Rashard Mendenhall thinks there are too many voices in the sports commentary room, especially white male ones. The 2009 Super Bowl champion kept it very real in a post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, with his polarized thoughts on the difference between the football knowledge base between the races.
“I’m sick of average white guys commenting on football,” Mendenhall posted. “Y’all not even good at football. Can we please replace the Pro Bowl with an All-Black vs. All-White bowl so these cats can stop trying to teach me who’s good at football. I’m better than ur goat.”
Better Than Ur GOAT
The racially based take underlies a considerable frustration that former professional athletes have with the professional sports commentary community. As more retired and active players in all significant sports develop their broadcast chops, Mendenhall is underlining a common issue: a muting of non-athletic voices.
The masses piled on Mendenhall for the comment, and many quickly reminded him of his perceived fumble at Super Bowl XLV, where, ironically, a white player, Clay Matthews, stripped him of the ball. The Green Bay Packers took the championship that year, winning 31-25 two years after the Steelers won a Super Bowl.
“[I am] simply tired of being berated by people who arent experts in de game,” Mendenhall posted. “We jus pretend like I’m the only athlete tired of fans talking trash? You dis upset over a single tweet. What about us? Like me or not, I’m a GREAT in football. This proves my point, u can’t speak on ball alone.”
For polarizing sports commentators like Jason Whitlock, Mendenhall’s frustration all stem from his “love of white meat,” claiming that Mendenhall has a white wife.
He quickly corrected Whitlock for going too far bringing up his wife and corrected her ethnicity with the hashtags #Lebanese to define what she is.
There has always been an unspoken rivalry between Black and white athletes. In boxing, it is an implicit selling point to match up fighters from two different races to create fight hype. Humans relate to each other through culture and always include race when finding matches.
There’s A War Going On Outside…
In boxing, two fighters from two different races create a competitive selling point that transcends athleticism and blends into cultural pride. Look no further than Jack Johnson vs. James Jeffries, Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, or Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor for fights based on race, sports, and culture.
Additionally, there is an embarrassment in the Black cultural side of sports, especially basketball, where losing to a white person denotes some issue with your game. These self-inflicted stereotypes do as much to negatively reaffirm Blackness as gifted athleticism as they assume whiteness as the opposite of athletically skilled.
An actual race war in football is a journey too far to explore sanely; however, what is clear is that Mendenhall doesn’t respect the acumen of white football players and analysts, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion,