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      Tiger Woods and Another Terrible Turn of Fate

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Tiger Woods’s Car CrashWill He Play Again?Sheriff Expects No ChargesGolf Without WoodsA Terrible Turn of FateCareer Highs and LowsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySports of the TimesTiger Woods and Another Terrible Turn of FateIt is easy to cling to memories of Tiger Woods at his peaks, but his vulnerability tells as much, if not more, about his powerful hold on sport and culture.Tiger Woods at Augusta National Golf Club in 2019, when he won his fifth Masters title and his 15th major championship.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021Updated 8:08 a.m. ETThe sight of his demolished S.U.V., sitting forlornly on a grassy Southern California hillside, belied the image of Tiger Woods as an invincible force marching across the golf course to certain, thrilling triumph.That was not always the case, and lately his victories have been far from commanding. But so much is embodied in Tiger. And in this period of pandemic and relentless loss, we struggle to confront visions of a crumpled vehicle, of him lying in a hospital bed, of leg bones shattered and questions about whether he will play again — while still dissecting who he is and what he has wrought.What happened to the sterling athlete who so many expected to reshape the game of golf and even, perhaps, the broader culture?Woods’s greatness, once seemingly preordained, has been dimmed over the past dozen years by stunning falls from grace and by betrayal from his body.But many of us still cling to him, even if it means grasping at shards of memory. We remember the prodigy who burst into view on the nationally televised “Mike Douglas Show,” hitting putts at age 2.We remember his Stanford years and the Masters of 1997, the first of 15 major titles, won in history-making fashion at age 21.When you think of Woods, what comes to mind?After his first Masters victory in 1997, Woods received his green jacket from Nick Faldo, the previous year’s winner.Credit…Amy Sancetta/Associated PressIs he the superstar who lived for toppling records? Who grew up with his eyes fixed on breaking Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major championships? Recall that there was a time when this seemed like an audacious, even arrogant, goal. Then he set about the chase, quickly drawing oh-so-near to Nicklaus, major after major. Is he the golfer whose very presence in a largely segregated, upper-crust sport was not only startling, but also a harbinger of the issues that frame our world today?With his shimmering brown skin, his power and confidence, Woods blew down the doors of the all-white country clubs. Remember the snide and easy way in which the golf veteran Fuzzy Zoeller referred to Woods as “that little boy”? Or Zoeller’s publicly urging Woods not to put fried chicken and collard greens on the menu of the Masters’ champions dinner?That was the golf culture Woods strode into, and took over, as the world watched.But how did he see himself? Here things get tricky. Raised in predominantly white suburbs by a mother from Thailand and an African-American father, Woods was one of the first major sports figures to openly embrace the idea that he represented multiplicity. “Growing up,” he told Oprah Winfrey shortly after that first Masters win, “I came up with this name: I’m a Cablinasian.”In a world that struggles to go beyond placing race in tidy boxes, that comment alienated some of his most ardent supporters. But if he was chided for seeming to keep his Blackness at a distance, it didn’t dent his popularity. No matter how Woods defined himself, he was imbued with a certain power. Forever the trailblazer and talisman. He put a torch to the old order. That was enough.Then came 2009, and a troubling descent. It began with tabloid tales of the married Woods engaging in serial infidelity. Eventually his deepest flaws were exposed: his illicit texts, his trysts, his trips to rehab as he battled addiction.Woods frustrated at a tournament in 2018.Credit…Sam Hodgson for The New York TimesWoods was among the first transcendent sports stars to emerge at the dawn of the digital age. His aura, his race, his swagger and shotmaking, the club twirls and fist bumps and miracle shots — all of it was perfectly suited for YouTube and the rise of sports apps that feast on fleeting moments and sensational emotion.The digital age also magnified his troubles. Each imperfection was there to see, personal and professional. For much of a decade, as the advancing years wreaked havoc on his body and the surgeries piled up, Woods was a shadow of his former self. Heading into 2019, he had not won a major tournament in nearly 11 years.Yet Woods somehow remained swaddled in Teflon. The revelation of his human frailties cost him plenty of fans and endorsements. But a significant portion of his admirers forgave and forgot. The continued embrace was a willful act by a public all too eager to dole out second and third chances to a winner. Especially a winner like Woods.He continued to be a top draw, a global icon, even as he grimaced through season after season, age and injury taking an ever-steeper toll. At one point, he was ranked 1,119th in the world. But then came April 2019, and the Masters. Summoning every remnant of his former self, he surged to victory, legions celebrating his fifth champion’s green jacket.Nobody who watched that tournament will forget it. Not just the stirring comeback, but the sight of Woods wrapping his son, Charlie, and his daughter, Sam, in his arms as he walked from the final green. It called to mind the embrace given by Woods’s father, Earl, after the Masters win in 1997. It spoke, too, of poignant change in the face of time. Woods was no longer the soaring young champion, but he could still reach the highest peaks, if only in short bursts.Woods after winning the 2019 Masters, his first major victory in over a decade. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesApril 2019 feels so long ago, given all that the world has gone through this past year.And now this. On Tuesday we saw the remains of that S.U.V. and waited for the updates. We shuddered, remembering Kobe Bryant’s helicopter, strewn across another Southern California hillside just over a year ago.We listened as a sheriff and his deputies described the wreckage, explaining that Woods was lucky to be alive and that drugs and alcohol did not appear to be involved. They said he had been pried from his vehicle and carried off on a stretcher.“Unfortunately,” said one of them, “Mr. Woods was not able to stand on his own power.”How could such a circumstance befall Tiger Woods, who strode across majestic golf courses with so much purpose? It was a reminder, once again, that heroes are human, full of weakness, unable to dodge the terrible twists of fate that stalk us all.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jaguars' Hiring of Chris Doyle Called 'Unacceptable' by Fritz Pollard Alliance

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDiversity Group Calls Jaguars’ Hiring of Assistant Coach ‘Simply Unacceptable’The Fritz Pollard Alliance criticized the addition of Chris Doyle, who was accused of mistreatment of Black players at the University of Iowa, to Urban Meyer’s staff in Jacksonville.Chris Doyle in 2018 at the University of Iowa, where he was the football team’s strength and conditioning coach.Credit…Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressFeb. 12, 2021Updated 9:36 p.m. ETAn organization that promotes diversity in the N.F.L. on Friday criticized the Jacksonville Jaguars’ recent hiring of Chris Doyle, who left the University of Iowa’s football staff last year after a number of current and former Hawkeyes players said he had fostered a culture of bullying and racism.A statement from the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which is named for the first Black head coach in the N.F.L., said the Jaguars’ decision to make Doyle their director of sports performance was “simply unacceptable.”“Doyle’s departure from the University of Iowa reflected a tenure riddled with poor judgment and mistreatment of Black players,” Rod Graves, the executive director of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, said in the statement. “His conduct should be as disqualifying for the N.F.L. as it was for University of Iowa.”Doyle, who was Iowa’s strength and conditioning coach, reached a separation agreement with the university in June, ending two decades of work there.The Jaguars announced on Thursday that Doyle had joined the staff of Urban Meyer, who was named Jacksonville’s head coach last month. Meyer, who won two college national championships as the head coach at Florida and one at Ohio State, has not coached since 2018 and has never worked in the N.F.L. before.The hiring of Doyle, who is white, comes at a time of intense scrutiny of the N.F.L.’s hiring practices and questions about whether minority candidates for coaching jobs have equal opportunities to be hired.“I’ve known Chris for close to 20 years,” Meyer said on Thursday when questioned about hiring someone who had been accused of mistreating Black athletes. Doyle was the strength coach at the University of Utah in the late 1990s, a few years before Meyer was hired as the head coach there.“Urban Meyer’s statement, ‘I’ve known Chris for close to 20 years,’ reflects the good ol’ boy network that is precisely the reason there is such a disparity in employment opportunities for Black coaches,” Graves said in the statement.Neither the N.F.L. nor the Jaguars responded to a request for comment on the Fritz Pollard Alliance’s statement.During a news conference last week, N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell said that he was not satisfied with the rate at which coaches of color have been hired in the N.F.L., which has 32 teams.“It wasn’t what we expected,” he said of the diversity in the round of hirings after the 2020 season, “and it’s not what we expect going forward.”Of the seven head coaches hired since the end of the regular season, just two were nonwhite. Last year one of five head coaching jobs went to a minority candidate, and the year before just one in eight.Over the last three years 80 percent of head coaching jobs have gone to white candidates, though players of color made up 69.4 percent of the N.F.L. this season, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.After the Jaguars hired Meyer and General Manager Trent Baalke, who are both white, last month, Graves praised the organization for interviewing several minority candidates and for seeking input from the Fritz Pollard Alliance.“I cannot argue that the process didn’t meet the standard of fair, open and competitive,” Graves told The Florida Times-Union.The hiring of Doyle, however, raised issues beyond the N.F.L.’s commitment to diverse hiring.Before Doyle left Iowa, Emmanuel Rugamba, a former Hawkeyes defensive back, gave multiple examples of the coach demeaning players with negative racial stereotypes. Rugamba said in a tweet that one day after a Black player walked away from Doyle, the coach said, “Why you walking wit all that swagger I’ll put you back on the streets.”James Daniels, a Chicago Bears offensive lineman and a former Hawkeye, tweeted over the summer: “There are too many racial disparities in the Iowa football program. Black players have been treated unfairly for far too long.”Doyle also presided over an off-season workout in 2011 that resulted in the hospitalization of 13 players.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      At the Super Bowl, the N.F.L.’s Social Message Is Muddled

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Super Bowl 2021N.F.L.’s Most Challenging YearGame HighlightsThe CommercialsHalftime ShowWhat We LearnedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Pro FootballAt the Super Bowl, the N.F.L.’s Social Message Is MuddledThe N.F.L. espoused racial unity and praised health care workers. But its inaction on racial diversity, its stereotypic imagery and its decision to host a potential superspreader event said something different.Masked fans paid tribute to front line workers and displayed messages of racial unity during the second quarter of the Super Bowl.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesFeb. 8, 2021Updated 3:38 p.m. ETThe N.F.L. likes to project power and precision. Sideline catches are scrutinized with zoom lenses, first downs are measured in inches and Air Force jets fly over stadiums just as “The Star-Spangled Banner” reaches its peak.But when it comes to topics like race, health and safety, the league’s certainty dissolves into a series of mixed messages.That was the case on Sunday at the Super Bowl, the N.F.L.’s crowning game, which is typically watched by about 100 million viewers in the United States. The championship game provides the league a massive platform each year to promote itself as America’s corporate do-gooder, with the best interests of its enormous fan base at heart. That was harder to do this year as the country remained roiled by the deadly coronavirus pandemic, which has exacerbated festering political division and racial unrest, issues the N.FL. had to plow past to complete its season.On Sunday, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., the N.F.L. trumpeted its support for the fight against social injustice. The national anthem was performed by two musicians, one Black and one white. The poet Amanda Gorman, who wowed the country with her recitation at President Biden’s inauguration, read an ode to the three honorary captains — a teacher, a nurse and a soldier — frontline workers in different fields. The TV announcers spoke often of the work that the league and the players have done to battle racial inequities.Yet, moments later, when the Kansas City Chiefs took the field, the N.F.L. played a recording in the reduced capacity stadium of the made-up war cry that is a team custom. The prompt got fans to swing their arms in a “tomahawk chop,” an act that many find disrespectful and a perpetuation of racist stereotypes of the nation’s first people. Last week, the Kansas City Indian Center, a social service agency, put up two billboards in the city that read, “Change the name and stop the chop!”The Kansas City Chiefs took the field as the N.F.L. played the “tomahawk chop” on speakers inside Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York Times“At the start of the game it was all unify, unify, unify, and then there’s this racist chant,” said Louis Moore, an associate professor of history at Grand Valley State University who studies connections between race and sports. “Eight months after George Floyd, and you’ve done all this stuff, letting players put phrases on the backs of their helmets, giving workers a paid holiday for Juneteenth. They are putting a corporate Band-Aid on a problem instead of dealing with it.”Moore pointed to other inconvenient realities that were either dismissed, ignored or obscured by the relentless messaging.There was scant mention of Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who has not played since the 2016 season, when he began kneeling during the national anthem to shine a light on police brutality.That led to a sharp, viral rebuke on Twitter from the singer Mariah Carey.There was little talk of the league’s abysmal record hiring people of color as head coaches and general managers even as television cameras showed the Chiefs’ successful offensive coordinator, Eric Bieniemy, who is Black and has been unable to land a head coaching position in multiple hiring cycles.Before the game, CBS Sports showed a segment that featured Viola Davis, the Academy Award-winning actress, saluting Kenny Washington, a Black player who in 1946 reintegrated the N.F.L., which had an unofficial color barrier for 13 years.Yet there was no discussion of a lawsuit brought by two former N.F.L. players who accuse the league of rigging the concussion settlement to make it harder for Black players to receive payments.The league spent considerable time lauding nurses and other health care workers on the front lines who have been helping fight the coronavirus. It had invited 7,500 vaccinated workers to the game, a signal to Americans that if you, too, get inoculated, you will be able to safely attend big events like the Super Bowl.Not discussed was that just hosting the Super Bowl could lead to a spike in the number of infections. Sure, the N.F.L. provided fans at the game with face masks and hand sanitizer, but little if any contact tracing was done to monitor exposure. Tracking infected fans will be made all the more difficult as people return to their homes in all corners of the country.Many people flocked to Tampa the week of the Super Bowl, flooding bars and restaurants.Credit…AJ Mast for The New York TimesThe Super Bowl, American sports’ biggest party, is not confined to TV and phone screens. The week of events leading up to the game was a magnet for tens of thousands of fans who attended parties or flocked to Tampa’s bars and restaurants, often unmasked. In the aftermath of the home team’s victory, mask-less revelers took to the streets of Tampa, an utterly predictable scene that has followed other major championships. Many of the people who celebrated without regard to social distancing or other guidelines will expose others to the virus as they travel home.For all the N.F.L.’s feel-good words and gestures to this moment in American history at the Super Bowl, and its attempts to use football to try to bring the nation together, the league’s carefully crafted message risked being muddled by its actions.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Officer in Tamir Rice Shooting Playing on Football Team Sparks Protest

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyProtests Rise After Officer in Tamir Rice Shooting Plays on Football TeamTimothy Loehmann, who was fired from the Cleveland police force after the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, has quietly played with a semipro team in Ohio.A photograph of Tamir Rice became part of a memorial at the Cleveland park where he was fatally shot by Timothy Loehmann in 2014.Credit…Ty Wright for The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2021Updated 7:19 p.m. ETWhen the new player appeared on the semipro football team made up of emergency workers, he simply went by Tim or Timmy. He was noticeably bad at football, said Randy Knight, a lineman on the team, who took Tim under his wing and taught him the basics: assuming a three-point stance, “firing off” the line, proper hand placement at the line of scrimmage.They did not interact much off the field, Knight said, but he played alongside Tim, who mostly kept to himself, without incident for more than two seasons.But in early 2019, a fellow semipro football player questioned why Knight was playing for the Cleveland Warriors.“They’re racist,” the player said of the Warriors, according to Knight. “The guy that killed Tamir Rice is on that team.”Tamir was the 12-year-old Black boy fatally shot by a white Cleveland police officer in 2014. Knight searched for information about Tamir’s killer on Google, and up popped images of the man he knew as Timmy — Timothy Loehmann.“I became irate,” said Knight, 32, a former corrections officer who is Black.Loehmann’s involvement with the team became public last week in a report by a local television station. Knight led a protest at the Warriors’ practice facility on Saturday, saying that the team’s management had lied to him by allowing Loehmann, who was fired from the police force in 2017 but not criminally charged in the shooting, to continue to play with the team. Activists and supporters of Tamir’s family have since expressed outrage over the former officer’s presence on the team, not least because it is in the National Public Safety Football League, which was originally started for law enforcement.“I think it’s careless and irresponsible for them to allow him to play,” Samaria Rice, Tamir’s mother, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “His career is over as a police officer in the state of Ohio as far as I’m concerned. It’s just ridiculous.”The league requires players to be active-duty emergency responders. Bill Sofranko, the coach of the Warriors, said that although Loehmann was fired in 2017, the team allowed him to continue to play while his arbitration appeal was pending and that Loehmann was removed from the team once he lost that appeal — in late 2019, after the most recent season was over. (The league, a 20-team group that began play in 1997, did not play last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.)Sofranko, who is white, said that he had allowed Loehmann to continue to practice with the team and that, contrary to what Knight claimed, he had never hidden the former officer’s identity.Loehmann is still trying to regain his job as a Cleveland police officer — he is currently appealing his firing in state court. His lawyer, Henry Hilow, said it was unfair for people to criticize Loehmann for being on the football team.“Every time he does something now in his life, there’s going to be someone picketing?” Hilow asked. “There’s never been criminal charges against him. Whether people agree or disagree, that’s the reality of the situation.”A grand jury in Cuyahoga County declined in 2015 to charge Loehmann in the shooting of Tamir, and in late December, the Justice Department announced that it was closing its investigation into the case without filing charges.Sofranko, 65, said that Loehmann had joined the team in 2017 the way most players do — he just showed up one day. He did not know about Loehmann’s involvement in the Tamir shooting, Sofranko said, until the former officer told him at breakfast after practice one morning. Learning that, Sofranko said, never made him question whether Loehmann should be on the team.“Why should I have?” Sofranko said.One former player, who is Black and now serves as an assistant coach, said that he was initially uncomfortable when learning that Loehmann had killed Tamir, but that then he talked to the former officer about it.“I got to know Tim personally,” said the former player, who asked to be identified only by his nickname, Lebo. “He was remorseful. He was apologetic.”Sofranko said Knight had never lodged any objection to Loehmann’s presence on the team until about two weeks ago, when Sofranko informed Knight that he was being kicked off the team because he had left the Ohio corrections department and was no longer eligible to play in the league.“He’s using this Tamir Rice, this Black-white thing to support his anger and vengeance,” Sofranko said. “Every Black person on the team supports Tim Loehmann.”Knight forcefully denied that. He said that the coaching staff seemed to hide Loehmann’s full identity — that he was not introduced to the full team the way most other players are.Loehmann was circumspect with him once, Knight said. When Loehmann’s suspension from the police force came up during a conversation, Loehmann said that it was due to a technicality with his résumé and that he would soon have his job back, Knight recalled.Loehmann was indeed fired because he lied on his résumé, but Knight said he felt that he should have been more forthcoming about the Tamir shooting.But as soon as he found out who Loehmann was, Knight said, he reached out to several members of the team’s management, including Sofranko, to complain. Knight provided screenshots of several text messages sent to a team board member in March 2019 in which he expressed concern about Loehmann’s presence on the team.“How in the hell did this guy get on the team?” Knight said he asked the team’s management. “How did we allow this to happen?”Management assured him several times that Loehmann would no longer be on the team, Knight said. But each time Knight showed up to games, Loehmann was there. It all blew up before the championship game in 2019 in Los Angeles.The team paid everyone’s way there, in part with a $20,000 contribution from Dee Haslam, an owner of the Cleveland Browns, according to Sofranko. A Browns spokesman said it was a one-time contribution. The Haslam family was unaware that Loehmann was on the team at the time, he said, and does not plan to make any further donations.The night before the game, Knight said, he argued with several teammates about the fact that Loehmann had made the trip, but he eventually decided to play so as not to let down the team. The Warriors lost to the Los Angeles Grizzlies, 24-0.Knight said he decided to return this year after again receiving assurances that Loehmann would no longer be with the team. But Loehmann was at the practice facility in early January. Before he could object, Knight said, Sofranko told him that he was off the team for being disruptive.“Why is he here?” Knight said he asked Sofranko, referring to Loehmann. “So you all mad at me because I spoke out?”Knight returned to practice two weeks later, this time as a protester. The police were called to escort the protesters out of the practice facility.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Jennifer King Becomes First Black Woman to Coach N.F.L. Full-Time

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Washington Coach Reaches a First for Black Women in the N.F.L.Washington promoted Jennifer King to assistant running backs coach, making her the first Black woman with a full-time N.F.L. coaching job, amid increasing scrutiny on the diversity of the league’s hiring.The wild-card playoff game between Washington and Tampa Bay on Jan. 9 was the first N.F.L. playoff game with women in coaching roles on both sidelines: Lori Locust, a Bucs assistant defensive line coach, and Jennifer King, right, a Washington intern who was promoted to assistant running backs coach on Tuesday.Credit…Daniel Kucin Jr./Associated PressVictor Mather and Jan. 26, 2021Updated 6:22 p.m. ETThe Washington Football Team promoted Jennifer King to assistant running backs coach on Tuesday, making her the first Black woman to become a full-time coach in the N.F.L.King’s promotion accentuates the importance the Washington franchise has placed on diversifying after a tumultuous year in which its longtime logo and nickname, widely perceived as racist, were dropped. The move also comes as the N.F.L. faces increasing scrutiny because of its paucity of Black head coaches.King, 36, was a coaching intern with the team this past season and previously served as an intern with the Carolina Panthers and as an offensive assistant at Dartmouth College.“She earned this opportunity with hard work,” Washington Coach Ron Rivera said in a statement. “The sky truly is the limit for her.”The number of female coaches in the N.F.L. has grown, slowly but steadily, over the past five seasons, with eight women on staffs in 2020. According to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports, which tracks racial and gender demographics of coaches in five professional sports leagues, the N.F.L. trails only the N.B.A., which has nine female assistants.Yet while about 70 percent of N.F.L. players are Black, only two of the current head coaches are, and just four — including Rivera — are people of color, according to the league’s measure of diversity.Of the seven head coaching jobs that became available in the past four months, only one has been filled by a nonwhite candidate — the Jets’ Robert Saleh, who is a Muslim Arab American. The Houston Texans’ head coaching position is still open.Three minority candidates were hired as general managers in the past two weeks — Terry Fontenot in Atlanta, Brad Holmes in Detroit and Martin Mayhew in Washington — swelling the leaguewide total to five. The general manager hirings are significant, because their roles enable them to hire, and recommend, more people of color to join their organizations. But they are less visible than coaches.In most instances, the pipeline to N.F.L. coaching and scouting positions is stocked with men who have played college football, diminishing chances for women interested in pursuing careers in professional football. But in recent years, the league has made stronger efforts to enhance opportunities for women, particularly those of color.It established the Women’s Careers in Football Forum, an annual event held in conjunction with the league’s scouting combine that since 2017 has given women with entry-level roles in college programs a chance to learn from, and network with, N.F.L. general managers, coaches and executives. At last February’s session, 26 of the league’s 32 teams participated, and Samantha Rapoport, the N.F.L.’s senior director of diversity and inclusion, said that with a virtual format next month, she is hoping for full representation.In 2019, 55 percent of the participants at the forum were women of color. Among all the women who attended the most recent gathering, in February, 15 were hired for full-time positions or internships, either in the N.F.L. or for a college program, for the 2020 season, bringing the total to 118 such jobs since the forum’s inception.“People that are marginalized or disenfranchised, if you give them a shot, an opportunity to have a conversation with someone who can potentially hire them, that’s how they land on the short list,” Rapoport said.In 2015, Jen Welter became the first woman added to an N.F.L. staff, as an assistant coaching intern with the Arizona Cardinals. Kathryn Smith became the first woman to hold a full-time assistant coaching position the following year, when she was named special teams quality control coach under Rex Ryan with the Buffalo Bills, and after the 2019 season Katie Sowers, who worked mostly with the 49ers’ wide receivers, became the first woman to coach in a Super Bowl.(Sowers, after four seasons with San Francisco, announced a few weeks ago that she would not return in 2021.)Another breakthrough came in November, when Callie Brownson of the Cleveland Browns was elevated to tight ends coach on a brief interim basis, becoming the highest-ranking female coach in league history.“What we’re hoping for is normalization,” Rapoport said, adding: “We’re not looking for firsts. We’re not putting on a schedule for the first female head coach or the first female general manager. That’s not our focus. Our focus is really the ubiquity of women in football.”King, like many of the women who have coached in the N.F.L., has played football and other sports. She was on the basketball and softball teams at Guilford College from 2002 to 2006 and was the head basketball coach at Johnson & Wales University Charlotte from 2016 to 2018. King has also played in the Women’s Football Alliance with the Carolina Phoenix, the New York Sharks and the D.C. Divas.“The way she’s worked with the guys, she’s just Coach King to us,” Randy Jordan, Washington’s running backs coach, told The Washington Post in December. “Her input throughout the game, there are things I may not see, and she’ll point it out to me.”“Her input is very, very important not only to me,” he continued, “but to the entire staff. She’s been doing a heck of a job.”Amid an organizational overhaul led by Rivera, the Washington Football Team has hired people of color for significant roles over the past 13 months. The team announced last week that Mayhew, who is Black, would become its general manager, filling a position that has been vacant since 2016. In September, the team added Jason Wright, the first Black team president in the N.F.L., to its front office.Gillian R. Brassil contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Talk of the Super Bowl Is Quarterbacks, Except One

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutVisual TimelineInside the SiegeNotable ArrestsCapitol Police in CrisisThe Global Far RightAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySPORTS OF THE TIMESThe Talk of the Super Bowl Is Quarterbacks, Except OneThe N.F.L. has tried to move on from the controversy over Colin Kaepernick, but recent events suggest his critique of America’s racial climate has remained relevant.Eli Harold, Colin Kaepernick, center, and Eric Reid knelt during the national anthem before an N.F.L. football game against the Seattle Seahawks in 2016.Credit…Ted S. Warren/Associated PressJan. 25, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETKap was right.Let’s not forget that.Let’s not erase his legacy the way the powers running the N.F.L. would like.As we barrel full steam toward the Super Bowl on Feb. 7, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Colin Kaepernick’s protest — his willingness to oppose the status quo and challenge America’s racial caste system — carried the profound weight of truth.Fans should remember. Team owners and the N.F.L. commissioner, Roger Goodell, should remember.What about the players? Since many of them have dropped their guard and allowed the message to be watered down, they need to remember too.The big game is less than two weeks away, with the Kansas City Chiefs seeking to successfully defend their title against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The narrative will center on quarterbacks, and rightly so. Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes aren’t just among the greatest to ever play, they are among the most captivating.But years from now, when historians assess the connection between professional sports and the state of the world in the current era, which N.F.L. quarterback will loom largest?I’ll bet on Kaepernick, once among the league’s most electric players, censured and shut out of the game since 2016. Kaepernick, whose kneeling protest during the national anthem tore at the heart of the one sport that most embodies America and its myths.Kaepernick, loved and loathed, celebrated as a champion for justice and denounced by politicians looking to hype racial resentment, no matter the costs.He has not just been at the center of the storm. At times he has been the storm. All of the other quarterbacks are throwing their beautiful spirals while watching safely from afar — careers well intact.We’ve just endured a presidential term of brazen demagogy from a man many N.F.L. owners have considered a great leader and friend. We’ve seen the rise of white supremacy. The stream of police shootings. The killing of George Floyd. Protests, the coronavirus pandemic and the deadly storming of the Capitol.Kaepernick’s critique of America foretold it all.But if you think everything is fine now that there’s a new face in the White House, think again. Remember that he began his protest not under former President Donald J. Trump, but in the waning days of the Obama administration. He knelt not just against the cracking structure of modern day racism, but its faulty foundation, laid down centuries ago and built upon ever since.His shadow still hangs over a league that heads to the Super Bowl acting as if he has never existed. N.F.L. owners — and their chief spokesman, Goodell — would rather slice him from collective memory and move on.“There is nothing more humbling for the billionaires who own N.F.L. teams than to be proven wrong, especially by a Black athlete who is seen as a thorn in their side,” Derrick White, a professor of African-American studies at the University of Kentucky and an expert on race and football, said when we spoke last week.That’s why the league settled the union grievance filed by the former 49ers quarterback and his former teammate Eric Reid. The pair claimed they were blackballed by the N.F.L. for protesting. A multimillion-dollar payout, replete with a confidentiality agreement, was easier to swallow than giving Kaepernick more airtime.After Floyd’s killing and protests against police brutality intensified around the world, Goodell was forced to admit the league had been wrong not to listen to players who had been speaking out against systemic racism for years. He summoned the courage to utter the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” And he carefully avoided mention of Kaepernick.The N.F.L. soon began co-opting the message. Sadly enough, the players have largely gone along with the plan. Kneeling protests waned to a trickle. The riot in Washington seemed to offer a prime opportunity for clamoring, unified protest. It didn’t happen. There were games to be played. Money to be made. Jobs to hold on to. And nobody with Kaepernick’s spine.You have to hand it to the czars of football. They’ve neutralized the message. They made just enough room for the previously unthinkable in a sport so conservative, so connected to the police and the military and the flag. Think of the helmets with the social justice messaging and the names of victims of police shootings, and the pithy phrases painted on the edge of fields.One such phrase: “It Takes All of Us.”Well, all of us clearly does not include Kaepernick. As much as he would like to, he will never play again. This season of chaos, when he wasn’t called upon even as teams were steadily depleted by the virus, put an end to any such hope..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.Another new motto: “End Racism.”This from a league with a long, sordid history of discrimination. A league known to prize Black speed and strength while diminishing Black intelligence and leadership.N.F.L. rosters are 70 percent African-American. There are only two Black head coaches. The league used to tell African-Americans they would get lead jobs if they just put in more patient years learning the craft. Done. Then came an all-too-familiar course correction: The series of recently hired white coaches who are heralded for their genius despite their glaring inexperience.End Racism? Stop with the Orwellian hypocrisy.What if the league had not turned its back on Kaepernick? What if, from the start, it had listened to him and started a sincere dialogue with Black players who emulated his protest?How soon we forget his magnetic talent, lost in the passage of time and obscured by silly arguments that focus on his last struggling seasons leading a 49ers team with little talent and lackluster coaching.To remember his potential, check out the YouTube highlights.Watch his four touchdowns on the frigid New England night in 2012, when he dueled Brady’s Patriots and led the 49ers to a 41-34 win. Skip next to his playoff game in 2013 against Green Bay, when he rushed for 181 yards and outpassed Aaron Rodgers.What might have been is part of the tragedy now. To flourish, the N.F.L. needs singular stars. If Kaepernick had not been rooted from the league, maybe he’s one of the quarterbacks guiding a team to the Super Bowl. Maybe he’s even the talk of it.Of course, you aren’t likely to hear from Kaepernick as we approach the big game. Silence has become his mystique, which fuels an enduring power.So who will do it? Who will bring him up, give him his due and keep telling the story? Who will keep the movement front and center, raw and real, instead of the stuff of manicured public-relations campaigns?What a shame that this is an open question, since there is still so much work to be done.What a shame, because “Kap was right” is not hard to say.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Mike Tomlin Reaches Another N.F.L. Postseason With Fewer Black Peers

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMike Tomlin Reaches Another N.F.L. Postseason With Fewer Black PeersThe Pittsburgh Steelers’ coach hasn’t had a losing season in 14 years. His acumen and approach have stabilized the team even amid player controversies and as the N.F.L. has struggled with race.“I think whenever you’re a Black coach in his position, that other people put so much pressure on you to do everything,” Steelers center Maurkice Pouncey said of Mike Tomlin. Credit…Scott Taetsch/Getty ImagesJan. 8, 2021Updated 7:59 a.m. ETMaurkice Pouncey, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Pro Bowl center, has been around Mike Tomlin long enough to decipher his coach’s body language.“You see him, and then the next thing you know, he’s so locked in,” Pouncey, a Steeler since 2010, said during a recent telephone interview. “You’re like, ‘Dang. I know not to mess around.’ ”Most players under his leadership came to respect Tomlin’s ability to wed football acumen with a sense of fairness and a consistency, engendering a behind-the-scenes kinship and historic success on the field.He has not had a losing campaign in his 14 seasons as a head coach, navigating the Steelers through controversies that could capsize other franchises. Through it all, Tomlin’s stone-cold facial expression has been as much of constant as the Steelers’ postseason berths — Pittsburgh hosts the Cleveland Browns in the first-round of the playoffs on Sunday evening — even as the N.F.L. has evolved greatly since he became the youngest head coach and second African-American coach to win a Super Bowl after the 2008 season at age 36.“He’s never lied to anyone,” Pouncey said. “And I think sometimes people get it misconstrued that he’s somewhat of a player’s coach. And I get it. He’s really cool with the players, but then when he comes in there, it’s all business.”In public, Tomlin is full of scowls and digestible platitudes showcased throughout games and in news conferences, a vastly different demeanor than his players see.“If you just listen to Coach T talk, he going to spit nothing but game at you,” said Ike Taylor, a cornerback who played a dozen seasons for Pittsburgh before retiring in 2015. “You just got to listen. He’s something like a pastor or a preacher or an evangelist. He just got a way with words where he can just reach out to anybody without even trying to.”Pastor Vernon Shazier occasionally accompanied his son, Ryan, to the Steelers’ facility before Ryan’s career-ending spinal injury in 2017. Tomlin, Shazier said, could tell someone that his play is unacceptable and warn the player that he’d soon be “going shopping” for a replacement if it continued, and then laugh with the player at his locker all in the same day.That candor allowed players like Taylor to forge what he described as an ongoing big-brother relationship with Tomlin.While Taylor was still active, Tomlin learned that he harbored aspirations of one day working in a team’s front office. Tomlin occasionally allowed him to eavesdrop on personnel discussions to gain a deeper understanding of the league’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering.Ike Taylor forged what he described as a big-brother relationship with Tomlin as a cornerback with the Steelers.Credit…Nick Cammett/Diamond Images, via Getty Images“Until it was time for them to really do business, I had to get out,” Taylor said. “I was probably one of the only active players who could sit in draft meetings and sit in on draft day with the organization. He gave me the green light to do a lot of things active players usually couldn’t have done, but that was the relationship him and I had.”Tomlin’s steadiness has been felt especially this seesaw season amid the pandemic. Pittsburgh began the season by reeling off 11 straight wins before its pursuit of a perfect season evaporated with three straight losses, as defenses started encroaching on the aging Ben Roethlisberger’s short-passing game. The Steelers capped their season with another loss to Cleveland in Week 17, though Roethlisberger did not play.Tomlin declined to speak for this article and he’s rarely gone into depth on his background the way he did during a round table discussion this summer with Vernon Lee and Carl Francis, co-founders of the Hampton Roads (Va.) Youth Foundation.Tomlin has been involved with the organization since he started as an N.F.L. assistant in Tampa Bay, helping to mentor the area’s youth. “Carl and I have considered him a partner in this endeavor,” Lee said. “Not just someone who’s coming back as a guest. It still shocks me to be quite honest with him being the head coach for the Steelers, how hands-on he is.”The three men, all natives of coastal southeast Virginia, discussed familiar streets, high schools and area legends. Tomlin eventually discussed the one motto that drives him.“Young people don’t care what you say,” Tomlin said in the talk. “They watch you move.”Tomlin should know. In the round table, he detailed growing up in Hampton, Va., with his older brother, Ed, “a product of a broken home. My parents separated before my first birthday and myself and my brother, we moved back in with her parents,” he said, referring to his mother’s parents.People looked out for their own in the 757, the area code for the seven cities that make up the Hampton Roads community. Adults steered Tomlin. His stepfather, Leslie Copeland, was a large influence. Tomlin followed Ed’s path into football, joining a league at age 7. Coaches of other teams showed genuine interest in the well-being of the young wide receiver, proving to Tomlin that if it took a village, he had found the correct one.Tomlin envisioned a career playing football by the time he arrived at Denbigh High in Newport News, Va. He doodled plays in class to the chagrin of his freshman geometry teacher, Gail Gunter. She warned him before calling his mother, Julia, after he failed to turn in a couple assignments.Gunter challenged Tomlin. Two years later, Gunter served as a counselor for the students competing in Odyssey of the Mind, a scholarly competition. The other students had recruited Tomlin to participate in constructing a vehicle but Gunter could not locate him when it was time to start.“Mike would come moseying on in after all the football players had left because he didn’t want them to see him coming into something that was academic,” Gunter said.The team finished second in the state. Tomlin had asked the other students not to disclose his involvement, which coincided with him asking Julia not to display his honor roll sticker on her car’s bumper.At the College of William & Mary, Tomlin continued drawing a distinction between football and his other pursuits. “I’ve referred to him before as a bit of a closet nerd even though he tries to downplay how smart he is,” said Terry Hammons, a fellow receiver and one of Tomlin’s closest friends at the university.As a student at the College of William and Mary, Tomlin trash-talked opponents on the football field but engaged with tough questions in the classroom.Credit…Cal Sport Media, via Associated Press ImagesDavid Aday, a professor of sociology and American studies, taught Tomlin in a criminology course. Tomlin sought to understand the racial, social and class links between mass incarceration, topics, Aday said, that are typically difficult to discuss.“The fact that he was a young Black man, some of the implications were a little more threatening, distressing,” Aday said. “There are a couple of ways you can deal with that. You can put your head down and say, ‘We’ll get through this conversation and move on.’ Or you can ask, ‘What’s going on here? What do we know that could help us to understand this?’”On the field, Tomlin talked trash to opponents and teammates alike, teetering the difference between inspiring his sideline and infuriating the other. He’d slyly caution Hammons to be safe before receiving punts — in essence, daring Hammons to return the ball.“Mike knew I had a bit of a Napoleon complex and he knew how to get me going,” Hammons said.Tomlin debated for more passes. He took over meetings with Hammons. During film reviews, Zbig Kepa, their receivers coach, sometimes dropped the remote on the table and told his boisterous crew to figure out the tape for themselves.“He was comedy on the field,” Kepa said. “Then, he would really keep that energy level going and communicate and ask questions in meetings.”His hopes of an N.F.L. career fading, Tomlin became the wide receivers coach at Virginia Military Institute in 1995, carving a path to stay involved with the game and using the intellect he had gained from studying it since his youth.He quickly worked his way up the college ranks with stops at Memphis, Arkansas State and Cincinnati, along the way learning the benefits of meticulously planning and documenting his days and charting goals in old Franklin Planners.“I got this Franklin Planner and I bought these cassette tapes, right?” Tomlin said during the round table. “And I committed to a day of watching these cassette tapes and organizing my life through this Franklin Planner. Just thoughts, quotes of the day, appointments, critical notes, call backs, et cetera, et cetera. I needed that organization because I was drowning in life at that time.”That propensity for planning paid off in 2007 when, after six seasons as an assistant in Tampa Bay and Minnesota, he interviewed to replace Bill Cowher as the Steelers’ head coach. Pittsburgh offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt and assistant head coach Russ Grimm were the favorites to win the job but Tomlin impressed owner Dan Rooney and team president Art Rooney II in his interviews by presenting a detailed plan for the franchise over the next calendar year.Tomlin in his first year as Steelers head coach in 2007. He inherited Hall of Fame quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who is now in the twilight of his career.Credit…Joseph Sargent/Icon SMI, via Getty ImagesThe Steelers appointed Tomlin as the franchise’s third head coach since 1969 on the same day that two Black coaches, Tony Dungy’s Indianapolis Colts and Lovie Smith’s Chicago Bears, met for the first time in the Super Bowl.“Mike ended up getting his job at a time when there was a lot of discussion about African-Americans being able to get a job, being able to hold it if you got it and who was qualified,” said Terry Robiskie, a longtime N.F.L. assistant coach. “It was always the discussion that they could never find anyone that was qualified.”Tomlin’s hiring was viewed as a success of the Rooney Rule, named after Dan Rooney, the former owner of the Steelers, that requires teams to interview minority candidates for high-profile vacancies. Tomlin joined six other Black men with N.F.L. head coaching jobs the year he was hired; with the Los Angeles Chargers’ recent dismissal of Anthony Lynn after the 2020 regular season, the number of Black N.F.L. head coaches is down to just two — Tomlin and Brian Flores of the Miami Dolphins — in a league where nearly 70 percent of players are African-American.Tomlin is now a veteran coach. The career of Roethlisberger, the Hall of Fame quarterback he inherited, is winding down. Members of the stingy defense passed down to him are long retired. Tomlin’s reputation as a player’s coach was dinged through running back Le’Veon Bell sitting out the 2018 season while seeking a new contract and Antonio Brown’s cycles of drama.Change has swept the broader N.F.L. landscape, too. As the N.F.L. has struggled with its place in the national reckoning on race, Tomlin last year came to the defense of backup quarterback Mason Rudolph, who is white and was accused of using a racist slur toward Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett, who is Black, during a brawl between the two teams.“He brings the perspective as a Black man with children, but he doesn’t try to force his view on his players and that’s what he’s done from the beginning,” Hammons said.Instead, Tomlin allows his players to deliberate issues collectively to land on a unified response, “allowing them to have a vested interest in the ultimate decision,” Hammons said.That was the goal in 2017. Tomlin allowed his players to debate on whether they would stand or kneel for the national anthem to draw awareness to racial injustice and abuse. The roster did not reach a consensus and decided to stay in the locker room before a game against Chicago. Alejandro Villanueva, an offensive lineman and Bronze Star Medal recipient, stood by himself in the tunnel as the song played.Alejandro Villanueva of the Pittsburgh Steelers stood by himself in the tunnel for the national anthem before a game against the Chicago Bears in 2017.Credit…Joe Robbins/Getty Images“I think whenever you’re a Black coach in his position, that other people put so much pressure on you to do everything,” Pouncey said. “And he’s not here for that. And if you really know Coach Tomlin, he’s a football coach. That’s what he loves. That’s what he dedicates his whole entire life to.”Decades ago, Robiskie met Dungy when the pair roomed together for the East-West Shrine Game, a postseason college showcase. Their paths paralleled. They became friends as part of a small number of Black N.F.L. coaches and sometimes vacationed together with their wives.After dinners, Dungy, by then Tampa’s coach, often brought up the name of a young coach on his staff, full of potential, learning by the day. “Mike who?” Robiskie, then an assistant coach with the Browns, would say. “Tomlin? I’m going to get him just like I get you.”Years later, Robiskie, now a running backs coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars, estimates that his teams are 0-19 against Tomlin.To Robiskie, Tomlin has extended the legacy of coaches like Dungy, Smith, Dennis Green and Art Shell while staying true to himself.The others, Robiskie said, were low-key personalities. “Mike was going to laugh and joke and scream and if he had to get upset and cuss and fuss, he was going to get upset and cuss and fuss,” Robiskie said.He added. “We’ve all got to tip our hats off to him. He’s brought that trophy there once before and I, for one, I get on my knees and pray he brings them another one.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Putting on a Mask Raised Naomi Osaka’s Voice

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Race and PolicingFacts on Walter Wallace Jr. CaseFacts on Breonna Taylor CaseFacts on Daniel Prude CaseFacts on George Floyd CaseNaomi Osaka after winning the U.S. Open.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexThe Great ReadHow Putting on a Mask Raised Naomi Osaka’s VoiceShe used her time away from competing during the pandemic to reflect on the world and her place within it. When the time came to speak, she approached it in her own distinct way.Naomi Osaka after winning the U.S. Open.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyDec. 16, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETAs usual, Naomi Osaka’s postmatch interview struck an emotional chord.It was two years after she had burst to the fore with a moving win over Serena Williams in the 2018 United States Open women’s singles final, where she had stood small and unguarded, crying in front of an audience that had been rooting for her opponent.Now, in September, after winning the U.S. Open for a second time, Osaka was asked by the ESPN analyst Tom Rinaldi to explain why she had entered each of her seven matches wearing a face mask bearing the name of a Black victim of racist violence.“What was the message you wanted to send?” Rinaldi asked Osaka.“Well, what was the message that you got?” she replied. “I feel like the point is to make people start talking.”Her answer, volleyed back at him reflexively, precise and a bit arch, revealed a sharply different woman from the one who had withered under excruciating boos at Arthur Ashe Stadium after her first U.S. Open title.As her star has grown, Osaka has described herself to interviewers as shy and quiet, though her older sister, Mari, likens her to the character Stewie Griffin, from the animated TV show “The Family Guy,” whose malevolent genius is subverted by the constraints of being a baby. That demeanor was sufficient as Osaka navigated the world as an effervescent upstart.When it came to opening up about nearly any deeply felt topic, Osaka used to let the words kink up inside her like an unspooled garden hose. But in 2020, Osaka found her voice and the self-possession to speak up when and how she saw fit, a massive leap for a global superstar who once felt too self-conscious to exhort herself even on the court. With time to engage with civil rights protests because of the pandemic’s pause of tennis, Osaka found the space to unravel her thoughts to convey an urgent and unequivocal demand for change.In doing so, she came to be as precise and efficient in her protest as she has been in her tennis, offering up her version of soft power: deploying bold activism shaped by her unique understanding of the world and her place in it.Osaka eschewed the playbook of other tennis stars.There’s a faction in tennis that has long wanted to hear a more polished version of Osaka.“Forever, whether it was the WTA Tour or other interested parties, everyone was always putting pressure on me to get Naomi media-trained,” Stuart Duguid, her agent, said. “I always thought that would be a mistake for her. That’s the last thing we want to contrive.”After Osaka haltingly riffed through what she called “the worst acceptance speech of all time,” at Indian Wells in March 2018, that push ramped up with executives letting Duguid know they had not been charmed.Osaka posed with the championship trophy at Indian Wells in 2018.Credit…Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesStill, he argued that Osaka’s candor made her a star whom fans could connect with. Displaying the mischief and joy of anybody’s teenage sister in her interviews, Osaka racked up deals that proved Duguid right. She rejected prestige for prestige’s sake, bucking the standard luxury watch and car endorsements that mark “making it” in tennis.She instead aligned with brands that made sense for a Gen Z global citizen: She added deals with Sony PlayStation and Airbnb. She took on equity partnerships with performance brands and companies like BodyArmor SportWater and Hyperice, and started fashion collaborations with Comme des Garçons and Adeam, labels coveted not at country clubs but on street style roundups.The haul beefed up her 2019 earnings to $37 million, a figure Forbes estimated was the most any woman had earned as an athlete in one year.In what she termed “a U-shaped” 2019, though, Osaka’s rawness and honesty conveyed the depths of her frustration over how much she struggled after her rapid-fire Grand Slam wins. After a 16-match win streak at Grand Slam events, she was upset at the 2019 French Open in her third match and lost in a first-round stunner at Wimbledon. After Wimbledon, she faced reporters who presented her with variations of the same question — what’s wrong with you?“There’s answers to questions that you guys ask that I still haven’t figured out yet,” she curtly replied to one, during a news conference she left by telling a moderator, “I feel like I’m about to cry.”It was a troublesome showing — her postmatch interviews felt like eavesdropping on a doctor’s stethoscope. She offered only sadness and frustration, with no spin.The year mercifully ended with Osaka’s hiring a new coach, Wim Fissette, an analytics-minded Belgian who had worked with other No. 1s, Simona Halep, Kim Clijsters and, most recently, Victoria Azarenka.When she was ousted in the round of 32 at the Australian Open, Fissette and Osaka pried open a vein of communication. To that point, they had developed a polite repartee about the technical parts of her game, but stopped short of talking about her mind-set entering matches.“She’s not a person that you get to know and she tells you everything you need to know,” Fissette said.Osaka revealed in a come-to-Jesus conversation weeks after the loss that she had told him things were just fine when they weren’t. She had assumed an extreme amount of pressure to win in Australia and wasn’t mentally ready to deal with a match that didn’t go her way. Osaka agreed to open up, realizing that sharing her feelings did not challenge her normal confidence in her game and in her physicality.“I don’t necessarily need that much in terms of strategy, and I feel like my game is always good enough to win,” she said in an email interview in November. “But of course you can’t play your A game every day, so it’s nice to know that I have some information on my opponent in case I need it. That definitely helps to relax me going into matches.”‘I was able to take more personal time.’Of course, her tennis wasn’t tested much in the months that followed because the pandemic shut down the WTA Tour in mid-March along with the rest of major sports leagues. Osaka used the downtime to consider the world from her vantage point. “I was able to focus on things outside of tennis and live my life outside of tennis in a way I never have and likely never will again,” she said. “I was able to take more personal time, more time for self-reflection, more time to understand and witness the world around me.”Tendrils of info on how she spent those months and how they changed her have seeped into her social media accounts where, between family dance-offs, she posted images of Frantz Fanon’s book “The Wretched of the Earth” and appeared with her boyfriend, the rapper Cordae Dunston, on workout bikes in a picture snapped by Colin Kaepernick. Amid Netflix binges and at-home workouts, and learning to cook her favorite of her mother Tamaki’s recipes, Osaka spent time reading about how Haiti became the first Black-led republic in the world. That was a suggestion from Leonard Francois, her father, to learn about her ancestors.Without the tunnel vision of a tennis schedule, Osaka showed the effects of the psyche-scarring onslaught of violence against Black Americans. In the days after George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis police in May, she flew with Dunston to protests there and later wrote an opinion piece for Esquire challenging that society “take on systemic racism head-on, that the police protect us and don’t kill us.”Though Osaka’s assertion of each part of her identity — Japanese, Haitian, raised for a time in the United States — has given her profitable endorsement lanes, she has often highlighted her Blackness when commentators minimize it. That erasure has happened in small ways, as when a TV interviewer after a 2019 Australian Open match gave a shout-out to her Japanese supporters there. She thanked them, then gave “big ups” to Haiti.Her Blackness has been overlooked in more troubling circumstances, too.After the 2018 Open win, an Australian newspaper cartoon depicted the final scene with Williams in racist caricature — mammy-esque facial features frozen in twisted rage — which the artist defended against backlash by saying, “I drew her as an African-American woman.” Nearly lost in the controversy was his rendering of Osaka: pale, with blond, straight hair and nearly unrecognizable. In 2019, her sponsor Nissin pulled an ad in which a cartoon of Osaka had skin and hair many shades lighter than she had in real life.Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka after the 2018 U.S. Open final.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThat same year, a Japanese comedy duo said Osaka needed “some bleach” and was “too sunburned,” remarks for which they later apologized without naming Osaka specifically.With Osaka cut off from IRL social touchstones and without access to her day job, her TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms provided the most candid way for her to speak up as she had pledged. When she tweeted her support for the Black Lives Matter movement in June and encouraged participation in a B.L.M. protest in Osaka, Japan, she faced social media trolls who called her a terrorist and a widespread backlash from Japanese people who viewed the issue as an outsider’s cause.“I think for people in America, the B.L.M. movement is something we have all started to talk about and talk about openly,” Osaka said, “yet globally, it’s not as common, and I hope that changed.”The cultural anthropologist John G. Russell sees Osaka’s emergence in Japan as a significant stride given the country’s long history of touting its monoculture, but one that has opened her and her sponsors up to racist vitriol from some people who view mixed-race Japanese figures as a threat to the national identity.The notoriously savage Twitter user Yu Darvish, a Major League Baseball pitcher who is Japanese and Iranian, and the N.B.A. star Rui Hachimura (Japanese and Beninese) have also used their platforms to clap back and to promote social justice.“They are stepping up to address issues that the Japanese media would prefer not to confront,” Russell said in an email interview, cautioning that though their efforts have increased visibility in Japan, their message “may serve to reinforce the view that hafu are themselves outsiders and not full members of Japanese society.” (“Hafu” is a term used for Japanese people of mixed-race backgrounds.)When tennis returned, Osaka put her protest front and center.The day before Osaka played her first match at the Western & Southern Open in August, Jacob Blake was shot in the back by the police in Kenosha, Wis.By her quarterfinal match, renewed protests had reached American pro sports, with teams in the N.B.A., the W.N.B.A. and M.L.B. opting to stop competing on Aug. 26.Osaka came off the court that day planning to withdraw from the tournament. No call with a players’ union, no team meeting. Duguid, her agent, asked her to hold off announcing for 10 minutes or so while he scrambled to give her sponsors and the tournament a heads-up. That done, she dropped a meticulously framed statement to her various social feeds that explained her stance.“Before I am an athlete, I am a black woman,” she wrote. “And as a black woman I feel as though there are much more important matters at hand that need immediate attention, rather than watching me play tennis.”Officials paused the Western & Southern Open rather than have Osaka withdraw from it to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake. She finished as runner-up, after an injury caused her to pull out of the final.Credit…Jason Szenes/EPA, via ShutterstockWithin minutes, the WTA’s chief executive, Steve Simon, called Duguid to salvage her participation. Simon, along with other tennis and tournament officials, eventually agreed to pause the tournament.“I have never, ever experienced the quickness and the united front for these leaders to come together on what was a very, very critical moment,” Stacey Allaster, the tournament director for the U.S. Open, said.It was an unmistakable display of Osaka’s power within the sport, an authority that is still heavily predicated upon winning.As she entered the U.S. Open, so much had changed for her personally and in the world. Fissette said no player he had coached carried Osaka’s glee and determination entering a Grand Slam event. With a strong showing at the Western & Southern (she advanced to the final, but then withdrew with an injury), a more open relationship with her team and a new expectation that her matches might get tough, she came into the U.S. Open confident enough to have seven face masks made — one for each round needed to win a championship.“I wouldn’t travel to a tournament without expecting to play seven matches, and initially, when I thought about the best way to raise awareness and honor voices that had been silenced, it was more something I had to do on a personal level, for myself,” Osaka said. “I didn’t feel that with all that I was seeing in the world around me I could just show up and play as if nothing had happened, as if lives were not unjustly taken.”As she bounded into Ashe Stadium on Sept. 1 for her opening match, a plume of hair and a bulky headphone tiara framed her mask bearing the name Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old medical worker who was killed in March during a raid of her apartment in Louisville, Ky.Cheryl Cooky, a sociology professor at Purdue who studies gender and sexuality, saw the quiet but impossible-to-ignore protest as contributing powerfully to the iconography of athlete activism.Collectively, she said, we tend to remember the visual shorthand of John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s gloved black fists at the 1968 Olympics, or Kaepernick’s kneeling, rather than women who have been at the vanguard of protest movements. Women like Ariyana Smith, the Knox College basketball player who in 2014 foreshadowed future demonstrations in college and pro sports by protesting the killing of Michael Brown by the police in Ferguson, Mo.“The protests that are happening in the sports space are by Black women athletes, but it’s the men who become these iconic figures,” said Cooky, co-author of “No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport and the Unevenness of Social Change.” Osaka’s protest, she said, was visible enough to stand alongside the most memorable acts.Osaka wore a mask in honor of Breonna Taylor as she celebrated defeating Misaki Doi in the first round of the U.S. Open.Credit…Frank Franklin/Associated PressThe imagery focused a laser beam of attention on Osaka during the most arduous tournament this year, during which she could not have her normal squad of family members and friends on hand for a postmatch hug. Still, positive reactions wormed their way into the Open bubble.The Greek player Stefanos Tsitsipas, who had texted Osaka after both tours paused in August and asked her to explain to him the Black Lives Matter movement, watched matches at the Open while wearing a B.L.M. T-shirt. Osaka regularly found earnest messages from fans all over the world on her social feeds. In an interview on ESPN, she was shown a video in which the families of Ahmaud Arbery and Tamir Rice thanked her for remembering their loved ones.“Once I saw that so many people were talking, those seven masks acted as more of an inspiration for me than added pressure,” Osaka said. “I am not really one to lose composure, but that moment left me speechless and quite emotional.”By now we know how that tournament turned out, how Osaka rallied from down a set and a break to defeat Azarenka, and then the retort to Rinaldi. The triumph left her “completely exhausted — physically and mentally,” and she declined a daytime talk show blitz as an encore.Instead, she wrapped herself the next day in what resembled a shortened version of a karabela dress, a traditional Haitian dress for celebrations, and a head wrap for her official champions portrait. Later, she and her family went to Haiti to reconnect with the past, a trip that she called “an amazing and emotional experience to cherish.”Now, two months removed from her victory and with the year coming to a close, Osaka still cannot give voice to the specifics of how her life, career and goals have changed. “I think that’s something that I won’t have a firm answer to for a while,” she said.When she does, she’ll let us know.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More