Seahawks' Sherman: NFL Wouldn't Have Banned Sterling

On Wednesday, Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, who famously went on a diatribe against San Francisco 49ers receiver Michael Crabtree on camera, then followed that act up by calling all those who called him a “thug” racist, has now said that the NFL is more racist than the NBA. Asked by Time magazine about his reaction to Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s racist remarks caught on tape, Sherman said that the NFL wouldn’t have banned Sterling. “No I don’t,” he said when asked if the NFL would have thrown Sterling out of the league. “Because we have an NFL team called the Redskins. I don’t think the NFL really is as concerned as they show. The NFL is more of a bottom line league. If it doesn’t affect their bottom line, they’re not as concerned.”

Sherman recently signed a contract for $56 million, making him the highest-paid cornerback in the league. He also said that because the NFL was a “real bottom-line league,” it would not matter that linebacker Michael Sam has come out of the closet. “You know, the thing that’ll hurt him is if he doesn’t play well,” Sherman stated.

Sherman responded to Sterling’s comments: “I wasn’t really shocked or anything. Because of what I saw after the incident after the NFC championship game.”

He added, “You’ve got a lot of racial backlash, and a lot of racist comments that were uncalled for – I can never see a time where racism is called for. So it didn’t shock me as much as it would have had I not experienced that personally, had I not seen those things.”

Despite the fact that Sherman received widespread support for his hilarious rant, Sherman stated that America “still had some progress to make.” He continued:

On equality, and understanding that it doesn’t matter what color you are, you treat people as people. And whether a good person or a bad person, you don’t judge them off the color of their skin. You can know a person is a good person or a bad person by who they are, not by what they look like. In that situation, it just seems like a lot of people gave him a lot of flack, well deserved, but you know – I feel like a lot more people were surprised then they should have been.

That’s why a lot of people shy away from the conversation that I forced on us in January. People want to it to be done, they want that uncomfortable truth to be over with, they want the racism to be done, they want to believe everything is great and hunky-dory. And it’s not. There’s a lot of racism still alive and still active. And it just forced America to rethink it once again. And to really, really understand that racism isn’t gone. We have to actively push it out. And snuff it out.

Sherman said he was “in awe” after President Obama gave him a shout-out during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.