It’s The World We Live In

The world we live in now ain’t what it used to be.

A recent national story supposedly detailed the difference between Biden and Trump, using the California fires and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The writer’s take was that Biden stood tall with Newsom and pledged the full weight of the federal government for assistance . . . while all Trump did was criticize.

For just a moment, let’s set aside politics. The reality is that people, you know, human beings are going through hell on the left coast and yet the story is about Biden this or Trump that.

This is what our world going forward is going to look like.

Whether you sit on the left, the right, the woke, the frustrated . . . whatever, can’t the vast majority of us agree things aren’t where they should be? Can’t we agree that our country could be – and should be – in better shape?

And can’t we all agree that this continued finger pointing is getting us nowhere?

For the 10 or 12 of you who follow these scribbles, you know I’m an old sportswriter – heavy emphasis on old. In a few days my Fighting Irish from Notre Dame will take on Ohio State for the national championship of college football. The Irish squeezed by Penn State in the semifinals on a last-second field goal. All of that is cause for my celebration. It’s been almost 40 years since Notre Dame was this good (a fact IU basketball fans can relate to).

But no, in this new world, that’s not the story.

The coaches in Notre Dame’s semifinal game, Marcus Freeman and James Franklin, are minorities. Franklin is black and Freeman’s mother was Korean and his father black. ESPN mentioned over and over that of 134 NCAA FBS schools, only 16 had black head coaches.

Only 16!

What ESPN didn’t mention is that 16 equals about 12 percent. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 14 percent of this country’s total is black.

The number doesn’t seem so disparate now, does it?

Immediately after the game – did I mention my Irish won? – ESPN’s very first question to Freeman was how it felt to be the first black coach to reach the championship game. What did you expect from ESPN? The once-great cable company is owned by the Walt Disney Company – the folks who reportedly vowed to make half their characters going forward representative of the LGBTQ community.

Let’s not forget what movies Disney makes. Their target audience tends to go to elementary school. ESPN would do well to avoid sex education. (Heck, I’m not OK with them including cuss words in their movies.) I know, I know, I’m wrong. Today’s world just can’t let little kids be little kids, perfectly content with dolls, playgrounds and all the things that make up the innocence of youth.

I digress. Back to the game. 

ESPN not only couldn’t wait to play the race card, it did so in the most racist manner possible – it discriminated against Asian Americans.

Did they ask Freeman how it felt to be the first coach of Asian descent to reach the title game? Nope. Not a word. I guess ESPN only cares about some minorities.

And hardly mentioned by the mainstream folks in the media world was Freeman’s reaction. The coach could not have handled it much better.

“I’ve said this before, I don’t ever want to take attention away from the team,” Freeman said on the podium minutes after the biggest win of his coaching career. “It is an honor and I hope all coaches – minorities, black, Asian, white, it doesn’t matter, great people continue to get opportunities to lead young men like this. This ain’t about me, this is about us, and we’re going to celebrate what we’ve done, because it’s something special.”

Good for Freeman, who is in his third year as head coach at Notre Dame. (BTW, did you know that of the five Notre Dame coaches who have won national championships, all except for Knute Rockne won one in their third year . . . sorry, I digress again.)

This is the world we live in now . . . and I hate the fact that the things many of us were taught growing up no longer matter. Hard work, honesty, fairness, manners, compassion, competition and so many other traits instilled in us by parents, teachers, coaches, clergy have been replaced.

And that old sports writer in me absolutely hates that the one place where color doesn’t matter is under ESPN’s assault. What? Am I forgetting Jackie Robinson and others who broke color barriers? Absolutely not! But since the white men who were in power back then got their heads out of their posteriors, sports has been about who proves themselves better on the court, the field, the arena . . . well, OK, WNBA and Caitlyn Clark haters aside.

This is the world we live in now.

Truth to tell, dear friends, we are a flawed country. Always have been. We have presidents who lie, cheat and steal – ditto members of Congress. And if one side of the aisle or the other tries to tell you the other side is worse, add them to the list of liars.

We conveniently forget facts, or worse, we make up whatever best helps our side.

It’s nothing new. This crap has been going on far longer than you and I have taken up space on God’s green earth.

Our history as a nation is that we have long tried to be better, to improve. From tossing a King’s tea into the harbor to fighting a Civil War to defying an idiot governor who tried to keep a young black woman from entering a university . . . we have tried. Sometimes we failed. Sometimes we didn’t. But we kept trying, and more often than not, got some things right and continued growing, improving. We’re still not there yet, but until recently, we trudged on – understanding that together we are better than apart.

Sadly, a lot of folks are now trying to undo that. It’s the world we live in now.

Two cents, which is about how much Timmons said his columns are worth, appears periodically in The Times. Timmons is the chief executive officer of Sagamore News Media, the company that owns The Noblesville Times. He is also a proud Noblesville High School graduate and can be contacted at [email protected].