Sherman was swarmed by his teammates but broke away to chase after Crabtree. He stretched out a hand and said, “Hell of a game, hell of a game,” to which Crabtree responded by shoving him in the face mask. Moments later, Sherman was surrounded by reporters and cameramen; by then, he had acquired an N.F.C. champions’ cap, which left his eyes in shadow, and his long dreadlocks hung loose. When Erin Andrews, of Fox Sports, asked him about the final play, he more or less exploded. “I’m the best corner in the game!” he proclaimed. “When you try me with a sorry receiver like Crabtree, that’s the result you gonna get! Don’t you ever talk about me!”
“Who was talking about you?” Andrews asked.
“Crabtree! Don’t you open your mouth about the best, or I’m gonna shut it for you real quick! L.O.B.!”
L.O.B.: that’s Legion of Boom, the nickname of the Seattle defense. The video of the “epic rant,” as it was called, went viral. Andrews told GQ that the response was so overwhelming that her Twitter account froze. She added, “Then we saw it was taking on a racial turn.” Some people expressed alarm that an angry black man was shouting at a blond-haired woman. (Andrews immediately shut down that line of complaint.) Many people expressed a hope that Manning would put Sherman in his place. The names that he was called were numerous, offensive, and explicitly racial, but one that stood out—it was used more than six hundred times on television, according to Deadspin—was “thug.”
by Amy Davidson, New Yorker | Read more:
