James Wiseman, race and the NCAA: Hot takes served cold at Memphis truth table | Weathersbee

Tonyaa Weathersbee
Memphis Commercial Appeal

How the NCAA came to declare University of Memphis freshman basketball prodigy James Wiseman ineligible was breaking news last week.

But to men like Jesse Jefferson, it was the same old story.

Jefferson, a Vietnam War veteran, and several of his friends recently gathered for lunch at Stein's restaurant in South Memphis.

Over steaming plates of meatloaf, green lima beans, yams, catfish and fried chicken, they talked about how the NCAA's decision to declare Wiseman ineligible because U of M basketball coach, Penny Hardaway, gave his mother $11,500 to ease her move from Nashville to Memphis in 2017, was a reflection of how when African Americans become successful, they become magnets for scrutiny.

“They [U of M Tigers] were winning. That’s what happened,” said Jefferson, as he polished off his plate of fish slathered in hot sauce. “They’re ranked 13th. If they weren’t winning, it wouldn’t be an issue…

Ron Grayson, a diner at Stein's restaurant, said he believes the issue driving the NCAA to declare Wiseman ineligible is rooted in envy at University of Memphis basketball coach Penny Hardaway's ability to attract top players.

“And it’s also all about the potential. Here’s Penny, who is a Memphis product, who’s able to attract players from everywhere, and who’s going to be on national television, showing the world that Memphis isn’t as bad as they think we are…they’re going to look at him closely…”

“To Penny’s credit, he put everything out front.”

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But while putting it out front should have helped Hardaway, the reverse happened. Although he admitted that he gave Wiseman's mother, Donzaleigh Artis, that money to help them move so that Wiseman could play for him while he was the coach at East High, the NCAA ruled that since Hardaway gave $1 million to U of M in 2008  — when Wiseman was 7-years-old — that made him a booster-in perpetuity.

Which made the moving expense money a violation of its rules — and Wiseman ineligible.

That's crazy.

What's worse, said Curtis Williams, is that Hardaway’s decision to help Artis with moving expenses likely reflected an extension of the generosity that he shows to many people in the community.

“The things he did for him [Wiseman], there’s a thousand stories of him helping people throughout the neighborhood, and it has nothing to do with them playing basketball,” Williams said, as his friend, Fred Jones, founder of the Southern Heritage Classic and a regular at Stein's, nodded.

 “There’s people that Penny has helped that have nothing to do with sports.”

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Another diner, Ron Grayson, said: “I’m pretty sure they’re [those pushing the Wiseman eligibility issue] mad, because a lot of kids who were going to Duke came [to U of M], and a lot of kids who were going to other places came, so these people are probably feeling some kind of way about this ..."

Yet there's another reason that the NCAA's ruling is wrongheaded: It's also divorced from the fact that its rules continue to dismiss the social and economic realities that confront many African-American athletes.

A disproportionate number of black athletes tend to come from either poor families, or families with limited economic means. While the NCAA might have ruled the same way if Wiseman had been white, the fact is that 56 percent of Division I men’s basketball players – the division that includes U of M – are black.

And while Wiseman’s family isn’t poor, it takes quite a stretch to argue that moving more than 200 miles away wouldn’t have put a strain on his family’s budget.

“It’s a deceptive kind of paternalism, along the lines of Napoleon’s ‘velvet glove, iron fist,’” said said Billy J. Hawkins, a University of Houston professor and author of “The New Plantation: Black Athletes, College Sports and Predominantly White NCAA Institutions.”

 “They present it [NCAA rules] as if they’re doing it for the good of the athlete, but underneath it all, they’re uncompromising and oppressive…

“Here we have a black family who wants to move, to maximize their child’s potential, and they get slammed for it, when the better tennis players and swimmers do this all the time…”

Others are fighting back, though.

State Rep. G.A. Hardaway, D-Memphis – no relation to Penny – plans to craft legislation to examine the NCAA’s practices within Tennessee, while state Rep. Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis, and state Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, want to forbid Tennessee's public universities from discriminating against an athlete based on a coach's donation to the school.

“I think the NCAA needs to be investigated,”  G.A. Hardaway said. “We need to look at its operations within the state, and whether it’s in the best interest of our children…

“I’m tired of seeing them take advantage of our amateur athletes, and our children suffer in silence as they do it.”

U.S. Rep. David Kustoff, R-Tennessee, also said he intends to look at the NCAA’s practices.

“The NCAA has a history of unfair practices and playing favorites, and it’s time they face up to their improper conduct,” Kustoff said in a release.

Nonetheless, Hawkins said, the NCAA must rid itself of the paternalism that runs through it.

“I think they’re overstepping their bounds when they’re controlling what a family can and cannot do when they’re talking about their child’s future,” he said.

He’s right – especially when it comes to struggling African-American families.

In those families, college athletics offer their children an opportunity for a better life. But if athletes like Wiseman are going to be penalized because their parents can't accept any practical help to bring them to the doorsteps of that opportunity, then what good is it?

And if the NCAA can’t fix this, then what good is it?