Race, Class & Gerry McNamara
I've held off writing about Gerry McNamara for awhile, but now that S.U's season is finished the time seems right to unload. I'm not alone in wondering why the public has gone through such a fuss about McNamara. See the poll of assistant Big East coaches naming Gerry the conference's most overrated player or this article on Slate.com linking Gerry to the legion of "AWG"'s (Annoying White Guys) that many fans love to hate.
I agree with Sean Kirst's comments in the Post Standard that the Orange run through the Big East tournament brought the entire region together. McNamara was incandescent during all four games at Madison Square Garden and all Orange fans should remember this conference championship as one of our team 's most glorious achievements.
That being said, why all the fuss about a point guard that will not go on to the NBA, was often inconsistent as a shooting guard and forced to play out of position as a point guard? His farewell Dome game against Villanova was more elaborate than the send-offs accorded much more celebrated athletes who also stayed for four years and graduated, including last year's graduating senior Hakim Warrick (you remember, the guy who saved our National Championship with THE BLOCK!).
The answer to that question is one of both race and class. The letters to the editor that talk about his being a "clean-cut, All-American guy" is a not so subtle hint about what's going on here. The overwhelmingly white fan base is hungry for a star that they can relate to, in a way that they cannot with the equally clean-cut, polite, and soft-spoken Hakim Warrick. In this town, it also certainly doesn't hurt to have an "Mc" beginning to your surname.
But McNamara is different from the legion of "AWG's" discussed in the aforementioned Slate article. The premise of that article is the the AWG's are from relatively affluent backgrounds. They are suburban types that aren't complete players, lionized in the press, but disparaged by true basketball fans as much for their cocky attitudes as for their uni-dimensional games. McNamara isn't a spoiled suburban kid, but from a blue-collar family in one of the archetypical fading rust-belt towns of America: Scranton, Pa. That plays well in a town like Syracuse. We may be larger and a bit more economically diverse than Scranton, but we're also struggling and unsure of our future. Gerry is our hometown guy by proxy, even more so than someone like Lazarus Sims, an actual hometown player.
I agree with Sean Kirst's comments in the Post Standard that the Orange run through the Big East tournament brought the entire region together. McNamara was incandescent during all four games at Madison Square Garden and all Orange fans should remember this conference championship as one of our team 's most glorious achievements.
That being said, why all the fuss about a point guard that will not go on to the NBA, was often inconsistent as a shooting guard and forced to play out of position as a point guard? His farewell Dome game against Villanova was more elaborate than the send-offs accorded much more celebrated athletes who also stayed for four years and graduated, including last year's graduating senior Hakim Warrick (you remember, the guy who saved our National Championship with THE BLOCK!).
The answer to that question is one of both race and class. The letters to the editor that talk about his being a "clean-cut, All-American guy" is a not so subtle hint about what's going on here. The overwhelmingly white fan base is hungry for a star that they can relate to, in a way that they cannot with the equally clean-cut, polite, and soft-spoken Hakim Warrick. In this town, it also certainly doesn't hurt to have an "Mc" beginning to your surname.
But McNamara is different from the legion of "AWG's" discussed in the aforementioned Slate article. The premise of that article is the the AWG's are from relatively affluent backgrounds. They are suburban types that aren't complete players, lionized in the press, but disparaged by true basketball fans as much for their cocky attitudes as for their uni-dimensional games. McNamara isn't a spoiled suburban kid, but from a blue-collar family in one of the archetypical fading rust-belt towns of America: Scranton, Pa. That plays well in a town like Syracuse. We may be larger and a bit more economically diverse than Scranton, but we're also struggling and unsure of our future. Gerry is our hometown guy by proxy, even more so than someone like Lazarus Sims, an actual hometown player.
