As NBA superstar LeBron James wears his “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirt at the volatile intersection where sports and issues of race in America collide, 74-year-old Colorado coaching legend Bill McCartney watches intently. He has kin in this game.
Coach Mac prays for the dreams of his grandson, star Buffs defensive end Derek McCartney, whose dark skin starkly stands out in Boulder, a college town where nearly 90 percent of the population is white and only one out of 100 residents is black.
“My heart hurts for people of color. People of color have such a sense of frustration because they don’t think white folks get it, in terms of what oppression or opportunity or justice means in America,” McCartney told me Tuesday. The architect of CU’s 1990 national championship allowed his thoughts to drift to his 21-year-old grandchild, a 240-pound defensive lineman born to the coach’s daughter and former Buffaloes player Shannon Clavelle.
The young McCartney was a ray of hope on a CU team that lost 10 games in 2014, as the redshirt freshman led the Buffs with 4½ sacks. But the real big dream at work here is a football player who aspires to be a physician.
“My grandson is African-American,” said the Hall of Fame coach, whose record with the Buffs was 8-3-1 in 1993, the year his second grandchild was born. “Derek is like fresh-driven snow. His dreams and ambitions are innocent and strong.”
But the truth of being a young, black man in the United States is often filled with more despair than hope, whether the grim statistic is an alarmingly high rate of unemployment, or the unsettling scene on our television screens is another angry response to deadly police force during the tragedies that claimed the lives of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y.
St. Louis Rams receiver Tavon Austin was among the NFL players who protested the summer shooting death of Brown by entering the field at a recent home game with hands help up in the internationally recognized position of surrender. James, the brightest superstar in the NBA galaxy, demonstrated his social conscience Monday, by wearing a T-shirt paying tribute to Garner before tip-off against the Brooklyn Nets.
“Obviously, our society needs to do better. … Violence isn’t the answer, and retaliation isn’t the solution,” James told reporters at the arena after Cleveland’s victory. “As a society, we have to get better. It’s not going to be done in one day. … We all have to do better.”
I applaud James, as it is far safer, and more profitable, for a prominent sports personality to endorse sneakers rather than stand at the center of contentious debate that extends far beyond the boundaries of the playing field. His willingness to be heard makes James unique, as it often seems as if an entire athletic generation moved on after boxer Muhammad Ali’s rant against the Vietnam War, and few big-name athletes spoke up about anything that didn’t involve polishing the brand.
Which reminds me: Like it or not, for better or worse, depending on your political view, when McCartney coached the Buffaloes from 1982-94, he used his fame as a bully pulpit to express ideas dear to his heart, even if the cause was a hot-button topic such as abortion.
“A professional athlete has a window when he’s competing that’s very small compared to the length of life. To use his influence to express opinion on social issues is opportunistic,” McCartney said.
Long before James ruffled feathers by daring to wear a black “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirt, McCartney believed enacting social change through sports was his moral duty. “When I was coach at CU, we had nine assistants. Five of my assistants were black, which I felt was very important. And the reason for that was Boulder is pure white,” McCartney said. “When an African-American athlete came to CU, he could walk around town and might think: ‘I’m not sure I belong here.’ But when he walked into the football office or ran on Folsom Field with his teammates and coaches, it validated him.”
From behind a CU podium in 1992, McCartney made the divisive declaration that homosexuality was “an abomination against almighty God.” But don’t you have to respect the courage of his convictions? At the height of his powers as a football coach, McCartney walked the walk of his beliefs. He stepped away from his lucrative job with the Buffs to devote more time to his family and Promise Keepers, a male Christian group that was both accused of sexism and credited for assembling men by the hundreds of thousands for fellowship during a 1997 rally in Washington, D.C.
“People are much more tolerant of controversial issues, even if they don’t agree with you, if you don’t talk about spiritual convictions,” McCartney said. “When you have strong spiritual convictions, it’s offensive to many people. If they don’t agree with you, they just as soon you shut up.”
A political football is far more dangerous to carry than cradling a basketball with an eye on dunking over a nasty 7-foot defender. While their politics might differ, James boldly now walks in the footsteps of Mc- Cartney.
Here’s the risk: When a sports personality opens his mouth on a hot-button issue, fans listen. But the cheering stops. And it can stop forever from fans who pay their money for a sports star to win, not think.
Mark Kiszla: mkiszla@denverpost.com or
