The most significant currency in any sport, as with society as a whole, is opportunity. The NFL should offer that to everyone
February is supposed to be the pinnacle of football excellence. Next Sunday, the Cincinnati Bengals will return to the Super Bowl after 33 years behind second-year phenomenon Joe Burrow to play the LA Rams and Matthew Stafford, who has never been to the big game in his 13 years in the league. Keeping with the theme of football excellence, fans, players and the media will no doubt express gratitude to Tom Brady, who this week announced his retirement after 22 years in the NFL and had arguably the greatest career the game has ever seen.
Still, the magic of the moment is lost to myself and my Black colleagues. We watch our white counterparts rightly win praise for the success that they have earned. We Black coaches and players, on the other hand, have to fight twice as hard to get half as far. We saw it with Colin Kaepernick taking a knee to bring awareness to social injustice against Black and brown people, and subsequently being blackballed from the league despite leading his team to the Super Bowl just a few years prior. Colin hoped to highlight the fact that that though we are all created equal, we are not all treated equally, and that needs to change.
RK Russell played in the NFL for the Dallas Cowboys and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
