I lived in the hood for 18 years and 10 months. I'm now 11 years and 10 months into living in a college town and it's boring. It took me seven years to find a good barber. I was going in salons with fucking haircut tutorials formatted in H264. <--- I'M JOKING. For seriously, give me the suburbs with character/diversity and a job market. I need the strip club in the same town as the cultural museum.
Is Russell Wilson black or Black?
"In that locker room, there were battle lines being drawn," Douglas remembered in an interview. "It was T.O. versus Donovan. People were starting to draw lines in the sand. I was out of line, but I wanted to defend Donovan."
The Eagles would suspend Owens over the fight, and eventually he would be gone.
"If someone is talking bad about your quarterback," Douglas said, "they [have] to go. Period. The quarterback, through thick and thin, has to be the guy."
In Seattle, though many people may deny this, there was a similar dynamic between Wilson and Harvin.
While reports like this one from ESPN's Chris Mortensen suggest Wilson wanted to help Harvin through his anger issues, one Seahawks player said the biggest reason the team traded the wide receiver was his increasing animosity toward Wilson. The player said Harvin was an accelerant in a locker room that was quickly dividing between Wilson and anti-Wilson.
Again, people will deny this, but there's truth to it.
The main issue some players seem to have with Wilson is they think he's too close to the front office, which is the same ridiculous thing some said about McNabb. How anyone could have a problem with Wilson—one of the best players in the sport and one of its best citizens—is unfathomable to me, but that's the case.
There is also a strictly football issue here with Wilson. I'm told he doesn't always take the blame with teammates for mistakes he makes. In Wilson's mind, a bad throw isn't always his fault.
Yet there are other quarterbacks in the NFL who do this—cough, Peyton Manning, cough—and there's no locker room tumult with them.
There is also an element of race that needs to be discussed. My feeling on this—and it's backed up by several interviews with Seahawks players—is that some of the black players think Wilson isn't black enough.
This, again, was similar to the situation with McNabb. And this, again, will be denied by Seattle people. But there is an element of this.
This is an issue that extends outside of football, into African-American society—though it's gotten better recently. Well-spoken blacks are seen by some other blacks as not completely black. Some of this is at play.
The Seahawks are among the best-run organizations in all of sports. Pete Carroll is the best in the NFL at making a locker room full of different types of personalities blend well. The only coaches I've covered who were better than Carroll at that were Jimmy Johnson and Bill Parcells.
For the Seahawks organization to get rid of a guy they gave up a first-, third and seventh-rounder to essentially get back a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (conditional draft pick in 2015) means there was something seriously amiss. This was no ordinary personality conflict.
Two things to make clear: First, there were players that liked Harvin. A lot. Marshawn Lynch tweeted his support using a stupid racial slur. According to the New York Daily News' Manish Mehta:
Second, if there is no respect for a quarterback, an offense can wither and die. In many ways, an entire team can. That is the power of the position.
And that might be the biggest lesson taught by the trade of Harvin.
