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The 60 for everyone's safety visit Volvo cars, dot com. Slash us to learn more. Boop, boop, boop, boop. Welcome dilemma to really being honest about just a giant piece of shit, the big, silly Bald Eagles, a podcast exclusive that none of our bosses ask for, more sports, more work, less pay. I haven't stopped talking in a month.

I mean, I tell you, just when you thought the show couldn't be more dilutive, bam.

Last time I listened to this show, I haven't listened for years. Now here's the marching band. No way am I missing something.

What am I missing? The end of the story that Chris Fallica. It's Fallica you made on the penis and the habitual liar.

I didn't ask for any of us for all of it. The big SUV.

I'm Chris Codi BSP and. If you've been around here for a while, 10 years going back, you know that Bomani Jones is just really strong, stronger than most on some of the difficult subjects that we talk about around here and that he can slalom course through some racial matter, political matters, societal matter in a way that is historic and it resonates and is uncommonly informed. I've told you before. Check out his podcast, The Right Time with Bomani Jones, because it is illuminating, especially at this time.

So I wanted to start with the debate the other night where you've got Rex Chapman, Rex Chapman. He is an American retired professional basketball player and social media influencer. He was a high school sensation, winning numerous awards for his play. I say all that so we can have the sports entree to what it is that he says politically, where he writes on Twitter, These postdebate people have to fill time by breaking down that, quote unquote debate. But they should all just sit there in silence.

Arms folded while the Kairouan is flashing, Trump refuses to condemn white supremacy, then shouts out orders to a violent neo fascist group, even at a desperate time in America. Bomani, even at a time where he is shown to be a win at all costs. I was surprised as there is a certain desperation as an election approaches, to hear him say in the middle of that entire embarrassment of a spectacle that passes for a presidential debate to hear him say, proud boys, stand back and stand by.

I was I was surprised to hear that. And I don't know how much worse the rhetoric is going to get from their.

All right, so I guess I got a couple of thoughts on this, one is one frustration I generally have with white people and I guess not every white person. That's why I said generally as a professor, I think he's still a duke, but I'm not sure his name is Eduardo Brunious Silva. And he wrote a book called Racism Without Racists. Right. And it's just really about the idea. It has a lot to do with the idea that we spent a lot of time talking about and condemning the idea of racism.

But we're really bad. But we got to actually put a face on the racism. And we're not even necessarily talking about, like putting a face on everybody that engages in some racist sort of behavior. But just calling anybody a racist at all, that is considered to be such an insult that you are not allowed to offer it, regardless of how true it might be. Like for me personally, strategically, you're not going to have a lot of times you're going to hear me come out and refer to somebody as a racist because like, whether or not the person is a racist typically doesn't matter.

Like, it's not that big a deal for whatever it is that I'm talking about. But the other part of it is why folks shut down. When you call an individual a racist, they start demanding all kinds of proof and everything else right before you do that.

But generally, white folks are pretty good at saying that they condemn racism. Right. Just the very idea. They generally pretty good about doing that. Right. As long as they got to put it on. Nobody, they like racism there. That's terrible, right? All the racism in their lives, somehow they can't manage to see racism. Yeah, that's real bad. And you may I wouldn't do that. Like, that was that was a bit striking.

The fact that he was not willing to do that. Trump complicates the matter because if he was not the president of the United States, I would guess that the things that he says would require people to distance themselves from him in a way that becomes complicated when 50, 60 million people vote for him, say that they're down for it. So you get all these guys and I guess all is a bit much because there really aren't that many people who are, like, publicly declarative of their affection for Trump.

But like we talked about the Covenant Covington Dude and UFC, we can talk about Dana White, who has appeared at the convention. Masvidal, yeah.

Masvidal, who's really, really gotten on board with anybody, making them actually answer for nothing. Right. Like nobody is going to make them go in, like meet the victims of white supremacy and I'm going to be white supremacy as a general idea. I mean, like the parents of the woman who was killed in Charlottesville by the car, nobody is going to go make them go talk to them to find out what the effects of these organizations like Cowboys are.

Nobody's nobody is going to do that. And it goes back to something I talked about when we first got started with this. And I think it becomes an important point now, which is we still really afraid of hurting white people's feelings, like we can't make a move in this unless you're willing to hurt some white people's feelings along the way. And you're not even to hurt willing to hurt those white people's feelings. Now, Trump, of course, it's different when you say to the Cowboys, you know, stand back and stand by.

That's not even being willing to hurt their feelings. Right. That's that's speaking directly to them like like like our run together, you know? But there's a lot of people that are in our orbit who have attach themselves to the dude who did that.

And we just kind of shrug our shoulders at it and call it politics. But by I mean, I think you can see the logical incongruence that we are trying to do with. You found it striking, as I did, right, that that doesn't seem very hard to just condemn white supremacy, like it doesn't seem like that's that's such a bare minimum. Ask Bo and the idea that he couldn't just condemn white supremacy and instead instead sounded like he was speaking in code directly to proud boys, stand back and stand by, which is sort of the incitement of a threat that I've got.

Mike Ryan, legitimately, as you're listening to this, as you're taking a pounding during this just nonsense that passes for a debate where you become scared to go to the polls because of the rhetoric. Like no matter what you think, you become scared of going to the polls because you might encounter guns there.

Yeah. By the way, I don't even think that counts as code, you know what I mean? Like like code implies that it's something that only they could hear it understand or like it was it it was explicit. Like what man said exactly what it is that he was going to say, like, oh man, this, this. We got a month left. It is basically like give or take. We got a month left before this election happens and that's probably not going to be the end.

And for sports, I think is going to be interesting in that the NBA will no longer be playing like they will be removed from this football players generally on a talkative bunch when it comes to this. And for whatever it's worth, the lot more people ride for Trump in football than I think a lot of people understand. And I ain't talking about white dudes. There's more of them that you would probably guess in that world. But like this is I don't know.

It's I don't know how easy it's going to be for us or anybody else to totally divorced themselves or detach themselves from what's going to be going on with this with this election, if for no other reason than I find it highly unlikely that Trump is going to stay away from sports.

So let's let's think about this for a second.

I don't remember if we talked about this here, but I talked about in some other places that the guy who I don't know that I want to put it that way, but I'll say this. When Obama was president, you got to remember in that second election, Obama got something like thirty nine percent of the white vote by. He's obviously not an exceedingly popular figure with white people, but at the very least, like in the first election, Know, got a decent share of votes, won some states that you wouldn't have thought of, got some votes from people like you.

Now, about the people who voted for Obama, didn't vote for Trump, like that's a real phenomenon. Obama used sports to try to reach white men right like that, that's always been my read. I can't say this concretely, but when the president is like I'm going to do my bracket on ESPN every year, to me, that was Obama finding something he had in common with white men.

Right. Sports is the way to do it. And I can think about my own life that like sports and music or ways that I can connect often with white men who probably otherwise would think that we don't have anything in common. Like I always felt like that was what Obama was doing was like, this is my way to connect with white men. Right? Like, I pick I, I do the bracket just like you do the bracket. Like, think about it.

When a Skip Gates had that situation with the cops and Obama is like, well, I'm going to invite them both to the White House to have a beer as well. White folks do. What about that? Other black people don't drink beer, but like we're going to have a beer and settle it. Who's the person in your head that you imagine something like this is a white man, right? Like these are connections to white people. And Trump is using sports the same way, like the things he said.

At least that's my read again, like the way he talks about sports and the way he positions in the way he decides to jump in for it.

He is attempting to reach and to connect with white men.

So if you connect this to the debate. Only like white men are the people, not all white men, obviously, but white men are the people that would connect probably most readily with the way he kicked it in that debate and the stuff we like to cowboys and everything else. So Trump has done something that is fascinating presidential politics, which is he is not making any attempt to go to the center and he is just trying to mollify the base and to exclude those on the other side of the distribution of preferences.

And if reaching white men is what he's trying to do in order to win this, then he's going to come back to sports like he stood up there like a big thing.

He said the debate was, I saved Big Ten football. First of all, shout out to the Big Ten that you got your football improved to the point where people actually think that's a good thing, because in two thousand seven, if you had told us you were taking away Big Ten football, we'd all say thank you. You know what I mean by, like, just wow. Now the SEC has to beat somebody else in the championship game. It would have been great if he had done that.

Now he's like I say, Big Ten football. Who really cares about that white man? Like, that's that's the base. That's what he's going for. I can't believe after everything we went through over the last few months, money that as it relates to college football, you tweeted this out and I just don't know how it is that we as a network, as a journalistic entity, not just ESPN, but all journalists don't see how football was just clearly used as a political tool and that there were more questions asked of Ohio State or the Big Ten for not playing football than questions that were asked of the ECMC for playing football.

I just can't believe that all of that is so.

It's the craziest thing in the world that the people who are talking about what we do is going to do. It sounds good to me like that's all it took. And the justification or one of the biggest explanation people have why they said the Big Ten should have played was, well, the ACC is playing right. The jump on the jump off a bridge logic was what people rode out with and went with with the Big Ten. What was interesting is if you if people had asked more about the explanation, you said more about it, I think you would have come away from it actually feeling a little bit better.

Like apparently they got some access to a whole different level of testing that makes it to where this is not the terrible idea that it would have been previously. Like, I was like, I mean, why are you doing this? And I checked into it. I was like, OK, I see why it is that you're trying to make a run at this. But people didn't even bother to go there. They were just so damn happy with the idea that we turned on the TV and our network.

And it was just it's a great day. The Big Ten is going to play football.

I would give it a damn in my life about whether or not the Big Ten was going to play football. You know, and I understand it is a significant portion of the population who does care about the Big Ten and is within their footprint. But I ain't in it.

And they hey, man, the world is just upside down.

And we got to figure out what all of this is going to be and how they're going to figure it out in college football. I wouldn't say it's been a disaster, but there are some schools that are undergoing disaster. We're not talking about it. University of Houston, it's at three different games canceled.

Three. Yeah, Virginia Tech took forever to start its season. I don't know that we're qualified to ask some of those questions. Something else I wanted to go to back to with you, because I don't know whether you get hurt by this stuff or not. I don't think that you do. But in terms of egregious offenses, when I'm watching that Axios interview that Trump gave and it's the most disastrous interview I've ever seen from I mean, obviously, it was the worst interview a president ever done.

But when he's asked about specifically the contributions of John Lewis and asked about not going to that funeral and his only thing to say there is, well, he didn't come to my inauguration and he can't even summon the decency and death while talking about Epstein's woman, the Epstein's woman, he says, you know, I wish her only well. And she's in jail for enabling a pedophile who killed himself. Like when you watch that conversation, the Axios interview, and you see him do something like that to John Lewis, do you just shrug your shoulders and say, this is what it is, this is how overt it is with this guy?

He went from birth tourism to this? Or do you say, man, do you have no degree of decency?

Well, I honestly have no reason to assume that he knows anything about John Lewis other than the fact that he didn't come to his inauguration. By I mean, everyone beyond said he has a lot of people on the streets like some details about John Lewis. They probably couldn't do it all. All Donald Trump knew is that John Lewis is a black dude. I was down for the civil rights movement who did not come to his inauguration. I don't think he knows any particulars.

So, yeah, I just saw it from him on that. I do shrug my shoulders, like at this point, that one that one don't even rate, to be honest.

So what ends up writing with you? Like what are the things that land? A good question. I don't know from him like in a way that would make me angry or like get to an emotional place for me or just like where you're just like how can you be this overt.

Like the thing that I'm actually worried about, honey, as long as it feels like freedom is falling apart and everything that I care about, as in this country, doesn't feel just right to me. The thing I'm worried about is somebody who can use these tactics in a more sophisticated fashion like ten years from now, because this this I can't believe that the clumsy, overt ness of this is actually working.

Yeah. Like, I think there was a point early where I was like, wow, these sorts of things are really surprising. And even like the thing that happened yesterday with the crowd, I mean, whatever data was the problem was that like that that was like, whoa, we're really doing this. Oh, OK.

Well, I mean, that is a bit much, but it doesn't land with me in a way where, like, it lands in that I am to a degree surprised by the fact that our general set of norms are just being flouted on these things. The thing that Trump has exposed is a lot of this a lot of this political system operated on norms and he just disregarded the norms and nothing happened. Like that's the thing they're going to have to rebuild and figure out what to do with it.

Everybody knows now that all the stuff he thought you had to do, you don't actually have to do. That's going to be the hardest thing to repair is that people get mad and baseball like this, like the notion of unwritten rules and they talk about how silly, unwritten rules are. Every single game has unwritten rules, every single one. Right. That's that's the problem with unwritten rules. Not that they're unwritten is the question as to whether or not they are standardized and everybody believes in them.

But this whole game was built on a set of unwritten rules and troubles like Shelby was written down. Oh, it's not. Guess there's not a rule.

And I don't know how you fix that, that I don't know how you repair because I'm not ask I guess I'm not asking you why or where you're hurt, because you've been you have been scarred enough to wear an armor around you that I don't see you getting hurt very much in these instances. I'm talking about surprise, though. Surprised. Oh, really? If you can get away with that, that overtly and the proud boys. I said it was code because I'm not even familiar with what that sounds like as an order.

I have I have no access to how he would talk publicly to the proud boys. But if you mention them by name, I guess that that's as directly as it can be.

Well, it's direct and it's after encouraging people to go home watching.

That's why I say I don't see any code involved in this. I thought that it was like from there, pretty explicit.

And so I don't know if for me it's a matter of being scarred or if it is like a matter of being aware. So something I think that was interesting when you talk about the freedom in which you believe in, in this country and the like. And this is where I think you and I, we wanted coming from slightly different perspectives.

One thing that has always been interesting to me is you, as a first generation American of Cuban descent and your parents who left Cuba during some, shall we say, trying times and decided to come here. The decision to come here was the decision to come for freedom. And so many Cubans then ultimately landed in Jim Crow, Florida, while celebrating that they had landed in freedom. It's a little tricky. That's correct, yeah, it's a little it's a little like and I could kind of understand how it goes.

And there are all kinds of fascinating discussions about, like what the definition of whiteness is in this country. Once you show up and like, how white can you be if your last name ends in Z, you know, like all the all these things that come and everything else. But I just I've spent a lot of time looking and it's just like this tells you a whole lot about the world in the way that we talk about things that so many people did not even give a second thought to the idea that they didn't come to freedom, they came to their own freedom.

It's kind of like when people talk about the economy and politics, people don't care about the big economy. They care about their own economy.

Well, but that's what happens with wet foot. Dry foot, right. Like throughout my lifetime, there has been a protection among Cubans. And this is why I believe that Cubans are the only place where you will find improvement with Trump from 2016 to now. But many Cubans are the only place, and it's because it is absolutely well, the rules are different for us than they are for the Haitians. So my Cuban brethren want to protect rules that protect them like that to me is embedded in everything you see happening with Masvidal and Miami and Cuba.

And Billy Kauffman's doing a documentary on how batshit crazy Miami is on this front to explain. It's going to be on HBO in a month to explain to people like how batshit crazy South Florida Cubans are as it relates to this. I am appalled as I see my people surrounding the black lives, people with threatening menace and trucks and that shit. And you recognize that you live down here. You know this you know how different black Miami is from Cuban Miami.

Look, we'll talk about this. This is something I will never forget as long as I live. The day Nelson Mandela died, me and you had to go talk about it in the parking lot for fear of being overheard because Castro was a supporter of the African National Congress, which then indeed, I think after he got out, he went to Cuba and still with Castro and Nelson Mandela, you know what I mean? But the big point for me is that the idealized notion of freedom that I think that Cubans in the United States can hold is something I've never been in a position to be delusional about.

Right. I've never been able to ignore it in that way. And so with Trump, it is like, wow, this is really, really, really that overt. That's kind of crazy. But I guess after three and a half years, I figured out, like, oh, they just gonna let this ride.

Got it.

Bomani, I didn't question what the American flag represented until I was in my thirties. Like, my guess is you were doing well if you're writing Martin Luther King and then the Capitol has shot him at six years old. My guess is that your you are skeptical about that flag like you're an adult about that far faster than I was.

You know, the thing about, like, flag stuff is and I've talked about this before, like the capitalism thing, that that for people who don't know the story, told the story to a reporter for GQ that I went to a very red, black and green like preschool.

And I found a composition book at the house one day. And I was writing something about Martin Luther King is about one page in the composition book. And I wrote it. And the last line is and then the to the Shadow like that was that was that. But that was the language that people were talking in. But when I was seven, we moved to Texas and we moved to Houston. But I went to school in this little town called Wilder, Texas.

It was population forty eight hundred ninety three when I left back in the day. And one thing I'll always remember is the first day of school when we got there, they gave us a picture to color in and it was a picture of a guy like in full cowboy gear. I get cowboy hat, he had boots and all of that stuff, and I just colored him in alternating red, black and green. Red, black, agree. Red, black, agreed.

Like, this is the combination of the worlds that I had been in. But the other thing that happened was they said the Pledge of Allegiance. I had no idea like what in the world this was like.

This is a concept that was totally foreign to me. And I remember the teacher was this is like second grade. So the teacher was explaining what it meant to pledge allegiance. And she said that a pledge was to promise and allegiance was loyalty.

And she explained that I promise to be loyal to the flag.

And I remember I was seven years old and I was like, I don't even understand what that means. Like, how are you loyal to a flag? Like as a concept that never connected with me at another time where there's a boy in class who goes again by the Pledge of Allegiance, just the idea of saying this, I just didn't make any sense of the idea of pledging allegiance to anything formally in a chanting way, if you think about it, is I'm not sure, never mind to a fabric, but to a seven year old.

I can't even imagine how confusing this is, especially if you're literal minded.

Yeah. And if you again. Coming from a world that's like totally separate from this, but I remember in fifth grade, there was this one boy who never stood up and he never said the Pledge of Allegiance. And so I started doing the same thing because I just didn't like the idea of doing this, just didn't make any sense. I didn't have anything to do with what the flag represented, anything. But just the whole concept didn't make any sense.

And I remember the teacher called me outside to talk about it. And I think from there I did it because it just wasn't that big of a deal because it turned out the other boy wasn't doing it because he was a Jehovah's Witness. And I found that to be interesting, that, wow, you got more respect for the people that go knocking on your door so that you got for maybe I just don't think this is a good idea, really.

Oh, OK. I know what Jehovah's Witness at that time, I just like, oh, OK. This is what we're doing. Got it. So, yeah. So for me, just those things and what people are talking about. Yeah. Like it was clear to me very early that being American just meant something totally different to white people than it meant to black people, you know, and it's I'm amazed that white people can't understand it.

Like that's that's like even if you say you hadn't thought about it, I can get that part. But people who just can't grasp how it is that black folks might be looking at this different, that that's that's kind of mind blowing to me and still mind blowing.

Right. Like, you don't develop an immunity or a numbness to that that it's still still with everything that we're going through. You're 40 years old now. You've lived a lot. You've lived in a lot of different places. You've done a lot of learning through a lot of life experiences. It's still something that shocks you, right? Because it's like, why won't you just listen to this? It's not you can't you can't listen to the idea that there's a different perspective than yours.

Yeah, but I also understand how people to socialize in ways that they don't even recognize. So true story. One of my buddies is a writer, and he was telling me a story about how when he was younger, he was fascinated by the stories of the Atlanta child murders in the late 70s and early 80s. Like for whatever reason, he was just really, really into it. He read all the stuff you could about it or whatever. And one day he was on something like reading something about it.

And he says his grandfather looked at him and said. You don't care about that, do you? And he said he told them, no, I don't because he knew that was the right answer, as Grandpa was like, why don't you care about it? He said he told them what he knew really was the right answer. And this is why he's like six, seven years old or something like that. And he was. Because they're just dead black people, like it's not an exact quote, but that was just basically what it was because was just just black people by white folks do not realize how much of the rhetoric when a black person gets killed is around simply explaining why you shouldn't have to care like they're not going to make you care about this thing.

You don't have to care about this. You know, they don't matter. That's how you get into running the screen to see who the dude smokes weed at night or something like that. Right. That's how you get to go through the juvenile records and everything else. The kid who, when he shot those people up in Kenosha trying to find somebody to beat them up or whatever it was, all of it is not to say why it is that what he did was OK as much as explaining why the people who died or people that you don't have to care about, why they don't matter.

And that is reinforced over and over again in American society. And it's something that you really don't stop and think about. Like I bet you somebody listening to this right now and just had a giant eureka moment about that very point because they had not thought about it like that. But that's the one hundred percent truth. When you start hearing what people say after these things happened, it really just shakes out to why should I not care about that? But Brianna Taylor, well, her boyfriend shouldn't have been selling drugs.

That's why I don't have to care. Right. That's it. You're not allowed to shoot drug dealers just because they sell drugs. We all know that. But do you have to care after a drug dealer gets killed? Totally different discussion.

You know, I went into this wanting to talk to you about black quarterbacks. I went in there.

I mean, there's still a little room, but there's still this is this is actually a big deal right now. I tell people about this that beholds Jackson game. We would have been taking a day off of work back in the day for that game. We still should've took the day off of work. But I gave the best to quarterbacks in the League of Black. That's huge. That's giant. That's colossal.

What is that going to be, though, in five years when you're marketing Lamar Jackson and he makes the the whole game a little difficult because he doesn't do interviews the way that the pizza sellers want interviews done?

Yeah, I always kind of joke, but not really. You may remember this. What they are highly questionable is they never go let white quarterbacks go extinct.

They'll do whatever it takes to stop white quarterbacks and go to state going extinct. Guess what? White quarterbacks are going extinct. I don't know how long that's going to last, but white quarterbacks, I know of one NFL team that expressly went into the draft saying we're going to draft a black quarterback. Right. So I'm looking at the league right now. How many teams in the league right now have a white quarterback that you should feel good about or you can feel good about?

I supposed to right the Chargers young, young, white quarterback you're talking about. Yeah, right. Yeah, because because they had even really no old ones left except the really old ones.

Right. But so Buffalo where Josh Allen is really talented in spite of all the things that I think are obvious that hamstring what he will ultimately be, he is really talented and God knows they feel good about him. So we got him. I'm looking at the NFC East. There ain't a white quarterback there that nobody actually feels good about. They trying to make themselves feel good about Daniel Jones. And if they gave up on Carson Wentz. All right.

I'm looking at Cincinnati. Joe Barrow. That's the only answer. And the AFC North. I am looking at the NFC North. I mean, Aaron Rodgers is old and Matt Stafford, honestly, quiet's has kept old, but we'll throw him in there for the AFC South. I mean, I see why you might feel good about Philip Rivers, but I don't think he counts in this discussion, nor do I really think Ryan Tannehill counts in this discussion.

And he ain't young either. And I damn sure don't think Minshew does NFC South. I'm looking up and down there. If you don't feel good about somebody, all those guys are. Oh, Matt Ryan is. Oh, Drew Brees is. Oh, Tom Brady is. Oh, the AFC West. You've got to talk yourself into all those dudes, maybe Justin Herbert, but he just got there, the NFC West. Nope, nope, nope, nope.

I do. To feel good about there. There's four white quarterbacks I feel like you actually could feel good about if they're on your team right now. That's it. Good white quarterbacks drafted after two thousand nine that are still in the league.

They are really, really hard to find.

The paradigm of playing quarterback has changed. It is required mobility in a way that it didn't require before because the other teams that are going to this more uptempo spread out have a running quarterback type of thing. They're going to drive the points up and go required. Everybody is by Nick Saban had to stop playing to type of offense that they played in Alabama because they couldn't score enough.

You got to score more points now. And what is going to happen with this league? How are they going to sell this league when all of a said there is no Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers, like the Sunday Night Football game was. That's the premier game of the week. That was New Orleans and Green Bay. OK, it was Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers because that's what they've always sold. The Monday night game was the future of the NFL.

When are they going to be able to fully wrap their arms around the idea like they look that? Deshaun Watson, Patrick Mahomes on. On Thursday Night Football to start the year. So I don't want to act like we're like totally ignorant to what it is that's going on, but this is the future of this league. Are they gonna let these guys selling shirts like that to me is going to be the question because they should be able to selling shirts like Patrick Mahomes.

He can sell insurance is the Jackson will be able to sell insurance, like when is Russell Wilson going to move into to that next level where he's getting deals not just for companies run out of Seattle? You know what I mean?

Well, help me understand this, because Cam Newton had the Dannon yogurt ad, and that was that was being that's the demo. Is is women there? Yes and yes. Yes.

And so help me understand, like what you think is problematic for the league in terms of selling if the white quarterback goes extinct or comes close to going extinct because, yes, Baker Mayfield is the one with the national and somehow even though he was terrible right.

Now, here's the question.

Why do we call the NBA a black league, but we do not call the NFL a black league, the only truly visible white players in the NFL, with the exception of a handful of defensive end quarterbacks.

Like Christian McCaffrey, basically, but think about the way we talk about any wide receiver that we get out here who's trying to put Julian Edelman into the Hall of Fame, you know what I'm saying?

I mean, think about how we do that. They've always had white quarterbacks facing the front, like wearing suits and extension of management. But that held in what the what the oppression and division of the median American was the quarterback Hill, that it is America going to be able to look at this future of black quarterbacks the same way. Right. Because if you want to I mean, this is this is what this comes down to with Josh Allen. If you want to look at the difference in the ways that people behave around quarterbacks and have to look at everything related to Josh Allen and how badly people want Josh Allen to do, well, just totally want him to do well in any sort of way.

Josh Allen has no idea what he's doing out there. He's just so talented that he can overcome it. Like I remember when he was in the draft that told people, I don't think this is a good idea, but I absolutely see why he's going to why he's going to go early like he is a first round pick. I just don't think he's going to work out very well. Right. So it's not like I got this, like, hatred of him or I can't acknowledge anything that he's capable of doing.

But Tyrod Taylor got them into the playoffs for the first time in 19 years. They were trying to bench him in the middle of the year for literally the second word, maybe even the first worst quarterback that I've ever seen in my life. Then they ran him out of there the next year. And then Josh Allen, guess what? He turned out to be what your best case scenario? Tyrod Taylor would be a guy who runs around a lot, throws the ball downfield, probably takes a few too many sacks, all those sorts of things.

He is Josh Allen, but they want Josh Allen to be good so badly, so badly because people root for the white quarterback is it ain't even really an underdog, you know, but they root for the white quarterback so much because that's what they've always rooted for. That's what the league is always built itself around, is rooting for white quarterbacks. And can they brand this league as they do so much and all the red, white and blue and with all the attachment to the police and everything else, can they do that if the league at some point becomes like half black quarterbacks?

Because right now it ain't that many black quarterbacks, it's just that the ones that are there are really good. Like, you have to be really good in order to be there. Before we get you out of here, last question, I'm just curious what your takeaways were as a writer who enjoys pieces that have some weight on them. Howard Bryant wrote something for ESPN Dotcom about 9/11, about police worship, about sports, and how we have these conflicting messages out there right now in a way that you can't be almost both things Black Lives Matter and all about the police force.

What were your takeaways from that piece? What were the things that you found interesting?

I think it made me realize something. There is a whole generation of baseball fans that probably do not know the words to take me out to the ballgame. Because we don't do that no more, we do God bless America and I and the thing about God bless America like that ain't even like our national song or anything like that.

I don't think I had ever heard God Bless America until the year 2001. My God, can you think of a time that you would just gone somewhere and they were playing God Bless America? No, it wasn't a song that was truly in our canon in that way, but it became one after 9/11 because in that time period, we need to wrap our arms around the idea of patriotism, which make perfect sense at the time. Right. Even if it was an attack perpetrated effectively by civilians for lack of a better term, it was an attack on the country and it made one hundred percent sense that people would basically people would unify around the one thing, at least in theory, we all have in common, which is being Americans.

But the thing is, we never stopped. I just kept on going and going and going. And we've been in been in a war now for almost 20 years of some sort. Right. And so this all just keeps going and going and going. And we don't even think about it so much anymore. And how it makes the interesting point, which is how all of this extended to the police and made the police a group of people that were then venerated in the same way that we venerate the military, like we've given the police the standing of soldiers and then everybody that's fighting like some big issue or whatever it is, we turn them all into soldiers, too, because that's the that's the impact and the effect of 9/11.

But Howard's point is a good one. And which is can you do law enforcement night twice a week while also saying Black Lives Matter? Is that a thing that is truly possible for you to pull off?

That's going to be a little bit tricky for you to do. It was kind of like the NFL having an race and racism in the end zone and then chiefs all across it right below, right about like, how can you do both?

And is anybody going to make them reconcile those ideas?

Well, good talking to you again, people. Check out the podcast. It is a lot of laughs and a lot of light as well. If you want some illumination, the right time with Bomani Jones. Thank you, sir.

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