Geoff Schwartz Is Smarter Than You - Responding to Anti-Semitism in Football

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

Geoff's back on another bonus episode to discuss DeSean Jackson's inflammatory, anti-Semitic post and his response. Then, he'll explain how helpful the NFL's new coronavirus protocols really are; and why intra-conference schedules is a good idea for college football. Cold Open: Julian Edelman DeSean Jackson: (0:57) Return to play guidelines: (6:54) Scheduling college football: (9:40) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I'm proud of my Jewish heritage, and for me, it's not just about religion. It's about community and culture as well. Anti-Semitism is one of the oldest forms of hatred. It's rooted in ignorance and fear. Welcome into Jeff Schwartz's Smarter Than You. It is July 10th, and this is me, just jeff schwartz just a solo edition of the podcast thank you for all the feedback by the way that we get on kind of the new format we're doing twice a week now i really do appreciate that uh we're going to touch on uh the sean jackson kind of put a bow on

that on that whole issue we discussed it at length this week on my twitter at jeff schwartz we'll discuss it now a little bit we'll talk about the NFL, putting in some return-to-play guidelines as well, and then college football. College football, we're getting to the point now where decisions are being made about this. And I actually think the decisions are the right way to go. But let's start off with Deshaun Jackson and the response from NFL players and the like. So it's something I did not expect to get into. You can go to my Twitter.

I have a 19-minute video that I put up on Periscope about my thoughts towards Deshaun Jackson, anti-Semitism, and my experience in the NFL with NFL players. And I come back to this. What Deshaun Jackson posted was ignorant, was anti-Semitic. And for right now, I'm going to cut him a little bit of the benefit of the doubt because I've been in locker rooms with players who have never talked to Jews before. They have never met a Jew or at least an open Jew who talks about Judaism. They've never talked about Judaism with anybody.

They don't know what antisemitism is. Now, I know it's a very loose benefit of the doubt because he did post a fake quote of Hitler, okay? That should be your first sign. Hey, don't post this. And then he posted it and then doubled down and whatnot. I like that the idea is educating Deshaun Jackson, talking to his owner who's Jewish, talking to a gentleman who's Jewish, and going to visit a rabbi in Philadelphia. All great.

Julie Edelman, Super Bowl winner for the Patriots, fellow member of the tribe, offered Deshaun Jackson to travel with him to the Holocaust Museum. And then Julie Edel Julian will go to the African-American Historical Museum as well and they'll go get a burger afterwards. Anti-Semitism is best combated when obviously knocked down and told and blasted out that it is wrong. But also learning is important here. And I think we focus too much at times on social media posts and not so much on actions. And if Tashaun Jackson takes these actions to help learn about Judaism, I'm for him making these changes and doing this.

And there's no way, guys, you can leave the Holocaust Memorial without feeling emotional. It is a heavy place. It's a place of much heartache. And as much as you can imagine the Holocaust via written text, movies, until you go there and see the faces and see, you know, they have, you know, possessions of, that were taken from people, they have stories. And until you actually go there, it's hard to really put into, you know, feelings what the Holocaust was and is. And when you go there, it hits you, man.

It hits you. And you understand the Jews have been persecuted for 4,000 years, right? 5,000 years. Forever. Forever. And that Jews have worked with minorities to empower minorities. And I think it's important for Deshaun Jackson to do that, to make it happen for education. Now, if he comes out and says, same thing again,

and two weeks after he did all this, I got a problem. That will be more forceful. They don't get after him. But right now, I think education is the best way to go. The question I get asked the most right now is, why haven't more players come out and spoken on this topic? We saw a slew of players come out and speak about Black Lives Matter, blast Drew Brees, and speak up about social issues. Why not this? My brother's done it,

Julie Edelman, Zach Banner. I think one other player has done it. I've had players text me as well. I'll tell you why. When it comes to social justice causes, when it comes to Black Lives Matter, it's a locker room full of black athletes. It's a locker room full of players who, as a white player, you can see their pain. You understand what your friend, your teammate is going through because you see it. They're there. You talk to them. You've talked to them about race, hopefully hopefully and you understand why they're feeling this way and why they're supporting a movement it makes sense a lot it's eaten a lot of people white people in locker rooms i should say um you know can empathize and they've come out and spoken the black lives matter we talked about we need white quarterbacks to speak out and they did okay so i'm not really looking i'm kind of thinking along the same lines here.

I know that, you know, that other players can step up and say that. But just kind of alongside. So it's easy for them to see, hey, my brother, you know, is hurting over this. I'm going to support him. There's like no Jewish NFL players in the locker room. So I get why there hasn't been much. I wish there was. In the locker room. So I get why there hasn't been much. I wish there was.

I wish people, I hope people use the opportunity to learn about antisemitism, learn what it means. It's bigotry, discrimination. It's not racism. We're not a race. There's Jewish people of all colors, all countries. I know people try to make us a race. I think currently we might be that in America, which is silly because we're not. So, learning about the basic parts of Judaism and just being more open-minded.

And that's why I like talking about religion in the locker room. I like talking to my teammates about cultures and race and religion and politics because it helps you grow as a person. So I hope people use this opportunity to grow, to learn. I have, at Jeff Schwartz on Twitter, again, a long periscope about the antisemitism I faced in sports, really in college and the NFL. It wasn't much. Great conversations for the most part. Go there and visit them. Visit my thoughts.

And yeah, so put a bow on this. Hopefully we don't have to talk more about this. I mean, who knows? I'm open to talk about it, but let's hope that this is going to die down as we move forward. All right. NFL made some news today kind of giving protocols for how they're going to handle the in-game experience this year, how they're going to handle the atmosphere surrounding the game. And it made news that the NFL is going to ban jersey swaps.

That's going to stop COVID. Everyone was roasting the NFL for this. Let me just say this. I want to defend the NFL for a second. I know it's not fun to do. But I understand the players saying, you know, we can play for three hours, okay, but we can't exchange charges or can't talk to reporters within six feet. If we want to play the season, we're going to have to accept that there's going to be contact during games. In theory, if everyone's healthy when they play that game, there should not be much transmission of the virus. If everyone's healthy, it shouldn't be. Even then, we know outdoors,

transmission of the virus is very low. So, unless you're just kind of like spitting in someone's face or coughing in their face during a play, you're probably not going to get sick. But there could be the virus on someone's jersey, let's say. I don't know. Just hypothetical. I'm not a virologist. And it's on their jersey for some reason. And you pass jerseys and you touch your face afterwards.

They're just trying to eliminate everything they can. Every instance they can eliminate to keep a game as safe as possible. And we're going to have to understand this year, players, owners, everyone in the game, that it's just going to be a different type of season. It's going to be a season where you are going to have to get used to things being different and being uncomfortable. And there'll be different protocols put in place. And the protocols might change as we go.

Might change as we go. So players, owners, everyone, you have to realize that some of this stuff, it might seem minuscule. It might seem silly to say, hey, we can't exchange jerseys. But they're eliminating every possible point to keep players healthy. That's what the goal is. Keep them healthy. I still feel very strongly the issue is preseason

and whether or not we're playing preseason games or not. The ramp-up period feels very much like both sides want to play the games. It's important. You know, the preseason ramp-up schedule, we'll see how that ends up going. I don't know. I'll say this about this. I said this, I think, other times. The only worry about the way the PA has set this up is I don't think eight

practice is enough to get ready for the season. I really question that philosophy. I'm actually seeing a high uptick in injuries, and I hope not. I hope not. I hope not. But I think we're going to see that. All right. The news of the day, really, news of yesterday,

is college football appears likely to go to a conference-only schedule. The Big Ten announced it. ACC announced it. The Pac-12 is probably going to announce it soon. We're going to have a conference-only schedule. I'll tell you why that's the best option. People are bashing it. I'll tell you what's the best option. I do a Pac-12 show, Pac-12 Today on SiriusXM. And we talked to Scott Barnes, the Oregon State Athletic Director,

and we talked to Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott. And here's why the conference-only schedule makes sense. There's no oversight right now from the NCAA as regards to COVID protocol, social distancing protocols, any of that. There's no guidance whatsoever from the NCAA. None. So every state and conference, I'm going to look them together, right? States and conferences are coming up with their own guidelines for how they're doing this, for how they're going to test, which still have not been uniform around the country. How they're going to social distance, how they're going to travel, how they're going to get players back that have been sick. It's all going to be left up to either the state, the university, or the conference. So let's say the Pac-12, and there are a lot of

states in the Pac-12 that have very stringent physical distancing guidelines in place in their state that require masks only. And I know the numbers don't really speak to this, but the idea is you're trying to keep people healthy. And you hope that most people are doing their part. And then even within your football community, you're doing all those. And you're testing a lot. You're keeping players as healthy as possible. Let's use Ohio State, for example.

That's not what Ohio is doing. I haven't looked up what the protocols are. Let's say Oregon-Ohio State week two. So Oregon has been on stringent mass policies. They're testing every day. They're keeping their distance. They're doing everything they have to do. They're doing it right. And here comes Ohio State

to Austin Stadium. And Ohio is a state, and again, I ohio is a state and again this i don't know what their guidelines are so don't don't come screaming my mentions upset about this and ohio state ohio i should say is lenient with their mass policy and they're lenient with the amount of times they test their athletes they're lenient with how the athletes get back on the campus and they're and you know and the athletes get back on the campus. And the bars are open. And players are not doing what they're supposed to do off the field. And you have a team that travels to Oregon with players that are sick of the virus. And Oregon has a team that's done

everything right. The bars are closed. No one went out to the bar. They're doing everything right. And now they play each other. And Ohio State gets Oregon sick. Gets Oregon players sick. And now Oregon plays Arizona, and they get Arizona sick. And so when you have a conference-only schedule, it's easier to control some of those variables. And you hope to control those, right? It's easier to control those variables. And that's why I think this works.

You can probably drive to more places than you would. Like, for example, look, Oregon, Washington, it's a flight. It's a six-hour drive. Maybe just drive instead of fly, all right? You know, Stanford, Cal, the Bay Area to Oregon, eight hours. Maybe just drive eight hours on Friday or Saturday. Like, you can find ways to make things more manageable without less flights. You can control maybe the hotels you stay at.

It's just, everything's a little more controlled when you're comfortable on the schedule. So, the other thing floating around is spring football. I think spring football is the worst idea out of anything. So, I hope you've made it to this point. And I've convinced people about this. I think it's very important. Here's why spring football is really silly for many reasons. All right? One is that currently, you end, let's say you end January 1st. You don't play until Labor Day weekend, seven months, right? Now, you have spring football, 15 practices.

You don't really have a lot of hitting anymore. So you have seven months until you're ready for the season. Let's say in the most pushback schedule possible, the earliest you could start, let's say February. So you play February, March, April. Let's say you play bowl games in May. That leaves you two months before training camp, June, July. You have to push back the 2021 season now until November, maybe October. Now you've messed up two seasons.

Okay. And I get it. You want to play because you want to make the money and you want to get kids in. I understand that. But now you're starting 2021 late. You're already starting late. Maybe by 2022, you've made up for it. I don't know.

You probably will. Okay. So let's say you rush to play the season. Guys are going to get hurt. You have more injuries. Even if you come back in October, you're done in May. End of May, you're going to have guys hurt. Not enough time.

Not enough time to rest your body and get it rehabbed. In a current schedule, let's say you get hurt week one, September. Guess what? You're back week one the following season. Not many injuries will keep you out a whole year. You get hurt week one of the new winter spring football. Now you're missing two seasons, folks. You can hurt week one of the new winter spring football. Now you're missing two seasons, folks. You're missing 2020, moved obviously into the 2021 spring, and the 2021 fall

schedule. Now you're missing two. You're missing two seasons now if you're an injured player. Missing two. What about NFL draft? NFL has said, we're not moving our draft. And look, right now it's easy to say that. They may move it. They might not. Let's say they don't move it because NFL plays as usual. If NFL plays the season as usual, they're not moving the draft. Now you're going to have all the players in the top three rounds are not going to play the college football season. No Trevor Lawrence. No Justin Fields.

No Penae Sewell. They're all not playing. No one's playing. No one's playing. So you're going to lose all your stars. Lose all your stars. It might not matter to you. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it does. All your stars. There's all your stars might not matter to you maybe it doesn't maybe it does all your stars there's weather concerns you're gonna

play negative 20 degrees in february yeah i get football plays all weather's temperatures it sucks to play in weather temperature like that okay terrible you don't want to do that so i get why they're doing it but it just is you can try to find a way to do it now. Also, do we know if things will be better in the spring? I mean, what is telling you right now things will be better in the spring? Anything? Any sign?

Can you give me a sign things will be better in the spring? There's no sign of that. That's why I think just try to get it in now or don't play. All right, folks. Have a great weekend.

I'll be 34 when I come back on Monday. Rate, review, subscribe. Really appreciate it. Thanks for listening to all my comments with Judaism. Really appreciate the support. All right, everyone.