"Well, I'm the best corner in the game! When you try me with a sorry receiver like Crabtree, that's the result you gonna get! Don't you ever talk about me!" Richard Sherman declared quite loudly in his interview with Erin Andrews immediately following the Seahawks victory over the 49ers in the NFC Championship game this last Sunday. Still pumped full of adrenaline, he went on to say, "Crabtree! Don't you open your mouth about the best, or I'm gonna shut it for you real quick! LOB!" Many viewers reacted negatively to this interview, calling him "not classy," a "thug," or worse. I believe that Sherman has every right to express an opinion such as this and shouldn't be held to any classy, monocle-and-cane standard that some people are expecting. After all, he is a player of a fast-paced, physical contact sport, which requires players to aggressively hit and tackle one another. We shouldn't then expect them to hold hands immediately afterwards and sing kumbaya. In fact, I say we ought to expect this sort of competition and emotion from professional athletes.
The reactions on social media sites such as Twitter were also reflective of people's higher expectations of class from professional athletes. Many saying he wasn't classy because he was publicly calling out another player, which is clear hypocrisy coming from those chopping down Sherman publicly themselves. There are also those who share my opinion and posted that Sherman was right to express himself as he did. The reason I believe there was so much of a social media reaction is that events like this make people feel justified to express feelings that they would otherwise keep hidden concerning things like race. Many of the comments were less intellectual about expressing their negative feelings towards Sherman and were outright racist. These included comments like, "Richard Sherman acting like a stereotypical unprofessional n*****" and, "RICHARD SHERMAN HOLY S*** YOU F***ING N******". People posting comments like these are on a whole different level than those simply criticizing Sherman's lack of professionalism. Instead of expressing valuable opinions, they are simply going off in explicitly racist ways while claiming they feel this way about Sherman because he made inappropriate comments. Hypocrisy strikes again.
In the end, the lesson to be learned is that we hold athletes, actors, music artists, etc. to standards of class that are pretty unrealistic. And being the people-pleasers they are, they conform to our expectations most of the time. But then it hits us all that much harder when they do something outside of their typical facade of perfection and show their own personality and emotions. We just need to come to grips with the fact that these people are, in fact, people and therefore have the right to have and express opinions. Our culture holds celebrities to ridiculous standards, expecting them to be as simple as the movie characters many of them portray. Sooner or later were going to have to realize if we can make mistakes, so can they.