Jordan McNair and Other "Tributes"

When I post on this blog, which I will try to do more than I have, I generally try to keep it light. That is mostly in the belief that I find sports to be fun and an easy opportunity at humor. I really cannot do that today, because I am having a hard time with our collective reaction to yesterday’s Maryland vs. Texas football game, and specifically the reaction to the tribute that Maryland’s football team paid to Jordan McNair. For those unaware, Jordan McNair passed away this summer as a result of a heatstroke he suffered during a team workout. The team took the field yesterday with 10 players and took a delay of game penalty, which Texas declined, in order to pay their respect to McNair.

Before I make my actual point, I want to preface it by saying I see the value in these tributes. When something tragic like this happens, a tribute such as the one made by Maryland is necessary to honor the player and their family. Tributes are important, meaningful, and necessary; but they do not hold something more than that. What I am referring to is the reaction to this tribute. I went on to Twitter after watching this and saw tweets including “all class from both sides.” All class. All class, from a school whose actions just led to the death of a student-athlete. Not even going to go with “some class.” Just nothing but class from that school that killed a kid.

I either have no idea what class means, or we all just forgot what this school did because some time has passed. In order to actually honor the meaning of these tributes and the life of Jordan McNair, this cannot be “all class.” Let’s collectively be better next time and not get swept up in something that just looks like its nice. Hopefully there is no next time to be better for, but the unfortunate reality of our sports culture is that it is conducive to really messed up tragedies. In order to prevent that next time, we need to put pressure on places like the University of Maryland to be better, and to hire coaches that are more compassionate towards their players. The way to put pressure on an institution is not to say that a nice gesture that in no way changes their reprehensible actions and culture is one that is “all class.”