Make Your Own Shot!

It’s a cold but sunny winter’s day in New York City as William Rhoden (’73), stands on Sugar Hill near his West 115th Street apartment building overlooking Yankee Stadium.

He is recalling fond memories of playing football in the stadium in his youth. It is a memory that, in part, brought him back to this section of New York to live and work. For Bill Rhoden, the sight of the stadium is a constant reminder of his love and dedication to athletics and is an icon that helps fuel his drive that has made him one of the leading sports authority on Black athletes.

Yankee Stadium is also the ballpark where Bill Rhoden, as a young Morgan State University football player, participated in the first football classic between MSU and Grambling College of Louisiana. It was an experience that would drive his passion for reporting and analysis of Black athletes to a level of intensity that rarely achieved in sports journalism.

Bill didn’t make the professional football ranks after his days at Morgan as a defensive back, but he has become one of America’s most outstanding sports writers, developing columns for the venerable New York Times, one the nation’s most prestigious newspapers.

It is here, in this old office where he spends untold hours producing his most creative work. He spent the last eight years in what he calls his ‘sanctuary’ researching, meditating and writing-- day and night-- to complete his recently released book: Forty Million Dollar Slaves. The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete.

In describing the underlying theme of the book, Rhoden says, “The book is really about power, and about getting power.”

Rhoden believes that the Black athlete serves as a metaphor of hope and, that sports has provided a vehicle for their vision of triumph against the odds.

“Sports for us has been much, much, more than just running and jumping, it has been a means of expressing what couldn’t be expressed. In fact the element that links Black athletes through time is the legacy of hope. This has been the Black athletes primary contribution to the journey of African Americans, providing a source of hope, a beacon of light.”

William Rhoden sees writing and journalism as a crossroads for all academic disciplines, like a crucible that that cooks everything down to a common denominator or departure point. “Journalism is everything. You could be a theologian and be a journalist or an economist and bring that credential into journalism.”

Reflecting on how the world of journalism has changed over the years, Rhoden commented: “When I came up there was print, print, print, and you graduated and went out looking for a job.

Now print is shrinking but the Internet is growing. Now you can be your own job. You can basically make your own shot. And, you can be published now without necessarily having to be hired by anyone.”

“That is why understanding your individual power as an athlete or a student is so important and why I have spent so many years in sports and beginning at Morgan playing football at a Historically Black College… and how that began to be the gateway of a certain understanding of black culture. Standing in Hurt Gymnasium and seeing photos of all those great Black athletes, teams from the 1920s, 1930’s and 40’s, and the pride that they represented. Not just in athletics but in the institution and how the institution helped carry the hopes of people.”

As a mainstream, syndicated sports writer, one would expect William Rhoden to have a keen sense about competitiveness, but his wisdom has a special spin that he shares with young African American graduates entering the job market:

“The mainstream operates as an eliminator, and particularly for African Americans. You’ve got to know that when you’re competing against everyone else, globally, the people you are competing against are being judged like figure skaters where they start with a 10 and then when they screw up, they lose points.”

“We’re being judged like basketball players, where you start with zero and you’ve got to make points. And if the people you’re competing against screw up enough and you make enough points then maybe you can meet somewhere in the middle”, he said.

Bill Rhoden is a true believer in the continued mission of HBCU’s and thinks that they remain a guiding force for young African Americans: “I just think that a Black college helped me in shaping a perspective that Black really is beautiful, that Black can be powerful, and that it’s ok to be powerful. There’s nothing wrong with having power.”

Bill Rhoden’s advice to all students:  “Take advantage of all the resources, whatever institution you’re at. You’re the fuse and the institution is the match, and it will launch you.”