#458. Losing to Boise State

This week has been devoted to the great sport of college football and the beginning of the 2009 season. On September 3, #14 Boise State played host to #16 Oregon in a highly-touted contest that ESPN featured for the entire nation to see.

The theme of this SBPDL will be sportsmanship (an upcoming entry), but will deal primarily with what transpired after the football game that Boise State won 19-8. The University of Oregon, a school that has 17,619 students (76 percent white and less than two percent Black) is known throughout the land because Nike founder Phil Knight is an alumni and he donated $100 million to the school.

Remember, where it not for college football, Black people would not be attending historically white colleges, and were it not for Nike and Phil Knight, the world would not bow down to Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and the assorted crew of ebony athletes that Nike parades.

Prior to the game, Oregon and Boise State met to engage in a display of sportsmanship at midfield:

“No, it's an idea floated by the American Football Coaches Association to encourage sportsmanship in college football, Boise State assistant athletic director Max Corbet confirmed this week that it will happen. The Ducks and Broncos will meet, en masse, on the blue turf and shake hands before the game.”

Boise State has long been a university that plays a majority white team, and Oregon – like most FBS teams – plays a majority Black team (even though they represent an aberration in the student body population).

The display of sportsmanship before the game was juxtaposed with the tremendous display of a topic we have discussed here at SBPDL – being out-rioted – as Oregon’s running back LaGarrette Blount (Black person) assaulted Boise State’s Byron Hout (white player) after the game:

“Blount has returned from one suspension already this year, an academic issue that kept him out of spring practice. But cold-cocking an opposing player, taking a swipe at a teammate and attempting to head into the stands after opposing fans is another animal entirely: Blount will certainly be suspended for the foreseeable future, if not the rest of his senior season, and could plausibly be hit with assault charges if Boise State or local authorities were feeling especially vindictive about it.”

Blount had been suspended before the 2009 season, but was reinstated so that he could sucker-punch a celebrating opponent after a hard-fought victory:

“On February 10, 2009, Blount was suspended indefinitely by Ducks' head coach Mike Bellotti for "failure to fulfill team obligations" in an attempt to put the integrity of the Oregeon program ahead of the wins and loss column. He was ultimately reinstated by new coach Chip Kelly and participated in spring football drills and in the first game against Boise State.”

The truculent nature of Mr. Blount will only be amplified when we consider the overall theme of sportsmanship and SPBDL in a later post.

For now, Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes losing to Boise State, as Black people find traveling to Boise horrifying enough for the dulling whiteness of the city, but to lose to a bunch of white boys is too much take and requires vicious right hands from a Black player to remind whitey that this is “A Black world”.

SBPDL note: similar post (riot-less basketball games...)