like sherman through frisco

maybe you've heard about richard sherman's post game rant?

maybe not.

richard sherman plays american football for the seattle seahawks. he's a cornerback, which is a deep defender roughly comparable to marking back in FIFA. the job of the cornerback -- in a nutshell -- is to prevent his opponent from scoring.

mr sherman's team has done exceptionally well this year and, after last weekend's win over the 49ers, will be going to the super bowl. this accomplishment is in no small part due to a split-second of mr sherman's life -- a split-second in which he jumped high, reached out, and touched the ball before his opponent, knocked the ball out of reach, and thuslywise prevented a touchdown that would have closed a 7-point gap by six and put the win within reach of the 49ers. the very next play, the seahawks intercepted a pass, and within moments, the game was over.

mr sherman's preventing this touchdown was a highlight-reel quality play. he did everything right, and it paid off big, just at the end of the game when the stakes are highest. the stakes are highest, and the players are tiredest.

mr sherman's specific opponent in this play was a certain mr crabtree... a 49er who'd been trash talking mr sherman all season. not all day. not all week. ALL. SEASON. it's not an overstatement to say that mr crabtree is mr sherman's nemesis.

in summary: mr sherman overcame his end-of-game fatigue to make a spectacular play that foiled his nemesis in a very high-stakes contest.

i'm sure he was pretty happy about this... don't you think?

so.

someone in the hidden room of the television producer dispatched the on-field correspondent, erin andrews, to ask mr sherman about The Play, to ask this young man how it feels to be on the tippy-tippy-top of his world. so she asked, and he responded with resounding enthusiasm, energy, excitement, and grammatical correctness. i saw it live, and it was thrilling. i played back the DVR and watched it three times, trying to absorb some of his authenticity, through the ether.

the backlash to his sheer emotion has been as disappointing as it has been predictable. dumasses immediately took to twitter to call him a monkey and a thug, and worse i'm sure. every sports talk show host at every tired little AM station across the heartland of america is shaking his (they're all men) head and bemoaning the demise of the gentleman athlete. NPR is shaking their collective head and bemoaning the misunderstoodness of the young african-american male.

c'mon, people.

any young man (and many a young lady, too) -- whether they be black, white, green, or purple -- would crow and strut in the very same way as mr sherman were they in his place. we aren't misunderstanding blackness. we're in part misunderstanding youth, but moreso, we're misunderstanding winning.

there's a contingent who are comparing him to peyton manning, an automaton if ever there were one. peyton's post-game interviews are straight as a popsicle stick and just as bland. the anomaly here is mr manning, not mr sherman. it is unusual for humans to react calmly in the face of overcoming their opponent.

let me say that again.

it is UNUSUAL
for HUMANS
to react CALMLY
in the face of OVERCOMING
their OPPONENT.

so.

given:
1. mr sherman's team won.
2. he was tired.
3. his adrenalin was turnt up.
4. he'd foiled his nemesis.

you can't write the proof of these givens with anything less than pure elation.

when asked how he felt about all this, on live television, immediately after the game, before he'd removed his uniform or replenished his electrolytes, mr sherman spoke with authentic passion. and, he didn't even curse.

that's not a reaction specific to african-american young men.

that's a reaction specific to winners.


the consternation of american sports society over mr sherman's so-called "rant" is just another in a long line of disappointing, yet predictable, consequences of this same society's inscrutable desire to denigrate winners by flattening the landscape of outcomes.

put away the name-calling, the psychoanalysis, the attempts to shoe-horn all our authenticity into a false ideal of controlled emotion.

mr sherman is a winner.

rejoice with him.