Appendix - Matrix - Michigan State University

"I have you beat," he said. "My wife's pregnant. We have no
decent house. So far 13 lovely people have turned me
down."
Much of the headbusting and police crackdowns at
schools originate in Afro-American student frustration
over housing, an area where valuable, "taken-care-of athletes"
are thought to be uninvolved. Athletic Department
p.r. men skillfully make this seem so. However, the great
majority of black varsity men live, like Smith, in backstreet
bed-in-the-wall pads located far from their classes, and
overpriced. Existing as celebrity-pariahs, they go along with
it because (1) they're dependent upon Charley's scholarship
funding; (2) they're shy and tractable, taught early to
"respect everyone, whether they respect you or not," or­
"remember, as part of the Big Team you're safe from those
Spookhunters outside"; (3) if they openly rebelled, back to
pushing a poolhall broom they'd go. The answer was expressed
some weeks ago by Lee Evans, .a collegian who
ranks as the world's second-best quarter-mller of all time.
"That bag," he says, "is rapidly changing. We're all through
having our insides churned just when we think we're emancipated."
The examples are many and they vary little: in 1967,
Southern California U's great footballer-trackman, O. J.
Simpson, was worth at least $500,000 to USC at the boxoffice.
Many awards followed. Simpson, should he desire,
could not become a member of more than 90 per cent of the
groups which honored him with banquets and trophies.
[Typical are the many restricted athletic clubs and country
clubs throughout the nation.] Such organizations, however,
feel quite justified in using Simpson's name to enhance
their own identification with athletics.
At Southern Methodist University last year, "one-manteam"
halfback Jerry Levias drew so many death threats and
so much abuse by mail and phone that he was given a bodyguard
and begged by his family to quit sports. Varsity
Negroes at the University of Washington, excluded from organized
dances, golf, and ski-trips, boycotted the school's
sports program. At UCLA a public-relations gag was put
on 7-ft-l Lew Alcindor; he shook it off to reveal that he's
been niggerblasted by fans, cold-shouldered by students, and
The Revolt of the Black Athlete· 76
told to get lost. In Kansas City, former Heisman Trophywinner-turned-pro
Mike Garrett found a bachelor apartment
unobtainable and exploded in print. "Troublemaker"
the local community said of him. In sections of the Bible Belt
and in Southern states where many Olympic point-winners
are developed, trackmen routinely break records, but their
friends must sit far from the finish line in segregated seats.
At a recent Los Angeles Boycott Olympics Project conference
word arrived that Dickie Howard had been found
dead, not far away, of an overdose of drugs. Howard was a
fairly good student and he won an Olympic 400 meter
bronze medal at Rome in 1960. Finding too many doors
shut, he disintegrated and at 29 took his own life. Post­
Olympic careers for black grads in coaching, teaching, advertising,
and business are so few (a Bob Hayes in pro football,
a Rafer Johnson in radio, a Hayes Jones in recreation
direction, are but tokens in the overall picture) that the
following happened: a college alumnus famous for his accomplishments
as an Olympic athlete approached a TV
agency. As he well knew, the endorsement, testimonial, and
product-pushing industry generally employs as many of his
kind as you'll find swimming in pools in Southampton..
However, he had a winning smile. To his suggestion that he
could sell breakfast food or toothpaste, network executives
said, "Use you on commercials? Not hardly. We'd lose 60
per cent of our audience. But we do have a job open."
He promptly was handed a card to be held up before studio
audiences, reading-"Laugh."
Not laughing himself, he held it up. No other work was
open to him.
As much as Olympic officials denounce the profit motive
and try to legislate it away, most athletes waste no time in
cashing in on their reputations. The Games and commer-:
cialism are so closely tied that no longer is it arguable that
they are not. One big goal is a job with a school. What major
universities employ a black athletic director, head coach,
assistant coach, or even a head scout? Answer: almost none.
Equipment-man and bus-driving positions are open, always,
in number.
Once upon a time, children, we inform men who are undecided
about joining the boycott and come to us torn be-
Feeding the Flame • 77
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