ESPN Must be High: Drugs & Jim Crow in Sports’ Reporting
by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan
My concern and interest in sports often has little to do with sports. While I am clearly a fan, someone who enjoys watching and thinking about sports, I am often drawn into the world sports because of the larger implications and meanings. Sports are more than a game; it is a pedagogy, a technology, and an instrument of larger social, political, and racial processes. During a recent interview with Colorlines, I spoke about the danger in seeing sport as purely game, entertainment, or distraction:
One of the things that often strikes me is the disconnect between progressive and those engaged in anti-racist movement and struggles — and sports. Sports continues to be seen as antithetical or a distraction, or not part and parcel with the movements for justice. I think that when you have a society that is increasingly invested in and has been for the last 30 years, with incarceration, with a suspension culture, with racial profiling, it’s not a coincidence that you have a sports culture that’s equally invested in those practices. And invested in the language of the criminal justice system.
I consume and am consumed by sports not simply because of the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” but because of its potential as a source of social change. Yet, sports continue to be a site for the perpetuation of injustice, violence, and despair. As a critical scholar, as an anti-racist practitioner, and as someone committed to justice, my gaze is never just as fan. In watching games, listening to commentaries, and reading various sports publications, I am unable and unwilling to suspend this gaze. So, it should be no surprise that when I recently opened ESPN: The Magazine, to find an article on drug use and college football, it had my attention.
“Of 400,000 athletes, about 0.6 percent will be tested for marijuana by the NCAA.” The lead-to ESPN’s sensationalized and misleading story on marijuana use and collegiate football, thus, frames the story as one about both rampant illegal drug use and the absence of accountability. While attempting to draw readers into their stereotyped-ridden, sensationalized tabloid journalism masking as investigative reporting/journalistic expose, it reflects the dangerous in this piece. “College football players smoking marijuana is nothing new. Coaches and administrators have been battling the problem and disciplining players who do so for decades,” writes Mark Schlabach. He highlights the purported epidemic plaguing college football by citing the following:
NCAA statistics show a bump in the number of stoned athletes. In the NCAA's latest drug-use survey, conducted in 2009 and released in January, 22.6 percent of athletes admitted to using marijuana in the previous 12 months, a 1.4 percentage point increase over a similar 2005 study. Some 26.7 percent of football players surveyed fessed up, a higher percentage than in any other major sport. (The use of other drugs, such as steroids and amphetamines, has declined or held steady.) A smaller percentage of athletes actually get caught, but those numbers are also on the rise. In the latest available postseason drug-testing results, positive pot tests increased in all three divisions, from 28 in 2008-09 to 71 the following school year.
It is important to examine the evidence because of the narrative being offered here and the larger context given the racial implications of the war on drugs.
According to Schlabach, 22.6 percent of football players acknowledging using marijuana; in student-athletes playing football were the most likely to acknowledge marijuana amongst those participating in MAJOR sports. While unclear how he is defining major sports, I would gather that those major sports include football, track, basketball, and baseball, coincidentally sports dominated by African Americans in disproportionate numbers. Why limit the discussion here other than to perpetuate a stereotype? Does the revenue or popularity of a sport require greater scrutiny? I think not.
Examination of the actual NCAA study tells a different story. Indeed, baseball (21.5%); basketball (22.2%), and track (16.0%) trail football. Only men’s golf and tennis, with numbers of 22.5% 23.2% trails football amongst non-major sports. If one compares reported marijuana use between collegiate football players to their peers in swimming (27.2%) ice hockey (27.4%), wrestling (27.7%), soccer (29.4%), and lacrosse (48.5%), it becomes clear that football is not the problem. Add women’s field hockey (35.7) and women’s lacrosse into that mix, and yet again it is clear who is getting high. In fact, when High Times or Bill Maher looks for a role model within collegiate sports, they are more likely to call upon soccer or lacrosse players than a football player.
ESPN further mischaracterizes the study by failing to sufficiently acknowledge the differences drug use in Division 1 football and Division III. The NCAA study found that marijuana use is least common amongst Division I student-athletes (16.9%), where Division II student-athletes (21.4%) and those from Division III having the highest level of usage with a number of 28.3%. Since the 2005 study, drug usage actually declined at the Division I level, while increases were seen in other two divisions.
Yet, ESPN and others continue to disseminate these false and harmful stereotypes about big-time collegiate athletes as spoiled, entitled, out-of-control and HIGH; as criminals lacking discipline and immune from accountability. Irrespective of intent, by focusing on “big-time” sports and by failing to differentiate between Division 1 and Division 3, ESPN and others play upon racial stereotypes. Is it just a coincidence that ESPN doesn’t note that marijuana use is highest amongst collegiate athletes from Division III; is it just coincidence that 76.7% white Division III football players are white? It is just an oversight that the focus is on Division 1, even though marijuana use is well below averages for student-athletes and non-student athletes alike?
Is it just a coincidence that focus is on the sport – football – that is 51% black? What does it tell us that men’s lacrosse, which is 91% white, wrestling (80% white), field hockey (90.5%), ice hockey (89.5%) and men’s soccer (72.1% white) are all sports with high marijuana use yet are unseen as problems? What does it tell us that ESPN and others conveniently erase them from a story on drug use and higher education? If fact, it tells us a lot about the sport media and the misuse of data for the sake of a sensationalized story. In that same April 30th issue, ESPN published a story about drugs and University of Oregon where Sam Alipour notes that, “between 40 percent and 60 percent of their teammates puffed”:
The school's football program reflects those realities. In interviews with The Magazine, 19 current or former Oregon players and officials revealed widespread marijuana use by football players for at least the past 15 years. Former Ducks, including current pros, estimate between 40 percent and 60 percent of their teammates puffed; current Ducks say that range remains accurate.
While I am no social scientist, interviews with 19 people along with the fact that “The Princeton Review and High Times both have ranked the University of Oregon among the most pot-friendly schools” and that during the 1990s the “Grateful Dead made Autzen Stadium a regular tour stop” is not evidence of a drug epidemic within the Duck football program. It certainly isn’t evidence that allows for statistical claims such as 40-60%, a number that not surprisingly was circulated widely by other media outlets.
Both articles reveal even more in terms of the perpetuation of stereotypes that have consequences in both the sport world and beyond. It is yet another illustration as how “what it means to be criminal in our collective consciousness” is “what it means to be black.” As argued by Michelle Alexander, “the term black criminal is nearly redundant” so much so that “to be a black man is to be thought of as a criminal, and to be a black criminal is to be despicable – a social pariah” (p. 193). One has to look no further than a Yahoo report –“ESPN's 'Higher Education': Rampant Use of Marijuana in College Football Isn't the Least Bit Shocking” to these conections. Responding to ESPN: The Magazine report, Adam C. Biggers waxes sociologist to explain their findings:
One part of the story that should be looked into is the player's backgrounds. Many of the athletes in the ESPN report are African-American and come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Based on my experience, marijuana isn't considered a "drug" by many in the urban community. I've been around college athletes, even coached at the prep level in Flint, Mich., and it's clearly evident that marijuana is ‘nothing’ when compared to other illicit substances. That may be true, but it's still illegal. In hockey and baseball, the use of smokeless tobacco is acceptable. Young players under the age of 18 use it on a regular basis. To them, it's part of the culture, as is marijuana to the urban community.
One has to wonder how Mr. Biggers would explain marijuana use amongst lacrosse or soccer players; what sort of stereotypes and white racial frames might he use to interpret prescription drug and recreational drug use amongst non-athlete students?
The effort to isolate the problem to football and to connect to “urban culture” is not surprising given fact that a study from the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education found that 95 percent of respondents imagined an African American when asked about drug user. The media narrative here (and elsewhere) is both indicative of the racial – Jim Crow – nature of the war on drugs and reflective of ways that dominant culture justifies and sanctions the racist war on drugs. According to Michelle Alexander, “racial bias in drug was inevitable” (104). Part of the reason why it was inevitable and remains the case today is the false narratives, stereotypes, and misinformation disseminated by the likes of ESPN has turned the problem of drugs into a problem of blackness. From Cops to ESPN: The Magazine, from the world of politics to the world of sports, America’s drug habit has been defined through and around blackness, rationalizing and sanctioning a war on blackness.
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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness was just published by SUNY Press in May of 2012.
