Caveat emptor.
Buyer beware.
Especially when it comes to houses, cars...
...and societal advances.
(CNN) -- There are two Richard Shermans.
There's the smart Stanford graduate who loves to read. And there's the brash, trash-talker who considers himself the best NFL player.
One is quiet, reflective. The other can be loud -- very loud.
Much of America met the second Richard Sherman on Sunday night when, after making an amazing defensive play to seal the Seattle Seahawks' trip to the Super Bowl, he ranted in a postgame interview about his opponent.
On Tuesday, we caught a glimpse of the first when Sherman showed up for a sit-down with CNN's Rachel Nichols for a mea culpa -- but not for long.
"I probably shouldn't have attacked another person," he told Nichols in an exclusive interview that will air in its entirety Friday night on CNN's "Unguarded."
"You know, I don't mean to attack him. And that was immature and I probably shouldn't have done that. I regret doing that."
But then, Sherman turned the spotlight on to him, making himself the victim, defending his actions and saying that what he regretted most was the way the media covered his rant.
He also said he was shocked by some of the racists responses he received.
"It was really mind-boggling the way the world reacted," Sherman said. "I can't say the world, I don't want to generalize people like that because there are a lot of great people who didn't react that way. But for the people who did react that way and throw the racial slurs and things like that out there, it was really sad. Especially that close to Martin Luther King Day."
"I learned we haven't come as far as I thought we had," Sherman added. "I thought society had moved past that."
Sherman, 25, has played in the NFL for three years after a standout career at Stanford. He was named an All-Pro the past two seasons at cornerback, a position where you often find yourself standing alone and defending against the fastest offensive players on the field.
It takes a certain mix of bravado and confidence to excel at cornerback. And in Sunday's game, Sherman brought both.
Sherman, who was defending 49ers receiver Michael Crabtree near the end of the tight contest, batted a ball to a teammate. That move ensured the Seahawks a trip to the Super Bowl.
The crowd was beside itself. And so, it seemed, was Sherman.
"I'm the best cornerback in the game," he screamed during the post-game sideline interview. "When you try me with a sorry receiver like (the 49ers Michael) Crabtree, that's the result you are going to get. Don't you ever talk about me."
"I'm the best cornerback in the game. When you try me with a sorry receiver like (the 49ers Michael) Crabtree, that's the result you are going to get. Don't you ever talk about me."
Fox sideline reporter Erin Andrews asked, "Who was talking about you?"
"Crabtree," Sherman angrily responded. "Don't you open your mouth about the best, or I'm going to shut it for you real quick."
Viewers were shocked. They're more used to hearing players offer up cliches about what it takes to win, and hand down half-hearted congratulations to their opponents for being worthy adversaries.
The bile flowed almost immediately -- tweets calling him a gorilla, an ape or a thug from the ghetto.
"Richard Sherman deserves to get shot in the (expletive) head. Disrespectful (N-word)," said one, expressing a common refrain.
In his CNN interview, Sherman said it takes certain characteristics to become a successful football player.
It takes intensity. It takes focus.
And, he said, it takes anger.
He said he was in that emotional state after the play Sunday.
"If you catch me in the moment on the field when I am still in that zone, when I'm still as competitive as I can be and I'm trying to be in the place where I have to be to do everything I can to be successful ... and help my team win, then it's not going to come out as articulate, as smart, as charismatic -- because on the field I'm not all those things," he said.
Sherman said the vitriolic response surprised him.
What he did was "within the lines of a football field" -- trash-talking an opponent but not hurting anyone, he said.
The commenters, he said, were out of bounds.
"They had time to think about it," he said. "They were sitting at a computer and they expressed themselves in a true way."
"But these people are acting like I attacked them in some way, like I went after them," he added. "I did my job effectively. And afterwards, they interviewed me and I had an interview. Regardless of how that interview goes, it doesn't give you the right to say -- the things they were saying. And that's the part that's sad."
There's no such thing as bad publicity, the saying goes. And to hear Sherman's agent tell it, the controversy has been good for him.
Sherman's Twitter follower count has exploded in recent days. And the agent says his phone is ringing off the hook.
"Corporate America knows who Richard Sherman is," said Jamie Fritz, who manages Sherman's marketing deals. "I talked to brand managers this week and they are fired up. They love it. They say this is real. This is true. We finally have a player who is willing to speak his mind."
But such exposure can be a double-edged sword, says Marc Lamont Hill, an associate professor of English education at Columbia University.
"He deserves all the marketing money he gets," Hill told CNN's Don Lemon. "My concern though is when they use this image, will they see him as an extraordinary athlete who has a knack for talking trash or frame him as another angry, violent athlete?"
Fritz admits there are two Shermans: The one who stormed off the field, and the one he wants America to see.
"The amount of emotion, anybody who's played a competitive sport in a championship level knows what it's like to have those emotions running," said Fritz. "Here's a guy who's never been arrested, never said a curse word in a post-game interview, and when you look at his body of work off the field and what he does for the community and charity, it's two completely different people."
Okay, before getting to my real point, please allow me to get the primary, and obvious, point out of the way.
The debate/discussion/argument regarding the appropriateness, or lack, of Sherman's on air tirade can, and likely will, go on for some time.
And, as with flavors, TV shows, movies, music, colors, et al, everybody has, and is entitled to, their own personal preference.
Me? From the get go, I was on the bandwagon that rolled out of the barn with a big sign on it that read "is this kind of juvenile behavior really necessary?"
Eric Bolling from Fox News' "The Five", on the other hand, actually said, on air during yesterday's show that he thought the comments were, at least, simply free speech and, to boot, in his words, a "refreshing change" from the standard, garden variety, "well, we had a great game and are looking forward to moving on to our next challenge" kind of thing post game interviews usually serve up.
Frankly, Bolling surprised me. Because on a panel that runs very little risk of getting arrested for punching too softly, Bolling is, as a rule, the, admittedly, conservative but, also, "refreshingly" reasonable voice of common sense.
I took Bolling's comments to task, posted on Facebook accordingly and a FB friend commented that I was obviously out of touch with today's athletes as, in his words, "the NFL has become more and more like the WWE".
I replied that I was, in fact aware of that evolution and added that I thought
1) that was unfortunate
2) that made for a pretty shitty role model paradigm for today's young athletic hopefuls.
Willing to risk being disregarded as the flag waver for the old fart fogey section of the convention, allow me to offer that I still think the whole "WWE" style of play accomplishes little more than cheapening the sport and those who excel in it.
As for Sherman's interview comments, I agree with two out of three criteria he offered.
Playing professional level football does require intensity.
And focus.
But, anger?
I really don't recall any (read: ANY) of the NFL greats that I grew up watching and admiring and excelling ever showing up in full rage mode on my TV screen, ranting the kind of trash talk that I also grew up watching, and expecting, from every blind tagging, cheap popping, five moves of doomer that ever graced the ring.
And, key point, we knew then, as we know now, that all of that was, and is, show biz.
Sherman's "anger"?
Not so sure the quotation marks are appropriate.
And if not, then I refer you to my 1) and 2) thoughts above.
If so, then my attitude stands, but my appreciation for the "real" Richard Sherman deserves mention.
Consider it mentioned.
Meanwhile, back at the point.
And the really unfortunate thing that has been unearthed by Sherman's little tirade in a teapot.
"It was really mind-boggling the way the world reacted," Sherman said. "I can't say the world, I don't want to generalize people like that because there are a lot of great people who didn't react that way. But for the people who did react that way and throw the racial slurs and things like that out there, it was really sad. Especially that close to Martin Luther King Day."
"I learned we haven't come as far as I thought we had," Sherman added. "I thought society had moved past that."
Not so much, no.
And while no reasonable person can dispute that progress has been made.
Progress, in this case, a tricky word to define.
Which brings to mind something Dr. King said in 1963.
“Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be; but thank God we ain’t what we was.”
And after his "anger" subsided and those who gonna hate used his anger as a springboard to expressing their own, Richard Sherman discovered that that old preacher's words were in sad need of a little updating.
“Lord, we STILL ain’t what we want to be; we STILL ain’t what we ought to be; we STILL ain’t what we gonna be; but thank God we ain’t what we was.”
There's a pretty serious lesson available here for those with ears that hear and eyes that see.
And that's that hatred, real, purely evil, potentially violent hatred, of one race for another is a long, long way from being overcome.
Just as we might have, naively, perhaps, felt good about our shared house being rebuilt and stronger than ever....
...we find that, in some measure, all that's been accomplished so far is an attempt to paint over the darkness, to coat it with a brightness we hoped and, naively, perhaps, assumed would prevent us or our children or their children from ever seeing that ugliness again.
Turns out that kind of darkness requires a whole lot more work to remove.
And it doesn't take much for it to fade back into sight.
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