[nabs-l] Charlie Wilks- blind football player. (as featured onESPN360)

[Harry Hogue]

David,

I'm glad someone else noticed that.  People are far too quick to jump all over something which seems inspirational, when in reality you have to look at the writer's bias and decide if that plays a factor in the person's portrayal; in this case, I think it definitely does.  Knocking into his own teammates is a perfect example of this.  There is nothing remarkable about what he does. It is terrific that we is makin the attempt, however.

Harry

--- On Wed, 11/11/09, David Dunphy <djdrocks4ever at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: David Dunphy <djdrocks4ever at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Charlie Wilks- blind football player. (as featured onESPN360)
> To: "National Association of Blind Students mailing list" <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
> Date: Wednesday, November 11, 2009, 5:00 PM
> Some may think I'm being unfair or
> negative here, but whether it's just what I read or how the
> wrriter portrayed it, quite frankly, I'm not impressed.
> Doesn't seem like he's playing football as much as he's just
> throwing himself into people in the hope that he gets lucky
> enough to break up the play. Anyone can do that, blindness
> is not a factor in a person's ability to do that. Hell, I
> ran  into people in the middle of their games on the
> playground purely unintentionally til I learned that I
> needed to use a cane. I think running into the tree several
> times also made a good case for cane use too, but I
> digress.
> He's even thrown his own team mates down by accident. The
> article seemed to try to make it appear that we had a blind
> football player. It came across more like he was someone who
> would run into people wrecklessly when given the cue to run.
> Between crowd noise and rain and all that, I doubt he'd do
> very well in real nfl games or even high school or junior
> high school games. Is it cool he's trying to play a sport?
> Absolutely. And from what it said, sounds like he'd be great
> on tv or radio. But this attempt to make him out to be an
> inspiration cause he runs into people blindly for lack of a
> better term just didn't do it for me. He may be good, but
> the article didn't do a very good job in trying to get that
> across. They should have focused more on his abilities as a
> reporter/tv person perhaps. I would have been interested to
> hear about how we might have dealt with being on tv and
> making sure that he could know when the camera was on him,
> for I think that would have been a more interesting way to
> inform people on how he handles what some might perceive as
> a difficult situation for a blind person. But the writer
> fumbled the ball with his attempt at creating his idea of a
> potential blind football player. Not saying it couldn't
> happen or hasn't, but I wasn't left with the feeling that a
> blind person could play and compete.
> > From David 
> 
> 
> __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version
> of virus signature database 4597 (20091111) __________
> 
> The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
> 
> http://www.eset.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> nabs-l mailing list
> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your
> account info for nabs-l:
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/harryhogue%40yahoo.com
>