Racism Plaguing Professional Sports?

Posted by / June 21, 2012 at 7:46 pm

African American civil rights leaders often lambast professional sports leagues for not hiring more black coaches and, in the case of the NFL, quarterbacks to match their racial prevalence in the league, but somehow the most important positions in sports are often overlooked. The leadership of 80% of the major professional sports associations in America are held by a group that comprises only 2% of the population. Although non-gentile Americans are dramatically underrepresented as athletes and coaches, they dominate the leadership positions in these leagues.

Major League Soccer (MLS) Commissioner- Don Garber is non-gentile.

Major League Baseball (MLB) Comissioner- Allan “Bud” Selig is non-gentile.

National Hockey League (NHL) Commissioner- Gary Bettman is non-gentile. It should also be noted that the former NHL Commissioner Gilbert Stein was also a non-gentile lawyer.

National Basketball Association (NBA) Comissioner- David Stern is non-gentile and so is the Deputy Commissioner- Adam Silver and also the President of League Operations- Joel Litvin.

Of the five major sports organizations, there is only one token gentile sports commissioner, which is the National Football League’s (NFL) Roger Goodell. Not so surprisingly, his top two executives: NFL Executive VP-Eric Grabman and NFL Executive VP and general counsel Jeffrey Pash, are both non-gentile. It should also be noted that former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue was non-gentile. At one point, all five commissioners were non-gentile.

On average, African Americans are far more likely to focus their career prospects on professional sports than other racial groups, so one would think that they would have an overrepresentation in the top spots of professional sports leagues rather than no representation at all. In professional sports, the players are selected based on skill, and skill is hard to discriminate against. As a result, some sporting leagues such as the NBA (80%) and NFL (70%) are predominately black. Considering that many of these black athletes graduate from top schools, and a select few also get the opportunity to coach, their experience should make them uniquely qualified for leadership positions in their respective leagues. After all, one need look no further than the popular T.V. show Undercover Boss to see some of the operational efficiencies that are overlooked when bosses are disconnected from the organizations they run. And who would be better connected to the operations of a sports league than a college-educated former player and/or coach?

Who, on the other hand, could be more out of touch than the current commissioners, who have little to no sports experience? NBA Commissioner David Stern’s experience consists of representing the league as a lawyer, which should hardly qualify one for a leadership role. Before the NBA, Vice Presidents Adam silver and Joel Litvin were also lawyers. NFL Vice President Jeffrey Pash is a lawyer who says his sports experience stopped at little league. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was a lawyer with no real sports experience. NFL Vice President Eric Grabman is a former banker for Goldman Sachs. MLS Commissioner Don Garber worked in sports organizations like the NFL before being named as the commissioner of the league. MLB Commissioner Bud Selig was a “fan” and owner before becoming commissioner. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, the sole gentile commissioner, is only one who even appears to have played sports. Goodell graduated with a degree in economics, which would seem to be much more useful for running a business than a law degree.

As a result of these sports leagues’ leaders almost uniformly consisting of lawyers with little to no connection to the leagues and players they represent, strikes and talks of strikes have plagued these organizations over the last few decades. Arguably the only thing that could break these organizations’ respective monopolies is a prolonged strike, but yet these out of touch lawyer/commissioners continue to bring their organizations to the brink of disaster. And the media is yet to challenge their credentials. This is especially shocking considering that the players are making large salaries, and many of the individual owners have seen their revenue increase and their investments gain value. Only a New York lawyer could cause a problem between two prospering business partners.

This unbelievable overrepresentation and discrimination in sports management does not end at the league leadership unfortunately. The top two sports agencies according to this ranking are Wasserman Media Group (Casey Wasserman) and Creative Artist Agency (Richard Lovett). Both are headed by non-gentiles. In addition, many other top sports management agencies like Excel Sports Management ( Jeff Schwartz) are headed by non-gentiles as well.  Likewise with the sports organizations’ leadership, who better to represent an athlete than a former athlete who has relationships with the coaches and owners? Instead, non-gentiles lawyers with little to no experience in sports end up representing the athletes.

The lifeblood of the major sports organizations are their television contracts; and shockingly these television networks are actually more over-represented by non-gentiles than the sports organizations and agencies they work with.

Disney CEO (ESPN and ABC) Robert Iger is non-gentile.

ESPN and ABC Sports President George W. Bodenheimer is non-gentile.

FOX President Peter Chernin is non-gentile, and so is the Vice Chairmen of Fox Sports Ed Goren.

HBO Sports President Ken Hershman is non-gentile.

NBC Sports Group Chairman Mark Lazarus is non-gentile.

NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker is non-gentile.

Turner Sports Group President Daniel Levy is non-gentile.

This could go on all day, especially with the Vice Presidents, who are similarly non-gentile. Again, one would think that some of the executives dealing with sports would be African Americans, who comprise the majority of the athletes, or just gentiles in general, who comprise 98% of the population, but that does not seem to be the case.

These non-gentile executives hire non-gentile sportscasters in a ridiculously overrepresented rate to their percentage of the population. Take for example: Chris Berman, Marv Albert, Hank Goldberg, Doug Gottlieb, Mike Greenberg, Mel Allen, Len Berman, Bonnie Bernstein, Steve Bunin, Linda Cohn, Roy Firestone, Tony Kornheiser, Steve Levy, Jim Rome, and the list goes on….

The odds of this kind of domination of leadership positions, sports divisions of television networks, sports agencies, and sports telecasters being coincidence, given that non-gentiles comprise only 2% of the American population, are so infinitesimal that it can not be explained other than tribalism and racism.

To prove this is a pattern rather than an aberration, one needs look no further than the starkly similar overrepresentation of non-gentiles in the Ivy League. As Kevin McDonald, a California State University professor, concluded, “These data strongly suggest that Jewish overrepresentation at elite universities has nothing to do with IQ but with discrimination against non-Jewish White Americans….It would be interesting to see the dynamics of the admissions process. How many admissions officers are Jewish? And, whether or not they are Jewish,what pressures are they under to admit Jewish students?” To answer his questions, nearly 80% of the people in the top administrative positions are either non-gentile or married to non-gentiles and they admit non-gentile students at a 7-15 times greater rate than African Americans and other gentiles. This link provides the names and tittles of the Ivy League administrators to prove this point.

Unfortunately, this trend of non-gentile overrepresentation also extends to finance, general media, the Supreme Court, government appointments, and financial contributions. As non-gentile controlled Ivy League universities and media outlets constantly declare, all races have equal intelligence and work ethics, so how can this kind of overrepresentation be explained by anything but tribalism and nepotism?

After reading this article, one will understand that there is a strong underlying current of racism in the non-gentile community against African Americans and gentiles in general. To illustrate this point, the leader of the Israeli Sephardic community and founder of the Shas party Rabbi Ovadia Yosef stated in 2010 that the sole purpose of non-Jews was to serve Jews. Yosef, a man who is also influential among American non-gentiles, said in a 2010 television interview that “gentiles need to die…goyim have no place in this world.” In the same year, 50 state-paid rabbis signed a letter instructing non-gentiles not to sell or rent houses to Arabs. The letter was then endorsed by another 250 non-gentile religious figures. In another example, a group of Israeli Rabbis headed by Dov Lior issued a religious edict saying, “a thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”It stands to wonder whether qualified African American gentile applicants are being turned down for the leadership positions in professional sports organizations because of this racism?

In many cases, it is customary for former players and coaches to take executive positions in sports organizations when they retire, but in the case of the top spots it is clearly “No Gentiles Allowed.” So if it is not due to racism, then why is there a glass ceiling in professionals sports for everyone but non-gentile lawyers? How does David Stern justify only hiring non-gentile lawyers as his subordinates? It would be an incredible coincidence if Stern just happened to hire two other non-gentiles considering that they only comprise a tiny fraction of the athletic population. Do non-gentile managers get better contracts from T.V. stations than gentile managers? Do athletes with non-gentile agents get off lighter for various infractions? Do non-gentile businesses get preferential treatment at sporting events? For example, a non-gentile named Larry Levy established Levy Restaurants, which operates restaurants at dozens of major sporting venues. The valuable contracts Levy was able to secure from non-gentile sports managers has translated into a half a billion dollar a year business.

Many Americans may view this tribalism as acceptable, but imagine if this situation involved white gentile sports commissioners only giving jobs to other white gentile managers. Or if it entailed white gentile T.V. managers hiring white sportscasters at a 10 times greater rate than their percentage of the population. Or if white Ivy League administrators accepted white students at a 7-15 greater rate than their percentage of the population. Or if financial firms run by white gentiles hired white gentiles at greatly disproportionate rates. Or imagine what would happen if Arab Americans were giving 50% of all financial contributions to American politicians and were using those contributions to coerce the US government to give tens of billions of dollars of aid to Syria, while non-gentile Americans at home were starving. These things would all cause a massive outcry, but because it is non-gentiles perpetrators who control almost the entirety of the media, there is hardly a word about it. Racism is racism, and it must be rooted out wherever it lies.

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  • AlanB

    Excellent article. Thanks for helping raise awareness.

  • Greg

    You write that athletes are chosen based on athletic talents and then you claim that NFL quarterbacks are over represented by non African Americans. Contradiction much?

    You also mention the high percentage of Jews in Ivy League schools but completely leave out the Asians who comprise about 25% of the Ivy League student body yet comprise roughly 3% of the national population. That doesn’t seem to agree with your theory that Jews on the admission board are discriminating against gentiles. Ivy leagues are filled with a student body that is a mixture of wealthy connections/alumni parents, athletic scholarships, or those who proved themselves on the applications for scholarly accomplishments.

    I also don’t understand the connection between being able to play a sport and being able to manage a team or a league. There’s a difference between having athletic talents and business talents, and at the end of the day all of the sport leagues are mere businesses that serve the purpose of entertainment while trying to make profit.

    Lastly, would professional sport team owners want to have a former player as a commissioner that represents them, who will likely be biased towards the player’s interest in case of a strike or a non player that will represent non player interests?! Makes more sense for owners to be in favor of a non-player commissioner.

    Clearly you have your own bias and write accordingly by only giving part of the story that favors your own argument, so maybe you’re racist yourself.

    • admin

      Hi Greg,

      Thank you for your comments. I will do my best to address all of your points by paragraph:

      1. You did not point out the contradiction. Quarterbacks represent only one position in the league.

      2. You say that Asians comprise 25% of the Ivy League, but yet comprise roughly 3% of the population. Well, according to your own math, there are roughly 50% more Asians in America than Jews, but yet Asians account for fewer Ivy League spots. So yes, it still smells like racism.

      3. Good point here about playing sports not translating to management, but experience with the operations at lower levels of an organization is generally considered to be invaluable in management, but not always.

      4. This is your best point, but what makes you think that New York lawyers with little to no management/business experience are the most suitable people to run a business?

      5. You haven’t pointed out any bias yet, and false accusations of racism only belittle your points.

    • Stan

      The issue remains. Why so many non-gentile managers and executives in sports, media, etc. Why not more Asian or Black CEOs — Stern, and other sports commissioners come from a Jewish background, and this group seems to hold these positions in such over-represented numbers that screams of a “father” (owners) choosing his own “sons” to run the businesses. Businesses that echo across America and are mainstream, when Jewish representation is Not mainstream. AIPAC is an example of a Jewish lobby group that touches every political spectrum in America, with special interest in supporting Israel, can touch, and even hurt a politician that does not “listen”, and yet is not “mainstream” in American gentile “awareness”, yet controls so much behind the scenes. This AIPAC is just another example of “hidden” influence that is so much greater than the average American is aware, who just pays his taxes, and drinks his beer, and watches organized sports where the profits and control are mostly held my a “small, non-mainstream” group, with “mainstream” influence. There is nothing wrong with Jewish talent, or even Jewish success, but why such tightly held control. Could a poor Asian man or African American man be allowed to join this “old boys group” or will the rest just be unaware “mainstream” consumers for an “elite” group that holds control in media, sports, banking, politics, etc. Never challenged (except amongst themselves) and never known, even as they walk amongst the gentiles who humbly pay their taxes and are bits, cogs, and wheels that allow the “Jewish machine” to continue running.