Having quarterbacked the Baltimore Ravens to 13 wins in 16
games and homefield advantage throughout the NFL playoffs, Lamar Jackson rested
his case, sitting out Sunday’s season finale against Pittsburgh.
Baltimore had nothing to gain as the AFC’s top seed and
Jackson had nothing to lose as the league’s presumptive Most Valuable Player. If
voters were uncertain before his last game, against Miami, he nailed the closing argument, throwing for 321 yards and five
touchdowns with a perfect passer rating.
Jackson turned 27 on Sunday, but validation never gets old.
Entering
Saturday’s doubleheader at Lee E. Williams Athletics and Assembly Center, the Jackson
State men’s and women’s basketball teams hadn’t experienced home games on the same
day since Feb. 27, when each squad knocked off Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
Finally
playing back-to-back games on campus after that long hiatus, the Tigers registered
another pair of victories, this time against Alcorn State’s men’s and women’s
teams.
JSU’s women’s team was coming off eight consecutive road games – the last five defeats against No. 11 Kansas State, Oregon State, Mississippi State, Miami and No. 10 Texas. But the Tigers had no problem in opening Southwestern Athletic Conference play, beginning pursuit of a fifth straight league title by routing the Braves, 74-46, on HBCU GO
Drill sergeants and football coaches have enjoyed license to
address their charges in a manner that’s unprofessional and unacceptable outside
the military and sports.
Soldiers might risk an insubordination charge if they respond
with the same tone and tenor, and perhaps follow with lefts and rights. But NFL
quarterbacks with multiple Super Bowls and Pro Bowls to their credit have no
excuse for holding fire if a coach berates them during games while the camera
rolls. Heat-of-the-moment arguments in competitive sports don’t have to be
one-sided shouting matches, and respect should run in both directions between
labor and management.
That wasn’t the case three weeks ago when Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton got in the face of quarterback Russell Wilson during a blowout loss against Detroit. The 13-second video of Payton yelling and gesticulating – while Wilson stands passively with hands on hips – told us everything we need to know about their shotgun relationship.
A young, gifted and talented Black professional has left one
of our own institutions to work at a predominantly white one. The big story
last year was Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders relocating from Jackson State to
Colorado. Florida A&M experienced a similar loss on Monday when head
football coach Willie Simmons resigned to join the staff at Duke.
Simmons enjoyed tremendous success in his six years at FAMU, where he posted a 45-13 record that was capped this season with the Southwestern Athletic Conference championship and the HBCU national title via a Celebration Bowl victory. He proved himself previously by going 21-11 during three years at Prairie View A&M. Clearly among the nation’s best young coaches, he could’ve run FAMU program for decades and seen his statue erected, becoming a legendary lifer like Grambling State’s Eddie Robinson (56 years) and FAMU’s Jake Gaither (25 years).
Did you hear about the Tesla robot that allegedly attacked an engineer, using its sharp metal claws to stab him in the back, leaving a trail of blood? Those cyborgs are gonna be our doom.
Unless automatons on social media kill us first.
Not every idiotic and incendiary comment comes from an insidious bot programmed to stir the slow and simple-minded. We know some of the blather comes from flesh-and-blood humans who operate with machine-like precision. They crank out voluminous takes that lack depth, understanding and intelligence, with speed and efficiency that puts engineering to shame.
As
an NCAA champion at Oklahoma State and a three-time Olympian who won gold and silver
medals, Kenny Monday didn’t experience much losing on the wrestling mat. Tastes
of defeat still don’t agree with him.
But
the Hall of Famer has to swallow some – for now – as head coach
at Morgan State, the nation’s only HBCU with a Division I wrestling program. The
Bears dropped home matches against Hofstra and Bloomsburg last week,
falling to 1-9 in their first season after a 25-year hiatus. Monday prepared
himself for such results upon accepting the job last year, aware that rebuilding
programs from scratch is a heavy lift.
“Yeah, it’s a difficult, difficult thing,” Monday told theGrio via phone. “It’s hard but it’s getting better every day. It’s just getting the administration and the university up to speed on what wrestling looks like and what it feels like, the requirements and the recruiting process. That’s probably the biggest hurdle other than just building the team.”
“And I’ve been tired so long, now I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and we want a change.” – Fannie Lou Hamer, 1919
If visitors from outer space used an NFL fan base to gauge America’s togetherness, they’d consider us one nation under the groove.
They’d look at the supporters and see unity among wildly diverse groups: Blacks and whites, rich and poor, college grads and dropouts, believers and atheists, city slickers and country bumpkins. The left-right divide that carves the country like a scalpel doesn’t leave a mark as our offense marches downfield and our defense stuffs the opposition.
Based on three hours of an NFL Sunday, intergalactic observers would believe that all Americans belong to one clan.
As Florida A&M’s football team endured arduous training in
hot and humid conditions before the season began, head coach Willie Simmons
told his squad that they could be exceptional.
He said they could be remembered as one of the greatest teams
in FAMU history. The gold standard was minted in 1978, when the Rattlers became
the first and only HBCU team to win the national championship in Division I-AA
(now the Football Championship Subdivision).
On Saturday, exactly 45 years to the day of that historic victory, the Rattlers made more history by beating Howard in the Celebration Bowl to win the Black national championship.
Jay Walker said leading Howard University to the I-AA playoffs
(now the Football Championship Subdivision) in 1993 is among his most treasured
memories.
The Bison were undefeated (11-0) and ranked eighth in the
nation when they traveled to Marshall University for a first-round matchup. “The
experience we had up there is something I’ve carried my whole life,” Walker
said via phone. The Howard quarterback spent four seasons in the NFL and
currently calls games for ESPN. “I’ve also covered the FCS playoffs,” he said.
“I was definitely a playoff guy.
“But now, it’s not even close. It’s all about the Celebration Bowl. This thing is phenomenal in terms of what it brings together.”
Tiffany Greene was
5 years old when she set her mind on becoming a sportscaster. She didn’t
predetermine her academic path but kinfolk might’ve bet on an HBCU, particularly
Florida A&M. Her parents met there and her grandparents met there, and a great-grandmother
graduated from there in 1908.
“Pretty much all
of my aunts and uncles and cousins went to an HBCU,” Greene said via phone. “I
saw HBCUs all around me and Florida A&M was the dominant one. FAMU is
really like FAMULY.”
An ESPN employee since 2012, she’s the first Black woman to call college football on a national level. But the pride within her orange-and-green clan has swelled as she prepares for the Celebration Bowl, Saturday afternoon in Atlanta, when the Rattlers face Howard for the Black national title.
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