On Saturday, the 15th ranked Texas A&M Aggies walked into the home of The Alabama Crimson Tide, the six-time-straight national champions, and Number One Ranked Team, and beat them in a fair fight, 29 to 24. Alabama fans and the country were totally shocked.
But while ESPN was covering what Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban had to say about the dramatic upset that started with the Aggies racing to a 20-7 lead in the second quarter, a Twitter conversation pointed to something this blogger wasn’t totally aware of: that Texas A&M’s coach, Kevin Sumlin’s African American.
The tweets were in the vain of something like this: here’s Alabama in shock from Obama being reelected President, and now Alabama’s beaten by a black coach. (Now the truth is, if the election did not contain such a racial bias where only white males favored Romney over Obama, this would not even have been a focus of the Twitterverse.)
What got me about the tweets was that ESPN never showed Kevin Sumlin – they certainly showed Saban’s comments, but not Sumlin’s. Nick Saban’s comments were played over and over again – not Sumlin. There was just one record of a talk with an on-the-field anchor and Sumlin and that was played on Fox from what I saw, and not ESPN.
Instead, Texas A&M’s QB was the focus of the win – no mention of the coach. You have to dig deep to find anything. SB Nation has something (thank God for blogs) and informs us that Sumlin has twice been involved in The Aggies downing of the Number One School in America – in 2002 and this year.
The story should be that Texas A&M is 8 and 2, and it should be about Coach Sumlin. If Mike Sherman, who was Texas A&M’s Head Coach last year, before stepping down because of a terrible record and his team’s poor play, were still the coach, you can bet ESPN would have focused on his words.
That’s not right at all. ESPN should be flogged.