Encounter between Texas trooper, South Carolina player reminds us of uncomfortable truths

Under Rule 9, Article 5 of the NCAA Football Rules Book, there are guidelines for “game administration and sideline interference.” There is a section that deals with making contact with an official:

ARTICLE 5. While the ball is alive and during the continuing action after the ball has been declared dead:

b. Physical interference with an official is a foul charged to the team for unsportsmanlike conduct. (A.R. 9-2-5-I)

The NCAA has written rules for sideline interference. Jim Crow has unwritten rules for sidewalk interference. I wish I could have written “had unwritten rules,” except I watched an unnamed Texas state trooper elbow and aggressively bump into South Carolina football players Nyck Harbor and Oscar Adaway III after Harbor scored a touchdown against Texas A&M on Nov. 15.

Here are the questions I cannot shake. Much like the murder of George Floyd in 2020, what would have been the rhetoric if the incident hadn’t been recorded and distributed nationally? And even more harrowing: What if this encounter happened during a traffic stop, or elsewhere out of plain sight, and not at an SEC football game?

The outrage against the unnamed official was swift and would have unfortunately dissipated just as quickly except on Dec. 12 Adaway filed a criminal complaint against this mysterious policeman, accusing him of assault.

Look, I’ve gotta be honest. It’s bothering me that this gentleman doesn’t have a name, and even if Texas A&M Police and Texas Department of Public Safety don’t want to give this guy a name, I will. “Unnamed Trooper” sounds so boring. Maybe “Walker, Texas Ranger?”

Adaway, who is being represented by Houston-based lawyer B. Keith Jackson, wants the officer’s name and an apology. The ambivalence of whether he’ll receive either is baked in Jackson’s comments to The Washington Post.

“The blue wall is a real thing as it relates to protecting their own, in this part of the country more so than others,” said Jackson. “I do think there’s a good chance they bring charges, only because of the video that was shown across the country that shows there was an assault committed.”

The questions I cannot shake are rhetorical, because even though I’ve never been arrested or done anything illegal, I still peer into my rearview window every time a police car zooms past me. I don’t have to imagine what’s down that tunnel where the trooper seemingly spawned from, because when I close my eyes, I can still see the inside of Valerie Castile’s house. I can see the room that doubles as a shrine for her son, Philando, who was killed by police at a traffic stop in 2016 in Minnesota.

I also sat in the living room of Toshira Garraway Allen, who told me about her fiance, Justin Teigen, who was found dead in a dumpster in Minnesota after his interaction with police officers back in 2009.

As a writer and a journalist, I understand that I get to see and experience some things that everyone can’t see. But George Floyd Square in Minneapolis is open to the public, and the names of victims of police brutality are in bright colors lining the street, and it’s a damn shame how far you have to walk before the names run out.

“Maybe it’s just Minneapolis,” you might say. A month later, I was sitting with Samaria Rice, the mother of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was gunned down by a police officer for brandishing a toy gun. And “brandishing” is the type of passive-aggressive language that is passive when cops “bump” into football players, but is aggressive when describing the acts of the oppressed. That baby was just playing with a toy.

It’s not just Minneapolis. It’s ‘Merica.

“You see this sort of thing on TV — different scenarios of police bullying people here and there — but you never feel it and understand it until you’re actually in the situation,” Adaway said to The Washington Post.

Normally, this would be the part of the column or news story where we would justify Adaway’s concerns and complaint with his accomplishments. We will likely identify with the family’s distress if we talk about Adaway graduating in the spring with his masters’ degree, right? The discussion about his sleeplessness and seeing a sports psychiatrist will find better soil if we find out he is the chairperson of the SEC Football Leadership Council. We pretend to care about meritocracy as long as it fits within the politics of respectability. That, of course, is policing within itself.

But a man’s good works are torn asunder amidst the noise of social media bots and the silence of coaches and men in power who consent with such a dangerous system. Maybe the rantings of “those boys should haven’t been in the tunnel at all” from DixieHick01871 would be wholly irrelevant if the coaches of the programs in question, or the SEC commissioner, would have the stones to protect their players beyond the football equivalent of “thoughts and prayers.”

Instead, we have to ask the questions. Back in 2006, a high school junior asked the Jim Crow Museum on the campus of Ferris State University (Mich.) how to find information about Jim Crow etiquette. An excerpt from their response:

In general, blacks and whites could meet and talk on the street. Almost always, however, the rules of racial etiquette required blacks to be agreeable and non-challenging, even when the white person was mistaken about something. Usually it was expected that blacks would step off the sidewalk when meeting whites or else walk on the outer street side of the walk thereby “giving whites the wall.” Under no circumstances could a black person assume an air of equality with whites.

In another world, or another column, I might be able to write about Ferris State winning the Division II title in football, its fourth in five years. Alas, the institution is a footnote because racism is so stupid and so pervasive that we have to keep asking questions that we already know the answers to because even with instant replay, referees of all sorts continue to get the call wrong. On purpose.

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