It's been several years now since Toni Harris appeared in a Super Bowl ad, and became the darling of the corporate media. Now, we're far enough along in her story to know that a coordinated effort by the academic establishment and the corporate media saw her as useful. They used her, and threw her away. The people who tried to tell the truth about the situation were shouted down, and called misogynists and racists.
That name doesn't ring a bell to you, right? Toni Harris? Who dat?
Well, she was the girl who made headlines for being the first female, who wasn't a kicker, to get a scholarship to play football at the college level.
To be clear, everything that I've seen from Harris indicates that she's a great person, who has overcome a lot of bullshit in her life. I have the utmost respect for her, and how she's grown up since she was dragged through the media in 2018.
She was, just like we all were in high school, young and green in the ways of the world. When she said sincerely that she was gonna be the first woman to play in the NFL, she wasn't lying. She was simply believing that lies that were told to her.
If I knew nothing about football, nor her, when the ads and interviews were coming out, I still could have mentioned how irresponsible it is to parade a college athlete around as somebody who is gonna be "a household name" after receiving a scholarship to Southern Methodist. I mean, I went to Montana State, I'm pretty sure that more people watch Montana State than Southern Methodist. Troy Andersen was just drafted out of Montana State this last season -- is he a household name?
Marcellus Wiley tried to bring this whole campaign into reality; but, he doesn't have the same platform as a Toyota Super Bowl ad. He saw what I saw from her reel -- a person who shouldn't be on the field. The third clip in the reel that she was sending out to show her stuff was from a practice in t-shirts. She played free safety, and didn't have a single tackle on film.
For boys and young men, playing in college is unlikely. Playing in the NFL is next something that almost none of them will experience. Of the 1.1 million boys who play high school football, 6.5% play college football. Of the young men who play college ball, about 1.2% ever even walk onto an NFL practice field.
The thing is, this girl was tossed into the spotlight at the time that Trevor Lawrence was starting his college career. It's not like Trevor Lawrence was getting Super Bowl ads out of high school. In fact, it's possible that some rules were broken by having Harris in that ad.
Well, Harris made some money, got a scholarship, went to college. No harm no foul, right?
If you don't see shattered dreams as a harm, okay.
The point is that everybody knew that this was a publicity stunt at the expense of a young woman. A lot of people lied, and bought into the lie. Some of us had the courage to say that was really going on.
The thing is, the liars had nothing to lose. Marcellus Wiley, and plebes like me might have said, "If she actually takes a legitimate hit on that field, she could be crippled or worse. We shouldn't do it." And the liars could, and did, say that I'm an woman hater. If she did get to play, and got paralyzed or killed, the media would either bury it, or change it into a story about how senselessly violent football is. Her coach was put in a tough spot. She never played a down in a real game. The coach knew the truth. He was damned either way. He was just damned less if he didn't play her and get her killed. The athletics director got a win for giving the scholarship. The school won woke points. The media won woke points. Toyota won woke points. The losers were Harris, the coach, and probably several thousand kids who could have gotten that scholarship.
The reality is that, at some point, love has to come with the truth. We can make arguments about when it is that we should stop telling young people that they can be an astronaut and a movie star, while being a cowboy in their free time; but, high school is far past the point when the truth should be told to young people.
I played football in high school, and I only played during garbage time. Maybe I could have made it as a blocking fullback at Montana State at 5'11" 240lbs back in the day; but, it wasn't bloody likely. If I were treated like Harris at the age of 17, I might have been bitter to the age of 26, wondering why I wasn't drafted in the first round to become the next Bruce Smith.
The reality is that these people never cared about Harris. The people who were saying that it was immoral and dangerous to put her on the field with the men, were the people who actually gave a fucking damn about her. We didn't see her as a tool in a political game. The illiberal Left saw her as a pawn.