Writer and ESPN commentator Mike Wilbon has been a source of guidance and solace for many of us over the past few weeks. For those who love sports and mourn the state of our country, Mr. Wilbon is helping us make sense of this time.
Concerning the NFL and the complete silence from its owners after the death of George Floyd and the protests that have roiled the nation, Mr. Wilbon was correct as usual: “We’ve heard from commissioners and players and executives,” he said. “We’ve heard from people retired for 100 years, we’ve heard from hall-of-famers in every sport, we’ve heard from soccer teams in Germany and all over the world.” Who have we not heard from? An NFL owner.
“Roger Goodell has at least identified himself,” Mr. Wilbon said on a recent episode of “Pardon The Interruption” with his co-host, Tony Kornheiser. NFL Commissioner Goodell “has come out from underneath the desk, saying, ‘Here is what I believe.’”
Admitting that “we were wrong” not to listen to player protests, Mr. Goodell failed to mention the name of Colin Kaepernick, the player who started the protests in 2016.
But Mr. Goodell not mentioning Mr. Kaepernick is beside the point. The point, Mr. Kornheiser argued correctly, is that if Mr. Goodell means what he says, then “he has to go out and he has to find a team and he has to twist an arm and he has to get Colin Kapernick on a team in the NFL this season, because Colin Kaepernick is an extraordinarily powerful symbol on your team.” Indeed he is. And let that team be the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The Rooney name is unassailable in Pittsburgh. For generations, the family has been a bedrock of our community, improving the city in their quiet, dignified way. They are a people whose triumvirate of beliefs — in faith, family and football — put them in good stead with the American people.
In this year of perverse tragedy, our nation will turn its eyes to the NFL very soon, and this is an opportunity for the majority owners of the Steelers, the Rooney family, to lead the league and show the country that they are a family of great integrity.
If anyone thinks how Mr. Kaepernick was treated by the NFL has been forgotten, just Google “Drew Brees” and see the response his recent comments elicited from the American sports community. The Kaepernick wound has never healed because the NFL owners would not allow it to heal. This could have been dealt with years ago to the relative satisfaction of all sides. A team would have signed him, a group of aggrieved fans would have protested, there would have been more kneeling, and then we could have played football. Instead, 32 owners colluded against a black athlete who had the temerity to dissent — the most American of instincts.
Mr. Kaepernick’s actions were driven by his integrity. His kneeling to protest police brutality against black people should be taken at face value, without his patriotism being questioned and without his dissent being confused with disloyalty. It took Mr. Brees four years — all spent in locker rooms with black teammates — to finally “get where we are coming from on this issue,” Mr. Wilbon said. “This is my estimation,” he went on, “80% to 90% of white Americans feel that taking a knee is disrespectful of the flag and somehow is at odds with what their forefathers did, as if our forefathers weren’t there dying on the same battlefields, which angers black folks.”
White Americans, Mr. Wilbon argues, “don’t connect with what we are talking about. Ten people can look at the American flag, all can be patriotic and all feel differently about the specifics of what that flag represents.” Historically, white veterans have returned from war in this country to a parade and local veneration, whereas “my uncles and dad,” he reminds us, “came back home and were told to get on the back of the bus. No, you can’t live in this neighborhood; no, you can’t try on the clothes in this department store. They all sacrificed and served this nation.”
This includes Isaac Woodard Jr., a newly discharged and decorated black World War II veteran, who was thrown off a bus and beaten blind by South Carolina police in 1946 for saying “yes” instead of “yes, sir.”
The Rooney rule — named after the late Steelers chairman Dan Rooney — was designed to make the ranks of NFL coaches more inclusive. There are problems with the efficacy of the rule, as evidenced by the quick hirings of four white coaches out of five vacancies this past offseason. Seventy percent of NFL players are black, yet there are only three black head coaches and two black offensive coordinators. There is work to do in making sure the letter of the law matches its spirit, but the intention of the rule is as honorable as the Rooneys’ six championship rings.
There can be no better resolution to the Kaepernick story than this: a man who was discriminated against by the NFL is signed by the team that pioneered anti-discrimination legislation at the league-wide level. It will prove that the Rooneys are morally committed to the inclusion they aimed to create.
Irish immigrants, like the Rooney family, and like my late grandfather, who was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, were seen as second-class citizens when they arrived in this country. Though not to the same degree or intensity as black Americans, Irish American blood knows the indignity of discrimination.
That’s why I’d like to think my grandfather would take a knee today, not out of disrespect for the flag he fought for, but in solidarity with those who are discriminated against. And that’s why the Rooneys can take a stand now, showing the country that they are a family and an organization that can help society cure itself of discrimination. “It might be late,” Mr. Wilbon said, “but it ain’t too late.”
Timothy Lydon is a writer and bookseller at Classic Lines Books in Squirrel Hill.
First Published: June 17, 2020, 9:00 a.m.
