Richard Lapchick, Black Failure in the Classroom and Sports: Are Black people better athletes?

We love the work of Richard Laphick, an individual who has spent the bulk of his professional career highlighting the glories of integration through sports, but inadvertently showing the continued failures and plight of Black athletes – by extension perpetuating stereotypes of Black people in the process.

Owen Marecic studies Biology at Stanford

His obsession with highlighting Black athletes and their academic records (both male and female at the NCAA level) and Racial and Gender report cards for all professional sports, provides a wealth of information all accessible on one Web site.

We know that Black people don’t save money for the future, which means Black athletes won’t have the opportunity to purchase into the ludicrously profitable sports franchises and become owners upon retiring. The vast majority will be bankrupt.

Because of the abysmal graduation rates of Black athletes, front office jobs and management positions are out of the question due to a lack of qualifications.

Not all athlete-students are named Myron Rolle, which means that countless hours will be spent at tutoring facilities on major campuses so that Black athletes can remain eligible. And tutoring facilities specifically designed for athlete-student needs are exactly what are found on the lovely campuses of big-time colleges, from Lincoln, Neb., to Happy Valley, Pennsylvania:

Bigger stadiums and better training facilities are no longer enough to attract some of the most talented football prospects. The competition to create a top athletic program now extends to efforts that help ensure that players survive in class.

Louisiana State University, a perennial championship contender, spent $15 million to build an academic center for athletes. The University of Georgia, another top-10 football program, built a new facility for $7 million. At Temple University, long home to one of the nation’s worst football programs, officials increased the academic support budget for athletes by 34 percent in the aftermath of poor academic performance that led to scholarship losses.

All of the nation’s more than 100 major college athletic departments employ some type of academic support program. So do some Ivy League colleges and other smaller institutions. The National Collegiate Athletic Association said Division I athletic departments spend at least $150 million annually on such programs.

These tutoring facilities (some costing upwards of $20 million) are available to athletes only, leaving many people wondering if this is a misapplication of resources considering many of the tests and papers written under these athletes-students names are actually the product of another person’s work.

Massive revenue is being brought in by these athlete-students (funding entire athletic departments) and keeping these scholars academically eligible is a difficult task for every university. Oh, and it’s all tax-free in one of the biggest scams of our time

Sports hold our fragile society together like the Hunger Games hold the land of Panem together in the incredibly powerful trilogy entitled The Hunger Games (Highly recommend this as a gift for Christmas), and yes, sports provide the primary positive examples of Black people that are beamed into the homes of America on a 24/7 basis.

Without the constant imagery of Black people dunking basketballs or running with the football, stories such as this one would be all that is left to disseminate. Sports offer an avenue for Black people to escape, though it is increasingly an avenue that leads to their imprisonment.

And in our increasingly goofy society, if a Black male can’t succeed against other Black males, they can always claim Transgendered status and play for the women’s team.

When considering how much money is spent upon tutoring college athletes, the actual return on investment is embarrassing (unless the actual rate-of-return calculated is in terms of revenue generated instead of diploma’s granted) and once again we have Richard Lapchick to thank for giving us these figures, thereby highlighting the poor state of Black academic achievement:

While graduation success rates (GSR) have improved among student-athletes whose teams will play in college football bowl games this year, there is still a large gap between the GSR for African-American and white student-athletes.

The GSR was up from last year's study for both groups with the African-American student-athletes rising from 58 to 60 percent and the white student athletes going from 77 to 80 percent. That gap is one percentage point higher than it was in last year's study.

"That the gap increased rather than decreased is particularly disappointing," Lapchick said Monday. "The fact that the disparity is bigger now than 2009 is cause for trying to figure out what we eed to do to narrow the gap."

Lapchick called the gap between the two groups "disturbing," in the report.
As is usually the case, much of the reasoning for the lower success rates among African-American students is attributed to the lack of a solid academic infrastructure in inner-city, urban areas.

"So many of the African-American students who come to our campuses come from urban schools, which are under-funded, ill-equipped … and it leaves them at an academic disadvantage," Lapchick said via cell phone Monday. "And our typical African-American student athletes are graduating at significantly lower rates than football players.

"There is just a terrible level of education in a lot of our urban centers. Whatever we are doing to assist student-athletes (in college) is what we need to look at across the board."

Also in the report, among the bowl-bound teams, the following results were found:
• 63 schools (90 percent) had graduation success rates of 66 percent or higher for white football student-athletes, which was more than 2.7 times the number of schools with equivalent graduation success rates for African-American football student-athletes (23 schools or 33 percent).

• 17 schools (24 percent) graduated less than 50 percent of their African-American football student-athletes, while only one school graduated less than 50 percent of its white football student-athletes (Oklahoma).

• Five schools (7 percent) graduated less than 40 percent of their African-American football student-athletes, while no school graduated less than 40 percent of its white football student-athletes.

In addition, the percentage of the gap among some schools is alarming:
• 15 schools (21 percent) had graduation success rates for African-American football student-athletes that were at least 30 percentage points lower than their rates for white football student-athletes.

• 35 schools (50 percent) had graduation success rates for African-American football student-athletes that were at least 20 percentage points lower than their rates for white football student-athletes.

The graduation gap has grown at the same time the educational gap has widened between Black and white students, though we are all Waiting for “Superman” to come save Black children from the doldrums of academic ennui.

Cam Newton of Auburn. Will win Heisman, but a scholar?

The BCS National Title game between Auburn and Oregon features two schools that graduate less than half of their Black players and more than 75 percent of their white players (Auburn is at 100 percent). The majority of the Black players at both schools (alright, every university) receive academic exemptions, because their grades and ACT/SAT scores are too low to qualify though their 40-yard dash times help make them partial qualifiers or academic exemptions.

With the proficiency of Black male students so incredibly low, one wonders what the future holds for college football and collegiate athletics in general. The bulk of college sports are not, however, fielded by teams of Black players as major college football and basketball are usually comprised.

But college football is the opiate of America, the reason that the South conceded to integration in 1969 (the last year Pre-Obama America had to make a stand), and the primary reason Black Run America (BRA) exists.

The Southeastern Conference (SEC), once the bedrock of opposition to integration, has since become a league of Black football players at institutions of higher learning that all have more than 85 percent white students comprising those enrolled.

Here, you can search all athletic departments of every university in the country. Find out how much your alma mater spends on tutoring. Here is the list of largest athletic department budgets. Here is USA Today’s look at athletic budgets, salaries and other financial matters.

So, Mr. Laphick, we’ll poise a question to you that has gone unanswered for years. Are Black people better athletes, which would help explain why Black people (13 percent of the population) are so overrepresented in sports, like basketball and football? Why do the numbers stay the same every year, though more money and finer facilities are built to improve these poor academic results?

If this is the case, does this explain racial differences in academic success and why the onus will always be on the barbershop?

We’ll bet that 10 years from now the 2019-2020 study of graduation rates for bowl bound college football teams will be eerily similar to what they’re now, the achievement gap perhaps enlarging.

Mr. Laphick: you have spent your entire life working for racial equality, though your efforts have created a world where racial inequality has only increased. Disingenuous White Liberals (DWLs) like you have won, though you have lost. 

The world you created is so fragile that the day will come when the smart person comes along and finally pulls the loose string that unravels the whole thing like a poorly constructed sweater. A world that rests on the assumption white guilt will spring eternal is one predicated on the belief that those who can see will never, ever finally say enough.

2010 has shown that the idea of Black supremacy in sports is a myth, with the play of Peyton Hillis smashing away at the notion that white guys cannot play tail back. Other white running backs have been just as talented, though never given proper looks and relegated to fullback in the NFL (few in college football have the intellect and skill of Owen Marecic).

Worse, 2010 has shown just how fragile the National Basketball Association (NBA) is and how baseball is a game in need of a serious makeover. It’s also shown that college football is a sport that’s about to get much whiter, thanks to the twin problems of poor scholastic performance and high rates of criminality that plague juvenile Black males.

Black Run America (BRA) needs heroes and sports give us many to admire, just as many more fall by the wayside. A paradox that will eventually provide the thread that unravels the entire regime.

And, once again, Richard Lapchick has shown us that no matter how much money is lavished upon building massive academic facilities and manpower, time and effort exerted by tutors to help college athletes earn a degree, Black football players (and basketball) continue to find graduating a difficult proposition.

Nature always wins in the end.

Are Black people better athletes (football and basketball being the primary sports people care about)? Simple question, but in answering what does that reveal? 

#235. Tiger Woods Fall From Grace

Stuff Black Like People Don't Like has said it before and we will say it again: without sports - and ESPN - Black people would have few, if any positive images to display to the world.

Sports allowed integration - especially in the south - to happen and sports have the ability to "mainstream" positive images of Black people to Americans who spend countless hours in front of the television watching college football, professional football and basketball.

Movies depict sports as the great racial equalizer and the only way to bring about harmony between the races is to have Black and white people compete on the same athletic field, wearing the same team jersey. Take for instance Remember the Titans:

"Remember the Titans centers on the American football team of the newly integrated T. C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. Although based on a true story, events in the film are largely exaggerated, especially those pertaining to initial racial tensions within the team, as well as the level of opposition the Titans faced."

In 1971, at the old desegregated T. C. Williams High School, Herman Boone (Denzel Washington), also derogatorily known as Coach "Coon," is hired as head coach for the school's football team. He takes the place promised to former head coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton). Yoast at first refuses Boone's offer as the assistant head coach, but then changes his mind after his white players pledge to boycott if he doesn't coach.

The black and white members of the football team clash in racially-motivated conflicts on a few occasions while at football camp but, after forceful coaxing and team building efforts by Coach Boone, the team achieves as well as success. Boone makes the camp quite rigorous; when the bus is leaving for the camp all members are instructed to wear a shirt and tie; anyone not doing so will watch the season and not compete. At the camp, anybody who displays any misconduct at practice is instructed to run a mile. One time during camp, Coach Boone wakes up the players at 3:00 am to run through the woods to end up at a Civil War battleground where he delivers a stirring speech on why that war was fought ("the same fight we are still having today")."

That film grossed more than $115 million at the United States and leaves the viewer with the impression that without sports, Black people wouldn't have much else to do for they would never have been included in mainstream American life. Thankfully, sports do exist and Black people can rest easy at night.

However, resting easy at night isn't going to be a feat accomplished anymore at Tiger Woods abode, for the most popular athlete in the world has finally hit into a rough he might be incapable of hitting out of:

Tiger Woods did not suffer facial lacerations from a car accident.
They were inflicted by his wife, Elin Nordegren -- according to a conversation Woods had Friday after the accident.

Tiger has yet to be formally interviewed by the Florida Highway Patrol -- that should happen this afternoon. But we're told Tiger had a conversation Friday -- with a non-law enforcement type -- detailing what went down before his Escalade hit a fire hydrant.

We're told he said his wife had confronted him about reports that he was seeing another woman. The argument got heated and, according to our source, she scratched his face up. We're told it was then Woods beat a hasty retreat for his SUV -- but according to our source, Woods says his wife followed behind with a golf club. As Tiger drove away, she struck the vehicle several times with the club."

Obviously, the tragedy of Tiger Woods getting in a horrible car accident is a news story on par with OJ Simpson racing through Los Angeles in a White Bronco, which is every news channel covered it with morbid fascination:

"Florida Highway Patrol spokeswoman Sgt. Kim Montes said Saturday that investigators are "trying not to get on the rumor mill."

The world's No. 1 golfer smashed his Cadillac near his $2.4 million mansion at 2:25 a.m. Friday and was briefly hospitalized, police said. Though there still has been no information on where he was heading at that hour, plenty of details from the crash have emerged: His lips were cut, and Windermere police chief Daniel Saylor said Woods' wife, Elin Nordegren, used a golf club to smash out a back window and help Woods from the car."

Tiger Woods is of course one of the great examples of sportsmanship for young people to emulate and now, we are treated to watching Woods engage in alleged extra-marital affairs and for an episode worthy of Jerry Springer breaking out at his home.

Tiger Woods plays golf, one of the last sporting activities that demands the participants to play by the rules and be gentlemen always:

"J.P. Hayes can sleep at night, knowing he did the right thing.

That doesn't mean the last few days haven't been difficult and it doesn't mean the coming months won't be a challenge.

They have been, and they will be.

But as a professional golfer, playing a sport that is self-policed - a sport in which integrity is as important as winning titles and cheating is practically non-existent - Hayes knows he did the right thing.

His sin?

Hayes inadvertently played a non-conforming golf ball - one not on the list approved for competition by the United States Golf Association - for one hole of a second-stage qualifier in McKinney, Texas."

Worse, Mr. Woods happens to represent something more important to the athletic world as he is the only Black person in the PGA:

"Ten years after he joined the PGA Tour, Tiger Woods still stands alone. And not just because he's so good.

Woods was supposed to open the sport up to black kids in America and around the world. Yet a decade later, he remains the only black golfer on the tour. This week, he plays at the U.S. Open, being run by the USGA, which talks about bringing minorities into the sport but doesn't have a single one on its executive committee.

``Am I disappointed? Yeah,'' Woods said when asked about the dearth of blacks at the highest levels of golf. ``I thought there would be more of us out here.''

Golf is the ultimate individual sport, where every action is dictated primarily by what you do (weather can be a factor), as opposed to football, basketball or baseball. Thus, if few Black people play golf and make it to the PGA then the fault must lay squarely on the feet of Black people, not the reason this writer claims:

"While white resistance to the integration of blacks into all the major sports continued after initial desegregation efforts, nowhere was this resistance more complete than in golf, where the maintenance of a system of overt and institutional racism prevailed for many decades after initial racial barriers were removed."

Thankfully, the PGA is trying to remedy this situation to bring greater racial balance to a sport played overwhelming by white and Asian people:

"With much fanfare, the PGA Tour established the First Tee program eight years ago, an attempt to bring the game to the inner city and get more minorities involved. In many ways, the program has been a success. Of its 450,000 participants, 44 percent are white, 27 percent are black and 10 percent are Hispanic. In all of golf, 84 percent of the players are white."

Of course, with America becoming increasingly non-white, golf is in dire of need of broadening its appeal to people of color or else it might find the fairways of the hundreds of golf courses across the country empty:

Out on the fairways, course operators work to stay green. On the tee sheet, they should be looking to get less white. At least that’s what demographic studies indicate. According to a Brookings Institution report, Caucasian populations have declined in more than half of the counties in the United States since 2000. Meanwhile, Latino and African-American populations are on the rise.

Quite simply, the white male—golf’s go-to customer for more than 100 years—is fading on the census tables. USA Today, crunching data from 2007, cited “the slowing growth of an aging population of whites” as a force that is “reshaping the nation’s demographic landscape.” What’s more, the article cited a parallel trend: “Immigration [and] a population boom among Hispanics.” As for America’s black population, when it was tallied in 2007, the numbers showed a one-year increase of approximately 500,000 residents—up to 40.7 million total. By 2050 or sooner, African-Americans will account for 15 percent of the population (versus 13.5 percent now).

Despite the growing number of black and Hispanic-Americans, these groups are under-represented as golfers. Even if these minority groups weren’t expanding their populations, they could gain importance to course owners just by increasing their golf-participation rates toward the national average for Caucasians of 14.5 percent. Currently, the participation rate among Hispanics is 5.4 percent, while for African-Americans, it’s at 7 percent. Asian-American golfers don’t have as much upside in this regard, with adults in this group registering a 13.7 golf participation rate."

Thus, the reason Tiger Woods is so important to golf and to attracting Black people to the fairways. 500,000 people are directly employed at golf courses throughout the country and the future for those who want a part in this industry is looking ever more dark, unless Black people start playing and paying to play:

"According to the National Golf Foundation, the number of new courses expected to open in the United States in 2008 is the smallest in 20 years. More courses are scheduled to close this year (nearly 100) than the 80 expected to open, though the closures have fallen since almost 150 were shut down two years ago. The golf construction boom of the 1990s – when about 2,500 new courses (mostly daily fee ones) were added to the 13,000 or so already extant in the U.S. – is not only over; it’s stuck in reverse.

The problems of the broad economy are bedeviling golf course construction. The housing market’s collapse has hampered development, since a number of golf projects these days are tied into on-site housing. Getting financing to build a new course is tougher than it has been in decades. Projects that were started this year have seen the bulldozers turned off until better times appear."

Worse, the housing market collapse and the depression we are enduring is having horrid effects on the golfing world:

"In Scotland and Ireland, where there are more golf courses per person than anywhere else in Europe, the pain is being felt most keenly in the loss of tourist traffic - especially traffic that once originated in the United States.

Golf tourists spend an average of $315 (250 euros) a day on a weeklong holiday, with a quarter of that spent on teeing off, and the rest going to travel, hotels and food, a report by KPMG’s Golf Benchmark shows. That means golf across Europe, the Middle East and Africa is a $67 billion (53 billion euro) industry."

Tiger Woods can't become fodder for late-night comedians. He is to important to the golfing world and Black people, for he is one of the few Black people in the country club at any given time who isn't cooking, cleaning or serving.

He is vital to the PGA and the golfing world and to have his name sunk in the depths of a horrible sand trap isn't a salvageable situation. Worse, he is needed for PGA events as his mere presence is vital for television ratings.

Also, Woods is a brand unto himself, as helps sell many goods and services, which helped him becoming the first Billionaire athlete:

"Now Woods can add one more accolade to his trophy case: the first athlete to earn $1 billion. Our calculations show that the $10 million bonus Woods earned winning this year's FedEx Cup title nudged him over the $1 billion mark in career earnings.

Forbes has been tracking athlete earnings since before Tiger turned pro. Woods had earned a cumulative $895 million going into 2009, by our estimates, from prize money, appearance fees, endorsements, bonuses and his golf course design business. If you add his $10.5 million in 2009 prize money, the FedEx bonus and his take so far this year from his more than $100 million in annual off-the-course earnings, Woods' career earnings are now 10 figures."

So, Tiger Woods alleged sleeping around on his wife doesn't bode well for golf, nor for the pristine image that has been concocted of Tiger Woods. This is a huge blow to one of the worlds top athletes and to the cause of Black people playing golf, which - as we have shown - could have massive ramifications on the future of golf itself!

Stuff Black People Don't Like has to include Tiger Woods fall from grace; for he is the only Black person on the PGA Tour; an iconic business image and spokesman for numerous companies; and one of the important Black people on the planet. He married a beautiful woman and yet finds himself engaged in behavior that is more in line with John Daly than with Greg Norman.

Perhaps Daley and Woods can discuss their negative press over wings and beer at Hooters.

#318. Sportsmanship

Sports. The final frontier for Black people. Sports offer "a way out" for Black people who live in broken home without fathers, or in the ghetto surrounded by misery, and the possibility of riches and fame comes with this promise.

In 21st century America, professional and collegiate athletes enjoy not only vast quantities of fiat money, but also fame, endorsement money and the adulation of millions, if not billions of people.

Black people are on the top of the list of highest paid athletes (in numerous sports) and best compensated in terms of endorsement dollars as 60 percent of the top 10 earners in 2008 are Black people.

Sports Illustrated, the most widely-read magazine devoted to sports in the world, routinely puts Black people on their cover:

Athlete	Number of covers
Michael Jordan	56
Muhammad Ali	38
Tiger Woods	30
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar	22
Magic Johnson	22
Jack Nicklaus	22

The adulation and notoriety that follows being on a Sport Illustrated cover is immense and solidifies in the general publics mind the superstar status of these athletic Black people.

Even though obscene amounts of money and fame are bestowed upon Black people who have the uncanny ability to entertain the masses through the cognitively difficult task of shooting a ball through a hoop or running with the football, an aura of bitterness surrounds them.

Take Tiger Woods, the highest paid athlete in the world and arguably the biggest Grouch in the world this side of Sesame Street:

"Tiger Woods has outgrown those Urkel glasses he had as a kid. Outgrown the crazy hair. Outgrown a body that was mostly neck.

When will he outgrow his temper?

"The man is 33 years old, married, the father of two. He is paid nearly $100 million a year to be the representative for some monstrously huge companies, from Nike to Accenture. He is the world's most famous and beloved athlete.

If there were no six-second delay, Tiger Woods would be the reason to invent it. Every network has been burned by having the on-course microphone open when he blocks one right into the cabbage and starts with the F-bombs. Once, at Doral, he unleashed a string of swear words at a photographer that would've made Artie Lange blush, and then snarled, "'The next time a photographer shoots a [expletive] picture, I'm going to break his [expletive] neck!

It's disrespectful to the game, disrespectful to those he plays with and disrespectful to the great players who built the game before him. Ever remember Jack Nicklaus doing it? Arnold Palmer? When Tom Watson was getting guillotined in that playoff to Stewart Cink, did you see him so much as spit?

Despite his pension for using profanity, Tiger Woods was recently rated America's favorite athlete:

Harris surveyed 2,177 U.S. adults online June 8-15. The Harris top five:1. Tiger Woods
2. Michael Jordan
3. LeBron James
4. Kobe Bryant
5. Derek Jeter

LeBron James, one of the worlds best tippers, also is one of the worlds worst sportsman, as he failed to shake the hands of the team that beat him in the NBA Playoffs in 2009:

"All athletes are taught from a young age to be good sports and shake the other team's hands, even if you lose.

LeBron must have skipped that part.

Professional athletes are supposed to be role models for young athletes all over the world. What is a young, aspiring LeBron fan suppose to think when he sees his idol storm off the court without shaking anyone's hand after losing?"

Serena Williams, who looks like the sister/brother of disgraced South African hermaphrodite Caster Semenya, is a superstar tennis player. She was famously disqualified in the 2009 US Open for threatening the judge with bodily harm after the judge awarded a point to her opponent:

"Williams’ subsequent outburst -- during which she glared at the linesperson and reportedly said, among other things, “If I could, I would take this fucking ball and shove it down your fucking throat” -- represented a regrettable loss of composure, but one that, under the circumstances, was somewhat understandable."

Here at SBPDL we have recently discussed the Boise State-Oregon football game, when a Black player- Lagarrette Blount - punched a white player after his team lost 19-8; the Miami-Florida International college football riot; the 2008 Montgomery Riot at a high school basketball game, and we will continue to discuss events that highlight Black people in situations that fit a clear behavioral pattern.

After all, who can forget the infamous incident between Latrell Spreweell (Black player) and his white coach PJ Carlesimo, when the basketball player went UFC and tried to choke his coach out?

A cursory glance at ESPN provides a cornucopia of highlights for the masses to indulge in and also provides the masses with incredible examples of Black people acting like the kid whose parents refuse to buy him a new toy:

"Brandon Marshall, openly unhappy with the Denver Broncos, was suspended by the team through Sept. 5 for what coach Josh McDaniels called "detrimental" conduct."

Black people have a profound ability to display selfishness, unsportsmanlike conduct and fascinating indifference to the rules and we must always remember young people believe that sports and the athletes who participate in these games set a wonderful example for young people to emulate.

Charles Barkley, a former professional basketball player turned perennial DUI suspect, had this to say about athletes being deemed role models:

"I'm not a role model... Just because I dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids."

Barkley is wrong. Kids (and adults sadly) are greatly influenced by what they see on television and Black people know this very well. Perhaps that is why COPS, a long running television show about real-life police officers, has aided Black people in helping them craft their criminal vocations?

Sportsmanship is defined as:

"conformance to the rules, spirit, and etiquette of sport. More grandly, it may be considered the ethos of sport. It is interesting that the motivation for sport is often an elusive element. Sportsmanship expresses an aspiration or ethos that the activity will be enjoyed for its own sake, with proper consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one's competitors. Being a "good sport" involves being a "good winner" as well as being a "good loser"."

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes sportsmanship, for only Serena Williams would threaten a judge with a tennis ball being shoved down her throat; Tiger Woods can enthrall millions with precise shoots, but cause everyone to wince when in earshot of his famous profanity-laced tirades that would make even George Carlin blush.

And to think, we didn't even mention Michael Vick in this post. Oops.