Black-and-white clarity in Gronk suspension
In this deck of race cards, Rob Gronkowski is the joker.
Gronkowski has been cast as a party boy who can flaunt his hearty sexual appetite and get away with brutality on the field because he is a fun-loving, child-like, big-ole white guy.
In the race-baiting eyes of State Street, Bristol, New York, Hollywood and elsewhere, the City of Boston and its environs remain trapped in a Charles Stuart/busing riots/segregated neighborhoods vortex similar to the phantom zone that swept up General Zod in the original “Superman” movie.
In recent days, Gronkowski has become the 6-foot-7 statue that must come down.
Gronkowski’s one-game suspension was dead-on fair. His after-the-whistle, out-of-bounds assault on Buffalo’s Tre’Davious White was thuggish — a word I used in real time via Twitter Sunday. Gronkowski has no previous record of thuggery and apologized.
White said yesterday he has yet to hear from Gronkowski, adding the “dirty shot” delivered by him “could have broke my neck ... I got a son (to raise).”
Ray Lewis called it “one of the worst plays I’ve probably ever seen in football” and slammed Gronkowski for attacking White from behind. “Does (a suspension of) one game do enough? I don’t know,” he added. Meanwhile, Lewis’ white suit has been missing for 6,251 days and counting.
Gronkowski’s one-game penalty drew flak from players like Aaron Hernandez’ pal Maurkice Pouncey and multiple media types because similar ballplayers, who happen to be black, committed lesser offenses but got similar or worse punishment.
The NFL got it right with Gronkowski, who lost $281,250 in salary and possibly $2 million in bonuses. The argument that Gronkowski somehow must suffer more because the NFL botched the punishment of JuJu SmithSchuster or someone else is ridiculous. Smith-Schuster, a Steelers wideout, got a game for a fairly legit hit on Cincinnati’s Vontaze Burfict during Monday night’s cage match.
NFL fans and players should be outraged by the mindless way punishment is delivered by Roger Goodell and his band of misfits. But the NFL’s continued miscarriage of justice has very little to do with race.
To wit: Tom Brady, the whitest athlete since the 1936 Berlin Olympics, got four games because he followed the Ideal Gas Law and chose not to give his phone over to the NFL’s Keystone Kops.
Gronkowski’s appeal was heard by NFL Hall of Fame linebacker Derrick Brooks. I have met Brooks. He is black. And not in a Rachel Dolezal way.
White said Gronkowski’s “intentions were to hurt me.” But NFL Head of Operations Troy Vincent — who is also black — said penalties are not determined by intent or result. The act itself sets the protocol for punishment.
In the wild and wacky world of NFL justice, even if Gronkowski went after White because of race — as ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon intimated this week — it would not matter when it comes to discipline.
There is another color masked here — green. Envy can be fatal. The Patriots have worked hard — 17 straight winning seasons, 11 AFC title games and five Super Bowl victories since 2001 — to earn most-hated NFL team status. Brady is 27-3 against Buffalo. Gronkowski was not even ejected. No wonder the Bills are ripped.
The old cliché is wrong. “Everyone hates a winner.” The hot-and-cold bromance between Brady, Bill Belichick, Robert Kraft and President Trump, meanwhile, continues to slow burn as the final log in this racial furnace. No doubt it occupies significant real estate in the minds of the likes of Kornheiser and Wilbon.
The Patriots and Bills play Dec. 24 at Gillette Stadium. The real-world window for retaliation closed after the final whistle Sunday. But one “dirty shot” always begets another.
Keep an eye on those knees, Gronk.