I've been re-watching Friday Night Lights and one of the story lines deals with an assistant coach saying some comments the Panthers' running back Smash Williams and his belief that black players make better running backs than quarterbacks. Now although he didn't say it exactly like that the reporters who was interviewing him spun it their way to make it seem like he was saying only white players can play quarterback. I know this is a fictional storyline, but it is a good example of the media can spin something to cause a story to become bigger than what it is originally meant to be.

This kind of stuff happens all the time in the media especially with sports. If you watch the episode you see that the coach didn't really mean it in a way to be racist or anything he just didn't articulate what he was trying to say the right way.

This reminded of when Rush Limbaugh said on NFL Sunday Countdown that Donovan McNabb was overrated because the media wanted so badly for a black quarterback to succeed. I understand what he was trying to say, but coming from him and in that forum was not the best way to go about it. There might have been some truth to what he said he just should not have used that forum to bring it up. There was a former player on the show who is black and rebuttled politely even though you could visibly tell he was upset.

My point is that when you talk about race in the media you have to be careful as to how you bring it up. You saw it in a fictional show, Friday Night Lights, and in a live NFL Countdown show. Sports and race is a hot button issue because of the diversity of races in sports. Race is a touchy issue in sports and especially when it is being discussed by a white person. There are definitely issues that need to be addressed and there are some good people out there who discuss those issues. The media just needs to be careful when discussing those issues because other media members may take them out of context and spin them a different way.