After watching Tiki Barber’s appearance on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Thursday night, ESPN Radio host Chris Canty was upset enough that he had to respond on Twitter.
What set Canty off was Barber following up on comments he made on his WFAN show that the Mara family, owners of the New York Giants, weren’t racist in his experience.
“To blanket call, generalize that NFL teams or executives within those teams are racist is a generalization that will always be wrong,” Barber told Cooper. “Because you can’t just say that based on what history has shown us as far as hiring is concerned.”
You can watch the segment below:
The Giants have come under scrutiny with Brian Flores alleging racial discrimination in NFL hiring practices. In his lawsuit against the league, Flores cited a text message exchange with Bill Belichick which tipped off that the Giants had already decided to hire Brian Daboll as their head coach before Flores’s scheduled interview for the same position.
“They embraced me like I was family. I know them intimately,” Barber said on WFAN’s Tiki and Tierney show Wednesday. “So when I say I don’t believe they’re racist, it’s because I know they’re not.”
Saying that history has refuted the contention that NFL teams’ hiring practices for head coaches are racist sent Canty to Twitter.
It’s a pretty easy argument against the NFL’s “Rooney Rule” mandating that minority candidates be interviewed for head-coach openings to point out that there were two Black head coaches in the league when the rule was implemented in 2003. Now, there is only one. As Canty points out, there were once as many as six Black head coaches in the NFL, but the trend has clearly gone in the opposite direction.
By saying otherwise and citing history as evidence to defend the NFL owners, Barber is “the problem” in Canty’s view. Among those who agreed with Canty’s criticism against Barber was ESPN analyst Damien Woody.
Whether or not Canty takes his feelings on Barber’s remarks to his ESPN Radio show with Mike Golic Jr. remains to be seen (or heard). But an exchange of differing opinions — or a war of words, to put it more strongly — would certainly make for some compelling radio.
Ian Casselberry is a sports media columnist for BSM. He has previously written and edited for Awful Announcing, The Comeback, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation. You can find him on Twitter @iancass or reach him by email at iancass@gmail.com.
