The Current 2020

September 22, 2020 | nsucurrent.nova.edu 8 Sports THIS WEEK SPORTS IN HISTORY On The Bench : Stop playing games, make up your mind September 22: Don Shula’s 300 win Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula recorded his 300 win in 1991, defeating the Green Bay Packers by a score of 16-13. Widely regarded as one of the best coaches of all time, Shula was the second coach to reach 300 wins behind only George Halas. Today, Shula is the highest winning head coach in NFL history with 328 wins and has a career win percentage of 67.7%. September 23: Drew Brees breaks NFL completion record New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees was able to break the NFL completion record on a 17-yard pass to his wide receiver, Michael Thomas, in 2018. The previous record was held by Brett Favre with a total of 6,300 completions. Drew Brees has been adding onto his own record and now has a total of 6,885 passes completed. September 24: Luka Modric wins Ballon D’Or Real Madrid and Croatian National Team midfielder Luka Modric was awarded the Ballon D’or in 2018. The Ballon D’or is generally known to be the greatest individual award in soccer and is given out to the player who had the best year based on votes from journalists. Other awards he won in 2018 include UEFA Men’s Player of the Year, FIFA Best Men’s Player Award and the World Cup Golden Ball, the award for best player in the World Cup. September 25: Carl Lewis wins second Olympic gold American track and field legend Carl Lewis was able to win his second gold medal at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. This medal was for the long jump of 8.72 meters. This was Lewis’ sixth gold medal and his second gold from the 1988 Olympic Games. September 26: Serena Williams was born On Sept. 26, 1981, tennis champion Serena Williams was born. Williams has 73 career titles and a dominant 85%-win percentage in Singles. In Doubles, she has posted 23 career titles and an 84.8%-win percentage. She also has four gold medals in the Olympic Games. At 38 years old, she is ranked ninth in the world in women’s tennis. September 28: Muhammad Ali vs Ken Norton III The final fight in a heated rivalry, Muhammad Ali and Ken Norton met again for the third time at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, NY in 1976. Norton had won the first meeting and Ali had won the second. The third meeting finished with Ali winning by unanimous decision. Ali later admitted that he didn’t believe he deserved the win and that he was happy he didn’t have to fight Norton again. Norton, after the fight, mentioned that he was robbed of the win and that he won 9 or 10 rounds. September 27: Lou Gehrig hits first HR MLB legend Lou Gehrig hit his first home run in 1923. Gehrig would go on to hit an additional 492 home runs before his career was tragically ended early by Lou Gehrig’s Disease or ALS. Gehrig was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939 and he was a 7-time All-Star, 6-time World Series champion and 2-time AL MVP. On Sept. 8, Electronic Arts or EA, the second-largest gaming company in the Americas, tweeted from their Madden NFL Twitter page that Colin Kaepernick was added as a playable character in the latest update of “Madden NFL 21.” This decision by EA is undoubtedly a controversial one not only because of Kaepernick’s past in the NFL, but also because of how EA has treated the situation in the past few years. For those unaware, the “Madden” video games are an annual series that has been a long-standing figure in both video games and sports history. Kaepernick has not appeared in a “Madden” video game since 2016, where at the time, he was playing for the San Francisco 49ers. Kaepernick had been essentially blacklisted from playing in the NFL after he began kneeling for the national anthem as an act of peaceful protest against police brutality and racial injustice. The unexpected decision to add Kaepernick to the latest “Madden” installation comes as a surprise due to EA’s treatment toward Kaepernick as a player. EA previously edited out references to Kaepernick in two songs on the “Madden 18” and “Madden 19” soundtracks. As such, EA received major backlash from fans of both the series and Kaepernick, eventually leading to an apology from the developers on Twitter in August 2018. In subsequent updates to the two games, the songs were added back into the games unedited. Developers deemed the edit as an unfortunate mistake, blaming the action of not properly understanding the licensure of Kaepernick’s image. While some may believe that EA made a genuine mistake editing out references of Kaepernick in the two songs, I do not. As a company,EA has made far too many mistakes upsetting their fans in the past to call this action a simple mistake. Additionally, pinning the blame on not understanding licensure feels like a scapegoat given the creation and development of these games are not new concepts. Whether purposefully or not, EAmade a stance in 2018 on how they felt toward Kaepernick’s protest and the movement. As such, I simply do not believe that EA has good intentions for adding Kaepernick back into the series. It is interesting to me that, now during a very turbulent period in U.S. history and critical moments for the BLM movement, EA has made the decision to add Kaepernick back into the game. If EA truthfully stood by what Kaepernick has been protesting these past four years, then he would’ve been in the game from the get-go instead of as an afterthought in an update. While overall it is a positive thing that Kaepernick has been added into the game despite some people disagreeing with his form of protesting, it feels like a forced public relations move from EA. In an attached statement on EA’s twitter, the company mentioned that it is part of their goal to empower their fans “to express their hopes for the future of football.” Yet, it still feels like a By: Rick Esner News Editor