BROWN, GRINER LEAVE LARGE IMPRINTS, BUT NEITHER IS A TRUE AMERICAN HERO
Cultural wars have led a rush to mourn the football great as “a God” and celebrate the Russia-detained WNBA standout like a rock star, but deeper examinations serve as reminders of harsh truths
The anointment of heroes shouldn’t be an elastic process. Mine skew toward those who save lives, cure diseases, teach children well, snuff out terrorists, serve in the military and, these days, obediently drive vehicles without road-rage episodes. In sports, heroes are ordained too loosely by agenda-driven, media-manufactured mythology.
Jim Brown, for one, was not a hero.
Brittney Griner, for another, is not a hero.
In recent days, since Brown’s passing at 87 and Griner’s return to the WNBA after 294 days in Russian custody, I’ve heard and read paeans of worship for both. They are prominent figures in American history, no doubt, and will leave lasting imprints of courage. But to be a hero, idealized for posterity, one’s magnitude must be so overwhelming that it minimizes glaring flaws in their journeys. Can we say that about either of them when compared to the heart surgeon, the first responder, the firefighter and the war veteran? I never have glorified athletes on a plane disproportionate to everyday life, which gets me into trouble at times. I don’t care. Neither is a hero, which isn’t to say worthy descriptions aren’t applicable.
Brown was a brawler and hellraiser, as a civil rights activist and the baddest football player of his or any time. He retired prematurely because he preferred to go Hollywood and make a movie than cede to his team owner’s threats to punish him. I was too young to witness his career as a pro and college running back who crushed defenders in his path, but when I attended his 80th birthday party during Super Bowl 50 week in San Francisco, his handshake still felt like a vice grip of fisted granite while his aura swallowed a room of celebrity well-wishers. Where Brown made his most stirring impact was in his embrace of Black empowerment in sports, such as when he urged Michael Jordan to take a social stand and grow a pair, causing Jordan to repel in rare silence at the height of his massive, merch-selling popularity.
“I was a symbol of a Black man who wanted all of my freedoms,” said Brown, in a frank self-synopsis, falling in line with another: “I do what I want to do.”
But was he a hero? LeBron James thinks so, writing on Instagram, “We lost a hero today. Rest in Paradise to the legend Jim Brown. I hope every Black athlete takes the time to educate themselves about this incredible man and what he did to change all our lives. We all stand on your shoulders Jim Brown. If you grew up in Northeast Ohio and were Black, Jim Brown was a God.”
He could not have been a God when he was arrested at least seven times, all for violent acts. He never was convicted after several accusations of domestic violence against women, including a 1985 case in which he was charged with rape, sexual battery and assault. Did he throw his girlfriend, fashion model Eva Bohn-Chin, off a second-story balcony years earlier? The case was dismissed when she wouldn’t testify. Just as he couldn’t be tackled on the field, he eluded the law at every turn. Accordingly, Brown admitted his mistakes to Sports Illustrated, saying in 2002, “I can definitely get angry, and I’ve taken that anger out inappropriately in the past. But I’ve done so with both men and women.” In his autobiography, “Out of Bounds,” he left no doubt about his behavior, writing, “I don’t think any man should slap a woman. In a perfect world, I don’t think any man should slap anyone, and I don’t consider slapping people a sign of strength. In my case, it’s related to a weakness.”
Cancel culture hadn’t arrived yet, so he avoided the fury of social-media mobs. Not that he would have cared. Jim Brown lived and crusaded as he pleased, which endears him for the right reasons and condemns him for his worst moments. He deserves plaudits, such as this from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell: “He was a gifted athlete (who) became a forerunner and role model for athletes being involved in social initiatives.” But let’s not trip over ourselves to understate or justify his mistakes, as seen on too many sports sites, sometimes in the commentary of Black journalists who might crucify a well-known White athlete with a similar or less messy off-field track record.
“Was he a great man? To me, because of how he impacted me, yes,” wrote The Athletic’s Jim Trotter. “But was he a flawed man? Without question. Both things can be true.”
Juxtapose that against treatment of another football great, Brett Favre, who has been brutalized in the media as a bad guy, through and through, though he has yet to be convicted in a Mississippi welfare scandal. Has Favre done a bad thing? Looks like it. He’s certainly no hero. But is anyone writing that this country dude can be a great man AND a flawed man? Trevor Bauer is exiled from Major League Baseball though he never was arrested, much less convicted after a months-long investigation, because a woman who twice sought rough sex at his home said he sexually assaulted her. Is he a hero? Not anywhere near. But to read opinions about the outspoken Bauer, a former Cy Young Award winner, he should walk off the face of the planet as a life failure.
Jim Brown? He’s still a great man, they say. No, he was a great activist and a great athlete. Be sure to differentiate before fitting him for a halo. Be sure to judge all people as human beings, not as Black people and White people in different bins. Credit leading media organizations, including the New York Times and Washington Post, for detailing Brown’s misdeeds in news stories about his death. It’s the opinionists, or some of them, who declare him a great man when he was not.
Griner, meanwhile, is a 21st-century geopolitical survivor. Her punishment — detainment in a Moscow airport, followed by almost nine months of captivity — was far more punitive than her crime, at least by American standards. But when she packed her luggage for a familiar trip to Russia and included vape cartridges containing cannabis oil, she tried to slough it off as a forgetful lapse. That was a lie. No one who traveled as extensively as Griner, and made a portion of her livelihood in Vladimir Putin’s domain, suddenly blanks out about the potential consequences of smuggling even a small amount of drugs across his borders. She knew what she was doing.
And she was at fault for underestimating how she could be exploited, as a U.S. basketball star, at a time when Putin was invading Ukraine and looking for any leverage against non-allies. She was allowed to rot behind bars and eventually was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony. This was a brutal exercise in using her to squeeze President Biden, who eventually succumbed to Putin in a lopsided trade swap, relinquishing a dangerous arms dealer, Viktor Bout, known creepily as “the Merchant of Death.” For Griner’s packing “mistake,” she set free a killer. If her bravery and perseverance were remarkable while incarcerated, nothing is heroic about the repercussions of vape cartridges and cannabis oil, as Putin laughs in his compound.
Nonetheless, over the weekend, Griner was treated like a conquering hero upon making her return to the sport. In Los Angeles, she was welcomed back in a neon Nike display on the side of a downtown building. Inside Crypto.com Arena, Vice President Harris welcomed her in the locker room of the Phoenix Mercury. The public-address announcer led 10,396 fans in a “Welcome home, BG!” chant. Celebrities sat courtside. Two days later, in her first regular-season home game since 2021, she was introduced to a fawning crowd on a red carpet.
She wiped away tears, saying later, “Part of the process of healing is kind of just letting it out. So, yeah, I got choked up a little but but tried to hide it.” It was remarkable to see Griner in uniform when, not long ago, her family and friends worried she would die in jail.
“It actually makes you feel more American,” she said of her ordeal.
But the celebration seemed awkward, if not overdone, when considering the reason she was detained. A drug bust — stream the movie “Midnight Express” to see what happens to U.S. smugglers abroad — suddenly was turned into a multiple-cause political rally.
“A day of joy,” Mercury coach Vanessa Nygaard said. “We brought home this woman, this Black gay woman, from a Russian jail. And America did that because they valued her. ... It makes me very proud to be an American. And even though there are people for who that doesn’t make them proud, for me, I see her, and I see hope.”
Some of us still see dope, too. And wonder what would happen to us in Russia if we weren’t a “Black gay woman” who played basketball. Would we ever be heard from again? For sure, we wouldn’t be brought home within months and whisked to the Met Gala in New York and White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, where Biden acknowledged her presence and said, “Boy, I can hardly wait to see you back on the court.”
All I want in this world is what Jim Brown wanted and what Brittney Griner wants: equality. As a columnist, I’ve dealt with slurs of all sorts and dismissed them as part of the gig, what I signed up for in journalism.
I was called “Gibroni” on an ESPN debate show and ignored it.
I was called a “f—ing fag” by a crazed baseball manager and ignored it.
I’ve been called “Manicotti” and a “Dago” and ignored it.
In my years, I’ve been subjected to more profession-related bullshit — lies, legal treachery and ignorant cancellation attempts — than most people. And I don’t expect anyone to rush to my defense because, in the end, I’m just another person in the big world. A hero, I am not. Not even close, in any respect.
But I don’t pretend to be heroic, and I don’t hurl the word around liberally, even when aggrieved athletes overcome life’s hardships. I know who the actual heroes are in modern society. I saw one the other day in Santa Monica, helping an elderly woman who’d been accosted by a screaming driver because she’d pulled to a full stop at a red street sign.
The helper was Black. The woman was White.
In the culture wars, this was a real definition of hope.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.