Phalanx wrote:
He wanted to keep it going at the end of the game as well - he kept lamenting that Oregon had scored those two touchdowns and how everyone looking at the score the next day wouldn't understand that Oregon was only up by 8 earlier in the game. He sounded just like an average Beaver or Husky fan. So now trying to find a racial angle to keep it going really seems like more of the same, but I am wondering if it isn't part of a larger ESPN attempt to form an anti-Oregon narrative. Not sure why they would keep letting him pop off like this otherwise. Aren't these guys supposed to be kind of diplomatic and professional?
Or maybe he played the race card so that they couldn't chastise him.
I think we've all seen/heard Gilmore on Oregon long enough to know that he's going to use any angle he can to throw shade at the Ducks the majority of the time. He's the classic person who will make a compliment and then couch it with "Mariota's a great person but as a QB he's got to work on..." Now that isn't to say that describing Oregon as struggling and what-not against Zona is out of line either, but it was obvious from the start that the narrative was going to be about if Arizona could knock off Oregon because there wasn't anything else compelling enough for them to talk about. I don't recall hearing a single thing about Oregon's recent history, Mario dominating the P12 and recruiting etc. A lot of story lines were not talked about because "Jedd Fisch's team is looking good if you take away all the times the Ducks have taken the ball away from them, they might even be in the lead if Oregon didn't score those points.
The race card has come up with a lot of broadcasters. I know Mark Jones who is the voice of the Kings in addition to his ESPN duties made a bunch of dumb comments about his security detail at games.
I think it comes down to people knowing that things are messed up but they don't have the answers and so they make a comment that isn't the most well thought-out and is more of an emotional response. (Geez, like nobody has ever done that before.) The thing that upsets me about the comments is that it's like crying wolf and I feel it makes actual racist behavior/actions more difficult to deter. Sometimes we act like a jerk, doesn't mean there's a racial component there.
I'm just glad I haven't had to listen to trevor matich call an Oregon came in the last 15 years. Dude always had such brutal takes.