Nick Piccone
EVER!
Yesterday, Eagles tackle Bennie Logan joined the WIP Afternoon Show with Josh Innes and Rickie Ricardo, and wasn’t short any words as he tackled [pun intended] the issue of his coach, Chip Kelly, and racism. [CBS Philly]
“Few years ago an incident happened with the team and things like that,” Logan said. “People just blew it out of proportion, but me personally—don’t get me wrong, it’s not right what had happened or was said, or what not. But the thing is, on my behalf I’m from Louisiana so it is typical like every other day you hear like somebody say that or doing that. So, I didn’t really react to it as like other people from other states or other parts of the country reacted. I’m just like, you just look over that stuff, forget it and just go on.
The incident Logan is talking about is the obvious one with Riley Cooper and the N-word, but it makes sense for him not want it to be brought back up and be a discussed topic anymore. Instead, he focused on the negativity that seemingly we bring on ourselves – because we just can’t help it.
“The difference here, people just really just attached to the negativity. I never seen so much negativity that lingers around so much and so long. Here it just seem like, they’re just attracted to negativity which is not a good thing.”
I mean, I understand the fact that Logan’s experiences in his life are different than mine, especially being that he grew up in the south and I grew up in the north. But to say that we’re attaching ourselves to the negativity about something happening that’s completely unacceptable [or should be] in today’s society is kind of weird – if only because we haven’t heard a take like this when talking about Chip and racism. Instead, we’re left with the Screamin’ A.’s of the world begging Chip Kelly to define what his type of player is – even though he already did.
Logan said that instead of people focusing on themselves becoming a better person, they’re looking for something negative to attach themselves to so they can feel better about who they feel like they are as a person. It sounds complicated – and I actually had to re-listen to this interview three or four times to finally get the gist of what Logan was trying to say – but it isn’t.
And honestly, there’s some truth to what Logan said. There are plenty of people in this country that have hopped on the politically correct bandwagon because they don’t want people to think less of them. I’m very opinionated and am fully against prejudice in this world – but I’m not doing it for an ulterior motive. And I think that’s what Logan’s message is here. Don’t send a hollow message.
I think it’s fair to say people seemed to move on from the Cooper incident two years ago until the issue of race came back up when Chip released DeSean Jackson and traded LeSean McCoy in back-to-back offseasons. If you suspend your belief that Chip wasn’t just getting rid of Andy Reid’s guys [which I think he was], you could convince yourself that he’s a racist. And that’s the reason why I don’t think this story regarding Chip and racism will go away any time soon.
There’s always a fine line when broaching this subject, and I have a huge amount of respect for Bennie Logan for going on WIP and speaking the way he did.
Listen to the entire interview below.