Black, White and Purple
Are you still under the illusion that Minnesota doesn't have a profound problem with race relations? Then you haven't been following the ongoing ineptitude of the football Vikings this season; specifically the kids-gloves treatment head coach Mike Tice has received compared to the way Dennis Green, his African-American predecessor, was mercilessly criticized by the fans and media during the years he ran the ballclub.
In the most obvious measures of a coach's competence--frequency of penalties, the performance of special teams, a club's poise under pressure, and wins versus losses--Tice ranks among the worst in the entire NFL. The nadir--so far, at least--occurred a week ago Sunday when he botched a trick play that appeared to have won the game for the Vikes. Even Pop Warner coaches know that when you run a formation that has an offensive tackle becoming an eligible receiver, the tackle has to report himself as such to the official before the play is run. Tice's claim that the officials signed off on his formation when he showed it them before the game was particularly damning--the officials' assent obviously came with the assumption that the coach knew and would abide by the tackle-eligible rule before running the play. Incredibly, Tice either forgot or was unaware of the rule, and ran the illegal play that wound up *preventing the Vikes from winning the game.*
Imagine the shitstorm that would have ensued if Green had made a similarly fundamental and costly mistake. Or forget about that blunder--the magnitude of which never occurred during Green's entire tenure as coach, by the way--and imagine how the fans and columnists would be roasting Green if his team had piled up as many penalties, blown as many field-goals and extra-points, or allowed his players to become involved in the classless rumble that occurred at the end of Sunday's Green Bay game. If Green had announced a "Randy ratio" at the beginning of this year, as Tice did, imagine the brickbats he would have received for essentially tipping his offensive strategy to opposing coaches.
For those of you with short memories of how harshly Green was treated by the fans, I can recite the words of WCCO radio's Dark Star, who ran the post-game call-on show for the station during the end of Green's tenure. Recalling how fans called in demanding that Green be fired after the team interrupted a long winning streak with a single loss, DS said that there are more closet racists in Minnesota than anyplace he has ever lived. (The quote appeared in a story I wrote about Green for Mpls.-St.Paul Magazine in the fall of 2000. I'm sorry I can't provide the direct link.) Not coincidentally, as of 1 p.m. on Monday, only ten percent of the nearly 10,000 fans responding to the Star Tribune's "instant poll" on why the Vikes lost to Green Bay, blame "lousy coaching" for the defeat, the lowest percentage of any of the five options listed.
The media has exercised a similar double standard vis a vis Tice and Green. The Star Tribune's Dan Barreiro, who routinely vilified Green as a person and missed no opportunity to blame Green for any of the team's misfortunes, has not been nearly so apt to link the Vikes' current putrid performance to Tice's inadequacies. After Tice blew the Atlanta game, Barreiro actually led his column with a specious Green comment (about the "slimmed down" coach being in an "easy chair" in San Diego choking up fruit salad) and waited until the piece was nearly half over before ripping into Tice. (I'd provide the link for the column, but the Star Tribune deems the wisdom of its Vikings coverage to be worth making it a pay site.)
It could be argued that personal deportment, as much as race, accounts for the difference in the way Tice and Green are treated. Yes, Green could be arrogant with the press, just as Tice goes out of his way to chat them up. Barreiro, for instance, has a weekly chat with Tice on KFAN. But if you accept this argument, then you say that the way a coach is regarded by the general public has as much or more to do with how a coach treats the media than how a coach actually coaches a team. In other words, fans and media in this town aren't racist, just incredibly gullible and self-important.
Upcoming: A brief take on the Andrew Hill gig at the Walker Saturday night and my year-end music picks.
11:02:00 AM 
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