Of course…
If you’re a sports fan, you’re probably familiar with Jemele Hill from her time at ESPN. She served as the evening host of SportsCenter in 2017, and in her 10-plus years at the network hosted various shows like Numbers Never Lie and His & Hers.
Her time at the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” wasn’t without controversy though. In 2008, she was suspended during the NBA playoffs for making a Hitler reference when criticizing the Boston Celtics, and in 2017 she drew criticism from the White House after calling President Donald Trump a “white supremacist.”
Hill was eventually removed from SportsCenter in 2018, months after yet another suspension for encouraging Dallas Cowboys fans to boycott the team’s sponsors over Jerry Jones threatening to bench players who disrespected the American flag.
Later that year it was announced that Hill would be joining The Atlantic as a staff writer, and in 2019 she launched her own podcast, Jemele Hill is Unbothered.
Since then, Hill has remained outspoken on racial issues, and by that I mean she makes pretty much everything about race.
The latest example: The Atlanta Falcons hiring of Kevin Stefanski as their new head coach.
Stefanski was the former coach of the Cleveland Browns, a two-time NFL Coach of the Year who managed to lead the Browns to the playoffs in two of his first four seasons. (If you know anything about football, you know how hard it is for the Browns to accomplish either of those with the Browns).
But according to Hill, the Falcons fans she knows aren’t happy with the hire – because of his treatment of Browns rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders.
Sanders is one of the most high-profile rookies we’ve seen in the NFL in a long time. The former Colorado Buffaloes QB, and son of the legendary Deion Sanders, started the season as the third-string quarterback for the Browns, but thanks to some questionable roster moves (like trading Joe Flacco to their rivals, the Cincinnati Bengals) and an injury to Shedeur’s fellow rookie Dillon Gabriel, Sanders ended up as the Browns starter for their final seven games of the season.
The Browns went 3-4 in those games with Sanders as the starter, and he ended the season with more interceptions than touchdowns, but there were still flashes that gave Browns fans hope that he may be able to grow into becoming a solid NFL quarterback.
According to Hill though, Falcons fans aren’t happy with the (white) coach being hired…I guess because Shedeur wasn’t the starter earlier in the season?
“None of the Falcons fans I know like the Stefanski hire. He had a losing record in Cleveland and they didn’t like how he handled the Shedeur Sanders situation. They LOVE Deion in the ATL. It’s a Black city, with one of the Blackest fan bases in the NFL, and they have a Black QB on their roster — so a lot of ATL fans are side-eyeing this hire. Stefanski isn’t going to get a honeymoon there.”
Shedeur’s father Deion Sanders spent time in Atlanta with two professional sports team, both as an outfielder with the Atlanta Braves and also as a running back for the Falcons. So I guess, according to Hill, because people in Atlanta love Deion they’re protective of his son, who they feel Stefanski disrespected? And all this is apparently because of race, because she mentions the word “black” three times in her post.
Hill later clarified that her post wasn’t meant to claim that Deion should have been hired as Falcons coach, but rather to share the feelings of Falcons fans that Stefanski “did Shedeur dirty.”
Of course, many people in the replies questioned what race had to do with it, if she’s claiming that it’s because of Stefanski’s treatment of Sanders and not because the Falcons went with a white coach.
But then again, the fact that she made it about race shouldn’t really be a surprise at this point either.
