Not even in demise can a terrific journalist relaxation in peace.
Even although Butch John handed away 9 years in the past, the dumb query he by no means even requested has been resurrected but once more.
Hopefully, for the final time.
On this Super Bowl Sunday when the Philadelphia Eagles tackle the Kansas City Chiefs, will probably be the primary time in historical past that each groups will begin a Black quarterback. The two quarterbacks — Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs and Jalen Hurts of the Eagles — each led their groups to the No. 1 seed of their respective conferences and each had been finalists for the league’s Most Valuable Player award, which Mahomes gained on Thursday.
As you’ll count on, this has spawned a bevy of tales about Doug Williams, the primary Black quarterback to ever begin and win a Super Bowl. Of course, you’ll be able to’t do a narrative about Williams main the 1987 season’s Washington workforce to the championship with out citing what is usually acknowledged because the dumbest query in Super Bowl historical past:
“So, Doug, how long have you been a Black quarterback?”
Even although Butch John by no means requested that query in that manner, it’s nonetheless reported as reality at present. If you do a Google search you’ll discover out that even Butch’s former newspaper — the Jackson Clarion-Ledger — exhumed the misreported query earlier this week.
Since Butch isn’t right here to defend himself; I’ll defend him and inform the actual story as soon as once more. I spoke with Butch the final time race turned a significant challenge on the Super Bowl. It was February 2007 in Miami when the Super Bowl featured two Black head coaches — Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts and Lovie Smith of the Chicago Bears — for the primary time.
I had met Butch years earlier and phoned him from the Super Bowl media room in Miami and requested him a joking query: “If you were covering the Super Bowl today, would you ask Tony Dungy or Lovie Smith anything about being a Black coach?”
Butch’s drained voice immediately boomed with ardour: “Hell, no!. Are you kidding me? I’ve already been branded an idiot once.”
At the time I spoke with him, Butch was disabled and not within the newspaper enterprise. He had a degenerative backbone situation and a pain-relief pump sewn into his stomach that injected treatment immediately into his vertebrae.
I spent an hour on the cellphone with him and he informed me the entire story about his notorious query that acquired mangled within the translation.
Here’s an italicized excerpt of what I wrote 16 years in the past after that interview with Butch and what really occurred when he requested Williams a query on the 1987 season’s Super Bowl:
“The fact of it’s this: Butch John was standing with about 20 reporters on that January night time when the Redskins arrived in San Diego for Super Bowl XXII. For about 20 minutes, reporters pelted Williams with questions in regards to the historic significance of being the primary Black quarterback to start out within the Super Bowl.
It was clear Williams was getting a bit uninterested in the questions, so John thought he would method the subject one other manner. He recalled one thing Williams had mentioned earlier within the season about how being a Black quarterback hadn’t even been a problem till he acquired to the NFL. That’s when John requested his actual query:
“The question I asked was this,” John mentioned. “I mentioned, `Doug, it’s apparent you’ve been a Black quarterback all of your life. When did it begin to matter?’ “
Not a dumb query in any respect. In reality, fairly a profound one. Except Williams didn’t hear it appropriately, did a double-take and repeated what he thought he heard: “What? How long have I been a black quarterback?”
“I was standing 2 feet away from Butch,” mentioned Bob Kravitz, [then] a columnist for the Indianapolis Star. “It never happened the way it’s been portrayed for all these years. Butch never asked the dumb question he is accused of asking. In fact, the question he asked was a really good one.”
But based on John, the misquoted model of his query appeared the following day in a blurb within the San Diego Union-Tribune and immediately turned the stuff of city legend. The query made it onto ABC’s Nightline and have become No. 100 on the ESPN listing of “Greatest Super Bowl Moments.”
In subsequent years, John could be sitting on Super Bowl media buses and listen to different writers speaking about how they had been there when “that moron from Mississippi asked Doug Williams, `How long have you been a Black quarterback?’”
John by no means responded to the misinformation. He knew it was no use.
“When something gets thrown into the Super Bowl hype machine, it’s over,” John mentioned.
As it seems, Butch was completely proper — then and now. Doug Williams talked once more this week about Butch’s misquoted dumb query as if it actually occurred. Sometimes, it appears, if a lie is perpetuated sufficient occasions it turns into the reality — even to those that had been there.
Butch would ultimately transfer out of the sports activities division to turn out to be an award-winning characteristic author for the Clarion-Ledger and Louisville Courier-Journal and wrote eloquent and significant tales on civil rights, poverty within the Mississippi Delta and the nationwide epidemic of kid welfare. Even so, the mangled query haunted him all through his profession.
After he died of mind most cancers 9 years in the past, Billy Watkins, his former colleague on the Clarion-Ledger, wrote that “Butch brooded over the episode for years.”
Butch was one of many smartest and most erudite wordsmiths I ever knew; he was not the so-called dumb sports activities author from Mississippi who requested an idiotic query.
In reality, I’d say the query he really requested has aged very nicely.
“It’s obvious you’ve been a black quarterback all your life. When did it start to matter?’”
As we prepare for Super Bowl Sunday by which two Black quarterbacks will begin within the huge sport for the primary time, it clearly nonetheless issues at present.
No must brood any longer, Butch.
RIP, my buddy.
Your query — your actual query — stays related and profound even 35 years later.
Email me at [email protected]. Hit me up on Twitter @BianchiWrites and take heed to my Open Mike radio present each weekday from 6 to 9:30 a.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and HD 101.1-2
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Source: www.bostonherald.com