Last Thursday, Georgia’s Jordan Davis was selected 13th overall in the 2022 NFL Draft.
A defensive tackle with consistently impressive film and an unexpectedly speedy 40 time at the combine, Davis didn’t have to wait long to hear his name called. As he made his way up to the stage to be congratulated by Goodell and accept his Philadelphia Eagles jersey, he acknowledged several supporters along the way with a few handshakes, daps and a high five.
The only person he hugged was his mother, Shay Allen.
Plenty of stories had been written about the mother-son duo during Davis’ time in Athens. She’s the reason he started playing football and they would pray together before each of his games. Even the Eagles credited her for Davis’ success.
But his isn’t the only story we know.
Utah linebacker Devin Lloyd’s parents met, and both served, in the military. Lloyd spent his last college season playing on behalf of two teammates killed by gun violence.
The youngest of three boys, Cincinnati’s Sauce Gardner recently told his mom, his hero, to retire.
Ikemefuna Ekwonu of NC State, and his football-playing twin brother, Osita, were raised by parents who immigrated from Nigeria.
Their stories and those of others are told during the NFL Draft, a highly produced spectacle, with this year’s pomp and circumstance taking place in Las Vegas. In the last several years, the days-long drama has depended upon the tears, fashion, cheers, ‘boos,’ and the fans that make each Draft event so unique.
These players deserve to be celebrated on such a huge stage for it’s a big deal to be drafted. Tens of thousands of players participate in college football and based on data from the 2019 draft, only about 1.6% of eligible players are selected annually. While this doesn’t account for the players who will inevitably enter the league as free agents, it does demonstrate just how limited an opportunity this is for NCAA athletes.
Simultaneous to its extravagance and grandeur, the draft relies upon dehumanization and labor exploitation, as the capitalist enterprise of the league places monetary value on players. It’s about the racist stereotypes that are used to describe players and their bodies at the combine and in the month leading up to the main event.
And every facet is structurally orchestrated further as white team owners are “trading, drafting and ‘owning’ the contracts of players who are predominantly Black.”
It’s impossible, and irresponsible, to discount the importance of these racialized aspects of the game. Nevertheless, I’m more interested in an additional dimension, one represented by and through players’ various kin relations.
The draft is a spectacular display of family.
Media draft discussions rely on narratives that theorize the chosen family the players are leaving behind in college, the sporting one they will gain in the league, and the biological one that supported them throughout their entire journey.
Families and support systems come in all configurations, something captured by the cameras as players wait to be selected.
Whether on location or in their homes, part of the media obsession during the draft is the focus on those around the player. His parents, siblings, partner, teammates, relatives, and friends surround him on the couch as he anxiously waits for his name to be called.
This is the access fans crave and demand, an access that is often is exploited.
Seventy percent of NFL players are Black. This labor force is strengthened every year by new talent that replenishes a similar racial demographic. And every single year, Black football families are publicly exploited, highlighted, mocked, or picked apart for public consumption.
This is particularly true at the NFL Draft, where family narratives are deeply and structurally racialized.
The 2020 broadcast was especially problematic in these ways; their treatment of Clemson’s Tee Higgins was especially egregious. Current players, viewers, and journalists criticized ESPN for the ways that prospective draftees’ devastating family histories and traumas were unnecessarily narrated alongside their triumphs on the gridiron.
ESPN issued an apology, but the produced storylines played into the tropes that Black families are somehow broken, dysfunctional or inferior – simply because they might be configured in ways that aren’t always legible to a heteronormative white audience.
The televised narratives are not for the benefit of the player. Instead, they serve the NFL because they pathologize Black families through the particular stories they feature.
This year, Penn State’s Jaquan Brisker was a target. The league chooses to circulate stories of hardship, uplift, and overcoming adversity, sometimes extrapolating and repeating the worst possible moments of players’ relatively short lives.
This approach then contributes to a certain myth-making which allows for the league to tell a perfectly articulated savior narrative about itself.
‘We have been a huge part of his success,’ argues the NFL. Though we know the NFL is plenty destructive to the lives and experiences of its players, this defensive move attempts to absolve it from blame.
But, of course, that’s still not the whole story.
At least, not the one the players themselves would tell.
That’s why I’m consistently drawn to the draft.
Despite how the networks choose to frame these players’ experiences, they’re often expressing themselves in a different way, alongside but counter to the hegemonic narrative. Through the jewelry they wear, the people they thank, and the locations they watch from, the athletes provide plenty of information about their own family narratives and how they wish for their stories to be told.
For this reason, the draft is a remarkable public display of Black families that places young Black men at its center. For me, that’s something worth tuning in for.
