Black Coach Choke (aka BCC)

I coined the phrase Black Coach Choke (BCC) several years ago, and have explained many times but never posted on the blog. What is the Black Coach Choke? The simplest explanation: It is the moment when a team is heavily favored going into a championship or major prime time game and they lose and the team has a Black Head Coach. Obviously, losing as a favorite is something that happens to coaches of all races. What I have seen in Black Coaches is that failure is not a result of them not being a good coach. What I have witnessed is that the failure seems to come out of a sense of loyalty. They simply expect their superstars to do what they always do and that will be enough. Almost an arrogance, if we play our game we will win. Problem is oftentimes superstars don't do what they always do under pressure. At that point it is the coach who needs to force the issue, not trust that things will work out. To be fair, I do not attribute this to every Black Coach that loses one of these games. When Mike Tomlin's Steelers lost to the Packers in the Super Bowl. I attributed that to the Packers having the better team. Plus Tomlin has won in that situation before. I think this started for me with Dusty Baker, back when he managed the Chicago Cubs team with Wood & Prior as the #1 & #2 pitchers and loss the World Series. Baker basically asserted if I get my 2 "aces" to pitch 4 games we will win. Dusty believed his superstars would come through. Problem is they failed. They failed because to accomplish this, he had to change the regular rotation and make them pitch on less rest than they had normally. Seemed to make sense as they were young and un-hittable, but on short rest they became very hittable. This continued with coaches like Tony Dungy. One has to ask how is it the team he coached in Tampa Bay was excellent perennially, but failed to make a Super Bowl. Then after he left someone else coaches the team and wins the Super Bowl. Another coach won with the team that Dungy built. It was the Black Coach Choke in its purest form. Jon Gruden (who replaced Dungy) basically came in and said we are going to protect ourselves from our potential weaknesses and not try to overcome them. Tony Dungy went on to the Indianapolis Colts and with one of the NFL's best QB's he continued to fail at the highest level. Fortunately for Dungy he made it into a Super Bowl and played against another Black Coach Lovie Smith for the Chicago Bears. The trust that Lovie Smith showed for his QB Rex Grossman is about the purest match to my explanation of the Black Coach Choke there ever could be. The fact that he could lead a team to a Super Bowl with a QB playing as poorly as Rex Grossman (nicknamed Train Rex) is a testament of how great a coach he is. His failure is only explainable by the Black Coach Choke. A sense of trust or arrogance that believed they could overcome those shortcomings or an unrealistic expectation that Train Rex could never meet. I still believe Tony Dungy would have never won a Super Bowl if he had not benefited himself from the BCC. Someone had to win! There is no argument that Dungy is one of the NFL's greatest coaches. His accomplishments are plentiful, he has even birthed a number of successful coaches out of his coaching system. The only logical (or maybe we should call it illogical) explanation for his lack of even greater achievement is the BCC? Read more!

Zimmerman

Interestingly, I wrote a blog post about the Zimmerman case and never mentioned race. The notion that this case is not about race is EXTREMELY disingenuous. For race not to be addressed as a contributing factor really makes the entire trial and the entire discussion dishonest. So essentially everybody is lying.

This case was completely about race. The problem in America is to admit that it was about race is to call someone a racist. When actually you should just call them an American. Our society has demonized the Black Male so badly they are viewed as criminals in the eyes of all Americans, not just by Whites.

A good illustration I see every day is riding the commuter rail to work. Our rail system requires you to purchase a pass before boarding. Then officials walk through the rail cars and ask riders to show their passes. Every day I witness someone explaining to the official why they do not have a pass. Without fail if the person is White they will generally not receive a citation, regardless of how poor of an explanation is stated. If the person is Black, particularly male, they most always receive a citation. This does not differ based on the race of the officer. Whether the officer is White, Black, or Brown consideration is made for the Whites and conviction is assessed to the Blacks.

Why so? Its our culture. We are trained to believe the White person is a hard-working and honest so his reasoning is valid. The Black person is a poor lying thug that shouldn’t even be on the commuter rail. So when we hear him speak our brain is processing anything he says as a lie. He is just a criminal, a bum that is up to no good.

I will be the first to argue that this notion is warranted, but it has been inflamed by the media. Local news, movies, national media coverage, conviction rates, and stereotypes all suggest that Blacks commit crimes at a rate disproportionate to our numbers in society. In reality, per FBI statistics annually almost 70% of arrests for crimes are committed by Whites. This does not even take into consideration that arrest rates for Blacks are higher than arrest rates for Whites even though both report similar rates of delinquency. That would require an entire separate post to discuss.

A simple argument would easily distill more crimes are committed by Whites because there are simply more White people. That argument is perfectly logical, what is not logical is the media coverage considering that fact. News broadcast show Blacks committing crimes in 90% of reports that are broadcast about crime although they make up 30% of crimes? The fact that crime consumes 7X more news time than any other news topic is an issue within itself considering how much information there is to be covered. That would require an entire separate post to discuss as well. I am not sure I am even ready to touch that one at all.

I say all this not to make a point that Blacks are misrepresented even if the facts support such. As my grandmother always said, “if those niggas were not out there doing it, they couldn’t put it on TV.”

My point was to say that this fear of the Black criminal is almost solely perpetuated by the media. Most people in the US have not been a victim of a crime, even less victims of a violent crime, even less had that crime committed to them by a Black male. So most people have not personally or even known anyone that has had a violent crime committed against them, but every time they see a Black person they suspect he will commit some criminal act? Which says to me if you have not experienced it personally then your viewpoint has been provided to you by an external source. Read more!