Racist Bryant Gumbel - new NFL Network announcer

[mraynrand]

Are Gumble's comments racist? That's the question. I think it's been established that the guy is a jerk.

The Gene Upshaw comment is not necessarily racist, but was it ever loaded. Gumble avoided the specific words that would have technically made it racist, that is, he did not refer to Upshaw's race in any way - but he really ripped Upshaw a new one. Still, you have to imagine what would happen to say Rich Eisen or John Madden if they had likened Upshaw to a pet on a Tag's leash. Do you think Jessie Jackson and Al Sharkton would have given them a pass?

Comment #2:

"So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention."

What if Bob Costas had said about pro football: "So try not to laugh when someone says these are USA's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of whites that makes the NFL look like a NAACP convention."

Do you think that would have caused trouble?

Gumble's statement implies that Blacks are the greatest athletes, that is, the Winter games don't have the greatest athletes because Blacks are under-represented. This is clearly racist - it directly suggests that Blacks are superior athletes, based on their race alone. He doesn't mention the lack of Hispanics or Indians (from India), or the under-representation of Chinese, despite their relative overwhelming world population. Again, does he not suggest that Blacks are better althletes, simple based on race? Is that not racist?

If he had made an argument that the collection of Olympic athletes was skewed towards those with the resources (read: wealth and leisure) to pursue such sports, and that very good, perhaps better athletes were excluded because of this, he could have had a pretty solid argument. But he didn't make this argument - he only made a race-based argument that Blacks are the best athletes.


I tried to evaluate only the comments, as those who are (sort of) defending Gumble correctly pointed out that some here were confusing Gumble being a jerk with Gumble being a racist. I think he's both.

[BallHawk]

Thanks Woody.

[Terry]

Are Gumble's comments racist? That's the question. I think it's been established that the guy is a jerk.

The Gene Upshaw comment is not necessarily racist, but was it ever loaded. Gumble avoided the specific words that would have technically made it racist, that is, he did not refer to Upshaw's race in any way - but he really ripped Upshaw a new one. Still, you have to imagine what would happen to say Rich Eisen or John Madden if they had likened Upshaw to a pet on a Tag's leash. Do you think Jessie Jackson and Al Sharkton would have given them a pass?

Comment #2:

"So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention."

What if Bob Costas had said about pro football: "So try not to laugh when someone says these are USA's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of whites that makes the NFL look like a NAACP convention."

Do you think that would have caused trouble?

Gumble's statement implies that Blacks are the greatest athletes, that is, the Winter games don't have the greatest athletes because Blacks are under-represented. This is clearly racist - it directly suggests that Blacks are superior athletes, based on their race alone. He doesn't mention the lack of Hispanics or Indians (from India), or the under-representation of Chinese, despite their relative overwhelming world population. Again, does he not suggest that Blacks are better althletes, simple based on race? Is that not racist?

If he had made an argument that the collection of Olympic athletes was skewed towards those with the resources (read: wealth and leisure) to pursue such sports, and that very good, perhaps better athletes were excluded because of this, he could have had a pretty solid argument. But he didn't make this argument - he only made a race-based argument that Blacks are the best athletes.


I tried to evaluate only the comments, as those who are (sort of) defending Gumble correctly pointed out that some here were confusing Gumble being a jerk with Gumble being a racist. I think he's both.

I don't even know who Gene Upshaw is, but may I conclude from context that he's black? No offfense, but your argument in point 1 are illogical, for any number of reasons.

For instance, IF John Madden likened upshaw to a pet on a leash AND IF Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton had their say about it, what would that prove? Al Sharpton doesn't get to decide what 'racist' means. Calling someone a pet on a leash is degrading and insulting, but that doesn't make it racist because the subjects (owner and pet) are of different races. That's pretty much in the eye of the beholder, unless you already know something about John Madden. In itself, the comment is not racist. The question is - is the person racist? If so, I might be more reasonable to figure that racism motivated the remark rather than other judgements. It's a crappy remark - I think we can all agree on that. Mind you, I've seen some posters refer to McCarthy as Thompson's lapdog - personally, I find that extremely offensive, but it's hardly racist.

Regarding your second point, making the observation that blacks are under represented in the olympic games does NOT imply that blacks are better athletes. It simply implies what it says - that you cannot decide upon the greatest athletes in the world if your sample is not representative of all athletes. NOW, having said that, maybe the winter olympics WAS adequately representative of all people. One cannot conclude the opposite either. But the flaw in your logic about what the statement means can be more easily illustrated by taking a more black and white example (no pun intended). Let's say that a few decades ago the South Africans, under Apartheid, held games to which black people were not invited. And then they claimed the games would determine the best athletes in the country. I think you can see how ridiculous that would be. And if someone came along and said that Blacks were not represented, it would not imply that Blacks were the best athletes, but simply that the determination cannot be effectively made.

So I would contend that he did NOT make a race-based argument that blacks were better athletes. He DID, of course, make a race-based argument.

Race based arguments are not in themselves racist. It really depends on whether the speaker is racist. Furthermore, the same words and phrases can mean very different things in different contexts. But that's politics and diplomacy. A white guy might be more circumspect about a certain term used in the presence of a black guy than another black guy would be, for fear of offending. But taking offense is not any sort of evidence that the source of the offense is racist.

The problem here is that a black guy has made some race-based arguments and many people are taking offense. Frankly, I believe the charges of racism arise more from having been offended than any real analysis of what was said.

Personally, I think the guy (Gumbel) was being pretty simple minded, that's all.

When Stephen Biko was trying to raise black consciousness, he was simply trying to instill a sense of pride and confidence in a particular set of people to offset inferiority feelings. That wasn't necessarily racist. The other set of people were not suffering from feelings of inferiority.

When you comment that you believe that Gumbel is a racist, I can't really comment. I don't know enough about him and I certainly don't know what YOU know about him. All I can say is that it hasn't been established in this thread.

What I DO notice is that people are quite defensive about the subject and quick to anger. That suggests to me that people are not at all truly confident that the winter olympics are NOT racist. As I said before, I suspect they are not, so I'm baffled by the reactions to Gumbel. Makes me wonder what people are so afraid of.

[mission]

i was expecting this thread to be the exact opposite.

i always thought gum-ball hated black people... seems pretty tiger woods-ized to me.

for-shizzle, bryant!

[Tony Oday]

What if Bob Costas had said about pro football: "So try not to laugh when someone says these are USA's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of whites that makes the NFL look like a NAACP convention."

Do you think that would have caused trouble?

It did remember Rush's comment on McNabb? But get used to it there are people that will always think they are victims.

[Cheesehead Craig]

Gumble should remember who he is talking about. Gene Upshaw is an old-school Raider. He played when the winner was determined by who caused the most opposing players to leave on a stretcher. Upshaw can bitch-slap Gumble into next week. I'd get the NFL Network to watch that.

[pbmax]

Gumble's statement implies that Blacks are the greatest athletes, that is, the Winter games don't have the greatest athletes because Blacks are under-represented. This is clearly racist - it directly suggests that Blacks are superior athletes, based on their race alone.

I think, by the letter of his logic, you are wrong in this instance.

He is saying that these athletes cannot be representative of the best athletes on the planet because so many, including people of African descent, are under-represented.

You do not have to regard athletes of color as better than their white counterparts to make this statement true. If I do not comb the entire planet, I cannot claim to have the "best" athletes.

In baseball in the first half of the century, the reason sport didn't comb the entire country because people were banned by virtue of their race.

In the Winter Olympics, certain grous may be underrepresented because such a small number of countries, in certain latitudes, play these sports.

We may have the greatest hockey players in the world here, but are they the greastest athletes? Hard to say because one group is so much larger than the other.

Gumble is simply trying to throw a firecracker into the soup. He is throwing an accusation around that sounds harsher than it is.

I think Gumble is a schmuck and an opportunist, using this kind of language to make a really small point that few argue with (sorry Woodbuck).

[the_idle_threat]

That may be so, but Kiwon is also hitting this nail square on the head.

No, he's not. He's hitting some other nails entirely. It's like he's pointed out a shelf being built and then started hitting nails on another wall entirely.

Back in the first post, Gumbel made some comments in reference to the absence of black athletes at the Winter Olympics.

Kiwon's response was to point to point to Gumbel's private education and professional successes in some sarcastic comment about deprived opportunities which was entirely a non-sequitor. Then he started talking affirmative-action programs and racial quotas for the winter olympics, which he pulled out of some imagined universe all of his own and which were also non-sequitors. And then he went onto a personal attack on Gumbel, who he probably doesn't even know.

But the last thing it would all make me think of is hitting any nails on the head. He never once addressed what Gumbel said. No one did for a while. The first subsequent poster talked about what he would do as a taxi driver. The next one talked about the ruination of his day. The next one talked about what a jerk Gumbel is - but at least, at last, we had a little first hand experience. And we all know how reliable gossip is.

And so on. It wasn't until Harlan Huckleby piped in that anything Gumbel said was addressed in the slightest. (And it was a good point, Harlan.)

I haven't seen anything that suggests Gumbel is a racist. I don't know if he is, but it's been an entirely unsupportable proposition so far in this thread. In fact, going by the complete absence of a decent supporting argument, I'm practically convinced the guy is NOT a racist, whereas I hadn't really ever thought about it before. Just so you all know the net effect of your arguments. The only half sensible comment on that particular subject came from Joemailman. Going by the definition posted by TravisWilliams23 on racism, I still don't see any evidence of racism in Gumbel, never mind the farce contained in the notion that a sociological phenomenon can be researched in some abridged dictionary.

Really, I get only two things from this thread. The first is that if Gumbel can generate such a frenzy among the Lilliputians so easily by just muttering a few words as observation, he must be doing something right (though not necessarily good for his career, as has also been accurately pointed out). The second is that the hysterical reaction by so many to a suggestion that there is racism in our world only reminds me how racist people really are.

Having said that, I seriously doubt if the Winter Olympics is essentially racist. I could have really enjoyed a humourous discussion around that and some person's penchant for seeing racism under every bed (Gumbel in this case). I'm sure you guys could provide such a discussion if you'd settle down and stop freaking out from your own insecurities. As it is, though, I'm hardly going to grab the popcorn for this scintillating discussion.

Let me break it down for you, Terry.

1) Gumbel played the race card where it was completely unneccessary. You seem to agree on that point with your comment: "I could have really enjoyed a humourous discussion around that and some person's penchant for seeing racism under every bed (Gumbel in this case)." It's my belief that such "cry wolf" conduct betrays underlying racism by the speaker ... a hatred of the so-called "white establishment" that is no less racist than some klansman's disdain for black culture. It's a value judgement based upon race rather than character ... it's racism.

Joemailman's ridiculous idea that people can't be considered racist unless they go all the way to the point of supporting enslavement and denying civil rights implies that only white people can be racists, so forgive me if I fail to give that comment any weight. I thought I was reading a Tank post for a second.

2) Those of us who have either pointed out Gumbel's racism or (in my case) agreed with his outing in comments have been quite calm about it. On the other hand, you seem to be getting quite worked up ... and I don't have any idea why.

[Tony Oday]

Greatest winter athletes in the world are in the winter olympics. Refute that statement. Think about it. We arent talking basketball, baseball or track and field here.

We are talking cold weather luge, bobsled and hockey type sports. Its not racist to say that there arent a lot of middle estern or african people that even play these sports.

[the_idle_threat]

Greatest winter athletes in the world are in the winter olympics. Refute that statement. Think about it. We arent talking basketball, baseball or track and field here.

We are talking cold weather luge, bobsled and hockey type sports. Its not racist to say that there arent a lot of middle estern or african people that even play these sports.

This is what makes the whole situation so ridiculous, and makes Gumbel look so bad.

When the Olympics say "greatest athletes in the world." it's pretty much a given they mean "greatest athletes in the world ... in these sports."

Gumbel's alternative take on it is simply a strawman argument which he knocks down with an unfounded race-baiting criticism. The fact that he's looking so hard for an opportunity to play the race card is what betrays his underlying nature.

[Kiwon]

The discussion thus far is illustrative of the broader point - the selection of Gumbel as the lead announcer for NFL Network games was a poor one because he is such a polarizing figure, in other words, a distraction.

Play-by-play announcers should be part of the landscape. They should enhance the viewer's enjoyment by concisely describing the action on the field. The game itself is the main event. As a premium channel if the NFL Network wants to expand its subscription base they should replace Bryant Gumbel with a less controversial announcer.

The fact that he has already shown such open disdain for "those billionaires" (the owners of the clubs) and portrayed them as greed-driven oppressors ("already making obscene amounts of money") testifies to something else mentioned here - Bryant Gumbel is a jerk.

"Those billionaires" are also his employers and they should demonstrate for Bryant how successful businessmen deal with newly hired insubordinate employees by firing him pronto.

And yes, I find his imagery of the NFL owners as filthy rich, greedy white men treating the NFL Commissioner as a lackey and directing him to control or "leash" the head of the players union (a black man), offensive and racist. It is naive to believe that Gumbel is only describing an isolated circumstance. What he is articulating is his worldview (Blacks are held down by Whites). This guy does have a track record and it's time for people to stop giving him a pass on his bigoted statements. Believe it or not, Black elites can be racists.

(I'm done talking about this. I'm back to Packers football now)

[pbmax]

Kiwon, I remember Gumble when he did the wraparound show for NBC when it carried the AFC long ago.

He wasn't too political then.

I don't think its a given he will be as provocative on play by play as he is on Real Sports.

I think Cosell struck people in one of two ways. Maybe other talk radio hosts or shock jocks today are the same way.

Their success depends on either ALL of the people that agree with them listening to them, or even people who dislike them (esp.Cosell) listening anyway.

Cosell was more entertaining than Gumble, but it might be a nice change of pace from Summerall and Joe Buck.

[woodbuck27]

As Gumbel Speaks Freely, N.F.L. Watches His Words

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

Published: August 22, 2006

Paul Tagliabue is in his final days as commissioner of the N.F.L. He looks relaxed and ready to fade from public view.

It is unlikely, then, that one of his final acts will be to force the NFL Network to get rid of Bryant Gumbel, its play-by-play announcer, for remarks he made last week on HBO’s “Real Sports” about Gene Upshaw, the head of the N.F.L. players union.

Maybe Tagliabue will fine him as if Gumbel’s socks violated league rules.

Tagliabue rebuked Gumbel yesterday at a press gathering at the N.F.L. boardroom for comments that he called

“quite inexcusable” and

“about as uninformed as anything I’ve read or heard in a long, long time.”

Beyond that, the best Tagliabue can probably do is summon Gumbel for a private N.F.L. pep rally before he hands his office keys and building ID card to his successor, Roger Goodell, next week.

Tagliabue understands free speech, even if in his view it is misinformed and ticks him off.

Gumbel is hyper-opinionated, rarely more so than in his commentary that closes each edition of “Real Sports.” He framed his essay last Tuesday as an open letter to Goodell, and he opened it with his take on what he believes is the one-sided world of Tagliabue-dominated labor relations.

“First of all,” Gumbel advised Goodell,

“before he cleans out his office, have Paul Tagliabue show you where he keeps Gene Upshaw’s leash.” He said that by making Upshaw his “personal pet,” Tagliabue kept labor peace

“without giving players the kind of guarantees other pros take for granted.”

“Try to make sure no one competent ever replaces Upshaw on your watch,” Gumbel said.

Gumbel is right that the N.F.L. union, since before Upshaw took office, has failed to achieve guaranteed player contracts.

But by calling Upshaw a lackey...

Gumbel ignores economic gains made by players under Upshaw, who, in the view of some owners, got too much in the new labor agreement.

Tagliabue said that the positions taken by Gumbel, a former co-host of NBC’s “Today” and CBS’s “Early Show,” suggested that he had acquired “buyer’s remorse” about working for the NFL Network. He said that Gumbel’s “Real Sports” commentary last week

“calls into question his desire to do the job and do it in a way that we in the N.F.L. would expect it to be done.”

(It may also signal Gumbel’s desire to say things play-by-play announcers never say, which may be refreshing for fans but would be anathema to the league.)

Tagliabue said he would discuss the Gumbel matter sometime during his final days with Goodell and Steve Bornstein, the NFL Network’s president.

Bornstein proudly hired Gumbel and Cris Collinsworth, another person of infinite opinions, but he declined a request yesterday to comment on Gumbel’s statements.

Seth Palansky, his spokesman, dismissed the thought that Gumbel had imperiled his status by expressing his Upshaw-as-canine view.

“We still expect him to call our games,” Palansky said. “There’s no issue there. We want to let the commissioner’s words speak for themselves.”

Then came the true bottom line: marketing the NFL Network as the home of eight Thursday and Saturday games.

“This is why people should call their cable operator to demand the NFL Network,” Palansky said.

Through HBO Sports, Gumbel said he had “no reaction” to Tagliabue’s ire. Upshaw also declined an interview request.

A flap similar to this was bound to occur sometime in Gumbel’s tenure. His mouth roars, and he was told upon being hired that no restrictions would be placed on him. Certainly, HBO does not tell him what to say.

In 1989, when he was at “Today,” he wrote an internal memo that flayed Willard Scott, the weatherman and celebrator of centenarians, for holding the show “hostage to his assortment of whims, wishes, birthdays and bad taste.”

The memo, still relevant today, was leaked to the news media. Tagliabue’s anti-Gumbel dudgeon is in character with a league that is astonishingly adept at controlling its image. Tagliabue apologized for the appearance of Janet Jackson’s right breast at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, and he flagellated himself for not doing more to control such behavior, reacting as if he had given her a bra without adequate underwire support.

Tagliabue told ESPN that he didn’t like the negative portrayal of professional football players on the dramatic series “Playmakers,” and ESPN eventually canceled it.

His reaction to Gumbel’s remarks typified the potential sensitivity that is created when a league owns a network that carries games. No league wants to be savaged by announcers employed by outside networks. But being ripped by your own network’s voices is touchier; Tagliabue’s reaction presages future irritations once the network’s games start Nov. 23.

To Tagliabue’s credit, he approved the hiring of Gumbel and Collinsworth, and he could not have expected a pair of leashed beagles. “Real Sports” has given Gumbel a designated vehicle for commentary, and he may rile Goodell a couple of times before his Thanksgiving game debut. Last February, he wrote off the coming Winter Games in Turin, snarling about the lack of black athletes, the news media who pretend to care about luge and biathlon, and the “pseudo-athlete” who awaits scores in kiss-and-cry areas.

E-mail: sportsbiz@nytimes.com

[woodbuck27]

Recent comments by Bryant Gumbel on HBO have rankled his bosses at the NFL Network.

[Scott Campbell]

I like him better than Katie Couric. She's a saucy little vixen.