As bad as our journalism complex has been for the past few years (generations), sports journalism has to be regarded as the minor leagues. While tasked with reporting on results, interpreting statistics, and occasionally delving into issues such as team or league maneuvers, for the most part, this sector is not looked at too seriously. Rich Eisen has recently bucked this trend and managed to do something correctly on the social front.
The noted NFL pundit, who hails from ESPN and The NFL Network, has his own broadcast and, on his eponymous show, took the time to address the disturbing lack of accountability seen from three Ivy League presidents testifying before Congress regarding the antisemitic speeches and activities seen on their campuses. Eisen initially expressed disbelief on his Xitter account, but he then followed with more commentary the next day.
The simple question of whether they consider the phrase or the statement of genocide against all Jews to be a violation of codes of conduct on the campuses or considered a violation of the code of conduct in relation to bullying or harassment and their answers not being unequivocally, 'Yeah, that violates it," and just equivocating with a bunch of word salad and nonsense.
Now, you could sit here and you could say, 'Well, it's legalese because they have to leave themselves some wiggle room' ... that's nonsense.
His was a call for moral clarity on the subject, and he delivered exactly that — he was clear about what is morally and ethically proper.
Today, @richeisen took time out from our usual show fare to respond to the unacceptable responses from @penn @harvard @MIT presidents at a US House hearing about anti-semitism on campus. pic.twitter.com/YUwltJhy9W
— Rich Eisen Show (@RichEisenShow) December 6, 2023
The calling for genocide is unacceptable. There is no equivocation. That we have seen so many journalists and entire news outlets vacillating on the moral grounds of the antisemitism displayed in this country, and even the terrorist acts witnessed in Israel, has become too commonplace and disturbing. It was a rare moment of actual clear-headed thinking and not emotionally fabricated outrage.
Every so often, you see attempts by sports journalists who want to earn notice by shedding the limiting shackles of their realm, but these are, more often than not, empty efforts that fall shy of the hope of earning serious journalistic plaudits. One main reason is that too many sports reporters wear liberalism on their sleeves, like a sponsor’s logo on a uniform. Whenever they do stray from the Xs & Os and strive for social commentary tied into sports, inevitably, we get lectures from the left.
When the Black Lives Matter upheaval spread through the nation, the ensuing sports connections were always covered sympathetically. The lectures were plentiful, while there was scant critical or even objective coverage. The feigned outrage over allegedly racist team mascots is a surefire way to garner some attention in the news cycle.
Then there were the peacocking examples from sports journalists over the past year regarding the Pride Night games in the NHL. First, we had a collection of these understimulated minds getting enraged when a handful of players from across the league opted to sit out the pregame skate during these games. Then, they were outraged anew when the league decided to suspend all commemorations of this nature in order to avoid the controversies these fever-brains cooked up while in their cubicles.
The latest was the recent attempted controversy when a Deadspin writer by the name of Carron Phillips decided to slander the character of a young boy at a Kansas City Chiefs game. Phillips falsely accused the boy of wearing blackface, and he declared the lad hated blacks and Native Americans, while it was learned the boy is himself a Native American. Carron was not addressing a sweeping problem seen infecting this nation; he targeted a boy for doing something that he — Carron — could use to spin up a self-aggrandizing dose of social activist signaling.
The method of Phillips in this attempt is revealing. He used a stillshot from a video to depict the boy, who had a multi-colored display on his face, from only the side, so only the black color was in the shot. It is also notable that this game was played in Las Vegas. The Raiders faithful are known for their garish costuming at games, and numerous fans are seen at games in facepaint in their team’s colors — silver and black. Phillips took the easy route of instead condemning a young boy, a safer target for his feigned outrage.
Other writers attempted to join in, like Kevin Blackistone of ESPN and A.J. Perez from Front Office Sports, who ran to the leaders of the tribe the family hails from to get them on the record as saying the headdress worn by a nine-year-old football fan was not officially sanctioned regalia of the Chumash Indians. This was such pathetically desperate behavior by individuals who felt the requirement to run with emotional fervor on a topic they manufactured.
Contrast these flailing efforts with the commentary from Rich Eisen. He did not have a pre-fab subject to then preen over with displays of contempt, he saw a problem that is mushrooming and evident to most of us. He was addressing intolerance that is real on college campuses; the antisemitism, and the willingness of the leaders of those schools to justify that unacceptable behavior.
Eisen also has a vested concern, being that he is Jewish. I dare hypothesize the writers wailing over a young football fan are not themselves Native American; I say this because had they been of that extraction, it is rather assured they would have announced this at the beginning of their masterpieces. It leads to assumptions, such as declaring a young boy has a hatred for an ethnicity only to have it revealed he derives from the very group for which he allegedly harbors contempt. Eisen is both knowledgeable of this subject and versed in its existence; he is not expressing outrage on behalf of another group and then stepping on rakes in the process.
Lastly, what we saw from Eisen is what he did not do. There were no sweeping assumptions made and grand accusations at a swath of the country as being culpable for this antisemitism. (Phillips, meanwhile — in a deleted defense of his article — called his critics "idiots" and accused them of hating Mexicans...for no discernable reason.) Eisen only addressed two targets: those committing the antisemitism and these three college presidents suggesting there is a level of interpretation towards condemning this kind of hatred on campus. And just note the disparity. A kid wearing feathers at a football game definitively “hates” Native Americans, while those calling out for the genocide of Jews need to be regarded with context.
Rich Eisen managed to show us how a sports reporter can depart the playing field in an adroit and proper fashion. Unfortunately, there are far too many Carron Phillips types in that sector of journalism.
