During Monday Night Football last week, commentators Ron Jaworski and Jon Gruden nearly exploded with glee. What prompted such happiness from this pair of seasoned football analysts? Well, I'll give you the play-by-play from the Patriots' second drive of the third quarter.
Tom Brady pass to Wes Welker, 5 yards; Danny Woodhead run for 6 yards; Woodhead run for 6 yards; Brady incomplete pass to Welker; Brady pass to Welker, 17 yards; Woodhead run for 6 yards; Woodhead run for 6 yards; Woodhead run for 4 yards; Brady pass to Welker, 15 yards; BenJarvus Green-Ellis run for 4 yards; Brady run for 1 yard; Brady pass to Woodhead for 11 yards and a touchdown.
In case you were wondering, Brady, Welker and Woodhead are all white. Even better, both Welker and Woodhead are 5 feet 9. They're just like you and me! And rest assured, Jaworski and Gruden alluded to this fact over and over and over again. They repeatedly mentioned that kids all across the country were at this moment inspired by the prime-time success of, in particular, Woodhead.
And surely some of Woodhead's "inspirational" mystique comes from factors other than his race, Gruden enthused in detail. The running back was born and raised in North Platte, Neb., and attended college at Div. II Chadron State in Nebraska, where he became college football's then all-time leading rusher. (The mark was broken one year later.) He then went undrafted and was signed by the Jets, but he saw scant playing time in the one season he was healthy. The Patriots picked him up to be a third-down, change-of-pace back after Kevin Faulk was lost for the season with an injury.
Obviously, all of these details contribute to his relatability to the average fan. As does his short stature. Both of these important details were mentioned by Gruden and Jaworski.
His race, however, was not. And that certainly was no accident. In fact, if Gruden and Jaws had mentioned Woodhead's whiteness, they would have been quickly excoriated in the media and perhaps by fans as well.
This attitude is pretty consistent with our national mindset towards race in general. But is it a problem? Is it healthier for the commentators of the world to ignore the elephantine issue of race when talking about a guy like Woodhead (or Welker for that matter, who has many details of his career similar to those of Woodhead's, from his whiteness and undersized stature to his undrafted-ness)? Should the question of race be ignored because, well, it's just sports we're talking about here?
I'm not looking to inject sports commentary into any debate over racial political correctness — the last thing we need in our lives is another one of those. On the other hand, by not acknowledging that a huge part of why kids all across the country are looking up to Woodhead is the fact that he's a short, WHITE guy, Gruden and Jaws are tacitly lying to us.
They're helping us deny that, for better or for worse, race is a powerful factor when it comes to identifying with other people, in our country and in others around the world. The cultural norm in the United States, however, has become to deny that race has any impact on our thinking.
Pretending that what is there isn't there, doesn't make it disappear. We have to be honest with ourselves. That's true of Gruden and Jaws and you and me.
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Ethan Frigon is a senior majoring in economics. He can be reached at Ethan.Frigon@tufts.edu.
