by J. Brown
I feel bad for Braxton Miller.
He's a superstar quarterblack, he gets his tuition (and maybe some other things) paid for at no expense to him, and he's arguably the most popular kid on one of the biggest college campuses in the country. If all that weren't enough, he probably has the most resume-boosting, upper crust-sounding name of any Black athlete ever. By most accounts, he should probably feel bad for me. I mean, the guy gets Twitter shout-outs from LeBron, for crying out loud. Despite all of this, I can't help but think about last year's NCAA College Football Championship and how it might have affected him.
After leading the Ohio State Buckeyes to a 12-2 record in 2013, Miller was expected to be a Heisman favorite in 2014. He had won Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year for the past two years in a row. The Buckeyes were ranked fifth in preseason polls. Things looked promising. But after Miller sustained a season-ending shoulder injury during a preseason practice, suddenly, it was all over.
As some of you know, the Buckeyes would go on to perform quite well without him. They finished the 2014 season with a 14-1 record, qualified for the first ever NCAA College Football Playoffs, and ending up winning the championship behind the heroics of Cardale Jones, who was the 3rd-string quarterback when the season started. As the confetti fell and the commentators waxed poetic about the resilience of the team and the abilities of their new undervalued leader, all I could think about was Braxton Miller. How does he feel? Sure, his team just won a national championship, but they did it without him from start to finish. They didn't even need him, and they actually fared better without him. What's worse: He was basically forgotten. I re-watched the closing moments of the championship game on YouTube, and the cameras never even showed his face during the celebration.
Was he happy about this? Did he enjoy seeing his team win it all, or was he a little bit salty that they did it with him standing on the sideline? Can star athletes truly enjoy wins that they didn't affect in any significant way?
by J. Brown
In honor of Black History Month, I spent this past Sunday doing exactly what would have made Martin and Malcolm proud: I watched a bunch of Spike Lee movies. If you watch enough Spike Lee movies, you'll start to notice that he uses a lot of the same actors throughout his filmography. Some of them went on to become pretty big stars in their own right (Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Giancarlo Esposito). Others, not so much (Bill Nunn, Joie Lee, Roger Guenveur Smith). It got me to start thinking about who the biggest stars have been in Black cinema. Now, take note that I did NOT say "biggest Black stars." I'm talking about the actors who have specifically played a large role in Black films. (If you're unsure what a "Black film" is, just ask yourself if it's a movie that most Black people have seen and most white people would never have in their Blu-Ray collection. "Barbershop", for instance, is a Black film.) Based on this criterion, people like Will Smith and Halle Berry obviously won't be on this list. The hardest part about compiling this list wasn't necessarily coming up with the names, but figuring out where to rank them. To shave it down to 10, I tried to factor in how many Black films they were in, how influential those films were, and how big their roles were in said films. Anyway, without further ado...
by J. Brown
A month and a half after its premiere episode, Empire has skyrocketed into the biggest new drama on TV that isn’t produced by Shonda Rhimes. According to this report by Entertainment Weekly, Empire’s ratings have increased every week and are reaching Walking Dead numbers. I don’t know how TV ratings are calculated, but I always measure ratings based on how annoying people on Twitter and Facebook become when the show is airing. Based on these systems, the numbers seem to match. This is all pretty unprecedented, and every report that I’ve read suggests that there weren’t any lofty expectations for the program. To me, it seemed very much like a cheap attempt to attract Black viewers. “Let’s give them hacky hip-hop music and put Terrence Howard in it. He’s in all the Negro films, they must love that guy.” Surprisingly (or maybe not), this has worked out probably better than even FOX had imagined. How did they pull this off?
