Dear ESPN and Toure: What’s So Black About Michael Vick’s Playing Style?
According to an article in ESPN Magazine Michael Vick Plays Quarterback Like Some Black Guy
It’s one thing to have folks disagree with a piece and it’s another write something that makes no sense at all. Somehow, in his piece that he says he didn’t name “What if Michael Vick Were White” the writer Toure managed to do both. Kudos. It’s quite a feat.
For those who aren’t familiar with Toure he often writes about black people and black culture. But at every turn, it’s clear that he’s a man who has a dysfunctional relationship with race. And it bothers me that mainstream publications have called upon this individual to be a sort of “negro whisperer.” According to Toure, he was asked by ESPN to produce a piece on Vick.
—feel free to skip down to “My Issue With The Part I Understood” if you don’t like messy details—
Messy Details
On twitter, Toure has revealed time and time again his fascination with blacks. He has even posed questions about caring for his (partly black) children’s hair—what comb to use, what shampoo et cetera. It appears that Toure, himself a black male, is lost as to what to do with the black hair of his black son and has no black family members to help him deal with this black dilemma in a black manner. Perhaps this confusion is why he reportedly told everyone he was French while he was in college.
But what took the cake for me was the time that he tweeted about black female slaves SEDUCING their white masters. And when an uproar ensued, he insisted that he’d gone to yoga class and his COUSIN took his phone and tweeted those terrible things. He later admitted that he’d tweeted the ideas himself.
But even without these messy background details that I couldn’t resist sharing, it’s painfully clear that Toure is full of shit.
In his ESPN piece, Toure continues to work out his issues with being black in front of a public audience. Only this time, he projects his conflicted fuckery onto Philadelphia Eagles Quarterback Michael Vick.
My goodness, doesn’t Vick have enough problems?
My Issue With The Part I Understood
The article in totality sounded like an ethnic comedian talking. You know those “black people do this (insert negative thing), but white people do that (insert positive thing)” jokes. In one fell swoop Toure assigned dog fighting to inner city minority communities (dog fighting was traditionally a poor rural white activity), attributed fatherlessness to all black boys born to unwed mothers (a child born to an unwed mother is not necessarily fatherless), accused most local sports coaches of being “unsavory” bad influences on the young athletes they mold (umm what? Is he trying to say a coach may have intro’d Vick to dog fighting??), and implied that getting caught with marijuana is an urban youth kinda thing (I’ve seen COPs, I know that ain’t true!).
And moreover, the article made it seem like black athletes are a particularly troubled group in general and that did NOT sit right with me.
But this is a football blog so let me make this post somehow relevant rather than a random rant on a man who has disgusted me with his commentary time and time again. And who, by the way, should neva eva eva eva eva in life be allowed to write about America’s greatest sport.
The analogy he uses:
WHEN MICHAEL VICK PLAYS, I see streetball. I don’t just mean that sort of football where you have to count to four-Mississippi before you can rush the quarterback, nearly everything breaks down and it’s all great fun. I also mean street basketball. Vick’s style reminds me of Allen Iverson — the speed, the court sense, the sharp cuts, the dekes, the swag. In those breathtaking moments when the Eagles QB abandons the pocket and takes off, it feels as if he’s thumbing his nose at the whole regimented, militaristic ethos of the game.
All of that is why, to me, Vick seems to have a deeply African-American approach to the game. I’m not saying that a black QB who stands in the pocket ain’t playing black. I’m saying Vick’s style is so badass, so artistic, so fluid, so flamboyant, so relentless — so representative of black athletic style — that if there were a stat for swagger points, Vick would be the No. 1 quarterback in the league by far.
On Michael Vick playing street ball… I’d probably have less issues with Toure’s description if he didn’t 1. Make Vick sound like a running back and 2. Allude to Vick’s “raw” talent after he’s clearly gone through great pains to polish it. 3. Make it so obvious that anything “black” equals “street” to him (street meaning amateurish and preferring style over substance).
Without knowing this is an article about Vick, if someone said “XX QB’s style is so badass, so artistic, so fluid, so flamboyant, so relentless” my immediate thought would have been Drew Brees or in the past, Steve Young, not Michael Vick. Without “flamboyant,” those words absolutely apply to Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. And without the word “fluid” you could easily be talking about Ben Roethlisberger.
I would venture to say Toure has never watched a complete football game even once in his vaguely black life.
Toure capitalized on two lazy narratives for his piece: 1. That black people are just soooo much cooler than white folks that we must write about how FUCKING COOL they are and romanticize it all 2. That black QBs play the game entirely different and must be praised and criticized accordingly.
So what exactly is soooooo black about Michael Vick’s play in particular? Toure says he’s not talking about leaving the pocket (the normal black QB meme), so then what pray tell is it? And do these differences in style apply to other positions and races? Does Cleveland Browns running back Peyton Hillis play like a white man or a black man? Does New York Jets QB Mark Sanchez quarterback like a Mexican? I need answers!
If there IS something “**deeply African American” (VOMIT!!!) about the way Vick plays, the adjectives to describe what in the entire hell that means do not appear anywhere in Toure’s piece. And the idea that Vick’s game is ‘street’ seriously downplays the work this man has put into his game. It also underestimates what it takes to make it in the NFL. Raw talent cuts it in high school, but this is the pros. We off that!
Scrambling is not just a black thing. Extending a play isn’t just a black thing. EXCITEMENT is not just a black thing. All of Vick’s highlight-reel quality plays involve techniques he’s worked to perfect. Toure seems to think Vick’s abilities arrived in the mail with a bottle of melanin addressed to “da homie Mike Vick.”
** From unreliable sources I’ve heard that Michael Vick also has a deeply African American approach to eating fried chicken, breakdancing, and sitting around the house doing nothing.
Share
