By Perry Green, AFRO Sports Editor, pgreen@afro.com
Houston Texans owner Bob McNair just can’t seem to keep his foot out of his mouth, especially when it comes to talking about race.
McNair made headlines March 25 for coming to the defense of Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, who is in the process of selling his team due to a racial and sexual misconduct scandal. Richardson had been under pressure to sell the Panthers since Sports Illustrated reported last Dec. how the 81-year-old owner had reached numerous lawsuit settlements with former employees; one of the settlements was made with a former African-American scout for the team, who claimed Richardson used a racial slur.
Houston Texans owner Bob McNair (left) is under fire for racially insensitive remarks. Again. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP Images for NFL)
But according to the Charlotte Observer, McNair believes Richardson’s alleged racist comments were either made in a joking manner or simply misunderstood.
“I hope this thing turns out that he’s innocent. They alleged. I don’t know,” McNair told the Charlotte Observer. “Some of the comments he might have made could have been made jokingly and misunderstood. I’m sure he didn’t mean to offend anybody.”
Now I can’t help but think that maybe the pressure should be turned up on McNair to sell his team, too. This isn’t the first time McNair has shared some pretty egregious remarks publicly. The 80-year-old Texans owner caught heat back in October 2017 for referring to NFL players as prison inmates, when he told his fellow owners during a meeting that they “can’t have inmates running the prison” in relation to how the league should handle players protesting during the national anthem.
McNair ended up apologizing for his inmate comment, but now he’s right back in the headlines just five months later with more racially offensive comments. It’s hard not to think he simply doesn’t know any better, or even worse, he just doesn’t care. And a business man who doesn’t know or care about offending his patrons, shouldn’t be running a business at all.
