Juan Montoya, “out having a taco?”

Bob Griese is a NFL legend, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, a College Football analyst for ESPN, and a guy that should know better. During the coverage of the Ohio State-Minnesota game on ESPN, the four letter network ran a promo for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Martinsville. The promo showed a graphic illustrating where the top five guys in Points were. After the promo aired, Chris Berman asked Griese where Juan Montoya was at, Griese replied, “He’s out having a taco.”

That is a pretty offensive comment, and shows Griese’s lack of knowledge concerning NASCAR. The point here is if you don’t know what you are talking about; keep your ignorant mouth shut. Some people cannot say something, and Griese should have known that this was one of the things he should not say. Of course before the game ended Griese came back on the air and apologized, but by then the damage had been done.

It doesn’t seem likely that any more punishment will be forth coming, but that leaves us to wonder what would have been the reaction if the target of Griese’s comment had been say African American. What would his punishment if he had said, about Tiger Woods, that he was off eating watermelon, or fried chicken?

I think all of us know what would have happened, and that would have Griese being fired immediately. So if that is true about one race of people, should it not be true of all? This is a question that is larger than sports. It is a question of one form of discrimination being ok, while another one is not.