An inescapable fact of the Tyreek Hill kerfuffle is that the blame rests on Tyreek Hill. Had he not been speeding through a construction zone, he would have been at Hard Rock Stadium, sitting in front of his Miami Dolphins locker.
Instead, Hill chose to speed through a construction zone. Hill then chose to ignore law enforcement commands, then chose to roll up his tinted window. Hill chose to tell the cop knocking on the window, “Don’t knock on my window like that.” Hill chose to ignore the next lawful command to roll down the window. Hill chose to ignore a command to get out of the car. Hill made those bad decisions all by himself. In the parlance of football, Hill chose to run the wrong route multiple times and was shocked when his actions were punished for not following the playbook.
Over the course of the past four days, ESPN and FS1 pundits and other sports talkers spent multiple segments insinuating or outright claiming that “but for” the color of Hill’s skin, Hill would not have been yanked from his car and cuffed. They lamented that “but for” his celebrity status, he might be in a casket right now. Is any of that true?
Rich Eisen has a popular podcast. Eisen ran a segment on the Hill uproar and played the post-game interview of Hill. Notwithstanding the media drumbeat that Hill must have been traumatized by his [bad decisions], Hill seemed pretty relaxed. In fact, after Hill scored a touchdown last week, he mocked the arrest by having a teammate “fake-cuff” Hill. Hill said in part:
…I could have been better, you know, I could have let down my window you know in the instant, but, um, the thing about me is man I don’t, I don’t want attention, I don’t to be like cameras out, phones on you, you know? In that moment but, um, at the end of the day, um, you know, I’m, I’m human I gotta I got to follow the rules, I gotta you know, um, do what you know, um, every everyone else would do you know, so now, does that give them the right literally beat the dog out of me? Absolutely not, but at the end of the day, um, I wish I could go back and you know, do things a bit differently
Eisen jumps in to throw out an absurd speculative scenario, where the “second [cop] comes in hot.” Eisen then adds:
“[T]hey can leap to a conclusion they should not, but if they’re leaping to a conclusion based on someone’s race, that’s a problem.”
What in all that is holy are you talking about, Eisen? Eisen leaped to an absurd conclusion by speculating about – “leaping to a conclusion.”
Apparently, that is the state of sports commentary. It was even more absurd on ESPN and FS1. Segments were crammed with lamentations that “blacks in the country” are afraid of the cops.
LeShaun McCoy, a retired NFL player who called himself “a good friend” of Hill’s, informed his FS1 audience: [You can watch this head-shaker of a comment below, on a clip of “The Matt Walsh Show,” starting at 15:15.]
I’m so mad it happened, but on the other side, I am kind of glad it did happen. You know why? Because you could just see what it feels like to be a black man in America, though, right? The difference is this person, this young man that’s getting detained like this, is a superstar athlete, so he’s going to continue to have his life. If this was somebody else they might not have their life. They might not had a chance to go to the Dolphins game. They might have got shot.
Huh…what? “Got shot?”
Hill’s arrogance and refusal to follow lawful commands after speeding through a construction zone, were the first three dominos that started this cascade. Hill wasn’t stopped because he’s black. Hill didn’t get pulled out of his $350,000 race car because he a black man. None of the police pulled their pistols.
Hill ended up sitting on a curb instead of sitting in front of his locker because “he chose poorly”:
Hill wants “the cop” fired. Easy for a millionaire to demand that a blue-collar cop be fired for the millionaire’s poor choices.
In a bit of kismet, on Thursday, the Dolphins play the Bills as the NFL’s featured, and sole, Thursday game. Eyes will be on Hill. One hopes he’s not going to speed through a construction zone on the way to his locker. I won’t be watching. But I will be rooting for the Bills.
