I didn’t understand what was happening during the Louisville-Duke NCAA tournament game Sunday evening. Suddenly, all the Louisville players were lying on the court, curled in the fetal position. The announcers seemed equally confused.
Then it became clear: Louisville guard Kevin Ware had gone down in front of his team’s bench, his leg unnaturally twisted. We later learned it was a compound fracture of the right tibia and fibula.
My neighbor Rob, a former college player, former high school coach with a locally famous weak stomach, stood and turned his back on the television. The director at CBS sports, clearly caught between the demands of journalism and taste, showed just two replays and from a camera positioned across the court from young Mr. Ware.
The game stopped for ten minutes as players and coaches wiped tears of shock and grief from their eyes as medical personnel stabilized Mr. Ware and got him on a gurney. For his part, Kevin asked his teammates to concentrate on the game, not his injury. For all its flaws – and there are many – academic sports, even at their most corrupted collegiate level, still build character.
For viewers of a certain age, Kevin’s injury immediately brought to mind the same compound fracture –same bones, same leg – that ended Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann’s career in 1985. The director of that game, broadcast on ABC’s Monday Night Football, was more lurid – at least in my memory – showing the gruesome break over and over in slow motion. (Yeah, it’s on YouTube. I will not provide a link.)
Given that these two athletes are now linked by their injuries, I was happy to see Mr. Theismann reaching out to Mr. Ware, who, I’m happy to say, is projected to recover fully and return to college ball next year.
http://fansided.com/2013/04/02/joe-theismann-reaches-out-to-injured-louisville-player-kevin-ware/
I’m less happy about something else I saw – and didn’t see – during Sunday night’s game. Although the game was close in the first half
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, it was clear Louisville was the dominant team; that became more apparent as the game wore on. By the time the second half was underway, I couldn’t help but notice that the two players whose faces featured prominently in close-ups were Duke’s Mason Plumlee and Ryan Kelly.
There are plenty of moments in basketball, especially late in the game, when action stops for inbounding a ball, free throws or one of the gazillions of timeouts allowed college coaches. In these moments, CBS cameras seemed to frequently focus on Mssrs. Plumlee and Kelly to get the “human reaction” shot.
Why is that significant (aside from the fact that the players were on the losing, rather than winning, team)? Mason Plumlee and Ryan Kelly are white. In fact, they are among the few white players on either team and yet it was their faces CBS’s director chose to feature again and again.
This is more significant when you consider that Ryan Kelly got in foul trouble early in the game and spent almost as many minutes on the bench as he did on the floor. After I first noticed this, I began to pay closer attention and what I saw seems to bear out my initial thought. Also, those African American players who were featured in close-ups tended to have lighter skin. Gorgui Dieng, who hails from Senegal, has very dark skin and was rarely featured close up. (BTW, he played one minute more than Ryan Kelly and scored 14 points, as opposed to Mr. Kelly’s seven.)
So here’s what I’m doing this weekend – watching the final four, but also watching to see if America’s oldest tradition – racism – will also be on display, however subtly.
Black Face, White Face
I didn’t understand what was happening during the Louisville-Duke NCAA tournament game Sunday evening. Suddenly, all the Louisville players were lying on the court, curled in the fetal position. The announcers seemed equally confused.
Then it became clear: Louisville guard Kevin Ware had gone down in front of his team’s bench, his leg unnaturally twisted. We later learned it was a compound fracture of the right tibia and fibula.
My neighbor Rob, a former college player, former high school coach with a locally famous weak stomach, stood and turned his back on the television. The director at CBS sports, clearly caught between the demands of journalism and taste, showed just two replays and from a camera positioned across the court from young Mr. Ware.
The game stopped for ten minutes as players and coaches wiped tears of shock and grief from their eyes as medical personnel stabilized Mr. Ware and got him on a gurney. For his part, Kevin asked his teammates to concentrate on the game, not his injury. For all its flaws – and there are many – academic sports, even at their most corrupted collegiate level, still build character.
For viewers of a certain age, Kevin’s injury immediately brought to mind the same compound fracture –same bones, same leg – that ended Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann’s career in 1985. The director of that game, broadcast on ABC’s Monday Night Football, was more lurid – at least in my memory – showing the gruesome break over and over in slow motion. (Yeah, it’s on YouTube. I will not provide a link.)
Given that these two athletes are now linked by their injuries, I was happy to see Mr. Theismann reaching out to Mr. Ware, who, I’m happy to say, is projected to recover fully and return to college ball next year.
http://fansided.com/2013/04/02/joe-theismann-reaches-out-to-injured-louisville-player-kevin-ware/
I’m less happy about something else I saw – and didn’t see – during Sunday night’s game. Although the game was close in the first half
, it was clear Louisville was the dominant team; that became more apparent as the game wore on. By the time the second half was underway, I couldn’t help but notice that the two players whose faces featured prominently in close-ups were Duke’s Mason Plumlee and Ryan Kelly.
There are plenty of moments in basketball, especially late in the game, when action stops for inbounding a ball, free throws or one of the gazillions of timeouts allowed college coaches. In these moments, CBS cameras seemed to frequently focus on Mssrs. Plumlee and Kelly to get the “human reaction” shot.
Why is that significant (aside from the fact that the players were on the losing, rather than winning, team)? Mason Plumlee and Ryan Kelly are white. In fact, they are among the few white players on either team and yet it was their faces CBS’s director chose to feature again and again.
This is more significant when you consider that Ryan Kelly got in foul trouble early in the game and spent almost as many minutes on the bench as he did on the floor. After I first noticed this, I began to pay closer attention and what I saw seems to bear out my initial thought. Also, those African American players who were featured in close-ups tended to have lighter skin. Gorgui Dieng, who hails from Senegal, has very dark skin and was rarely featured close up. (BTW, he played one minute more than Ryan Kelly and scored 14 points, as opposed to Mr. Kelly’s seven.)
So here’s what I’m doing this weekend – watching the final four, but also watching to see if America’s oldest tradition – racism – will also be on display, however subtly.
© Mark Floegel 2013