In The Absence of Empathy: Antonio Brown

If you’re familiar with the name “Antonio Brown”, then hearing about him stripping at midfield in the middle of a game isn’t the least bit surprising. Antonio Brown has long been engulfed in the trenches of football controversy, and his latest stunt against the New York Jets was just the icing on the cake that was his football career. Brown was in the middle of a game on national television when he inexplicably began to remove the top half of his uniform and head to the Buccaneers’ locker room, effectively ending his time with the franchise. But while this event was bizarre, even for a man like Antonio Brown, the media and the common football fan were far too quick to judge him. My entire social media feed was flooded with comments calling Brown unhinged, crazy, and a joke, without even stopping to question what might’ve led him to this point. Nobody stopped to question if the outburst was justified, or even if it wasn’t necessarily justified, nobody stopped to think about whether or not a reaction like that would happen to any other person with Antonio Brown-levels of stress and criticism. Antonio, like many public figures before him, has been consistently ridiculed and pushed towards his breaking point, and then subsequently treated like a madman when he pushes back. And I think that if we look back at his controversies, it becomes clear that while he is emotional, he’s not crazy, and he’s not all that abnormal in his behavior.

His first major controversy was his refusal to switch to a safer helmet, which would seem ridiculous to most people (including myself), but hyper-specificity is a widely-held trait among high level athletes and performers. Take Russell Westbrook, for example. He shot above 82% from the free throw line for his career by the time the 2017-2018 season had rolled around, and between each free throw, he would walk to half court and back. But before the 2017-2018 season started, the NBA made a rule change so that players couldn’t walk past the three-point line in between free throws. Russell Westbrook has hit an average of only 70% of free throws since. Athletes love routine, and taking them out of their routine can be very frustrating and cause them to perform at a lower level.

Antonio Brown was also suspended earlier this season for three games after it was discovered that he had obtained a fake vaccination card. To be clear, I don’t think that vaccine hesitancy is particularly reasonable, and getting a fake card could be potentially dangerous, especially for the older staff members on the Buccaneers’ payroll, but Brown is far from alone in his worries. An astounding amount of news coverage has been dedicated to making the vaccine seem like something to be feared, and the COVID protocols are much more relaxed for vaccinated players when compared to unvaccinated players. He shouldn’t have done it, but I can at least understand the thought process, and being a victim of mass media misinformation is far from a rare occurrence.

Brown is one of the few athletes that I’ve watched be berated by the public for obtaining an injury. Early in 2019, Brown used a cryo-chamber after a workout to cool his muscles, but he didn’t wear the proper footwear into the chamber, and he subsequently obtained frostbite on the bottoms of both of his feet. This injury was honestly a bit careless on Brown’s part, but cryo-chambers are a very new concept, and forgetting a small piece of equipment while using something new is about as human as it gets. Brown also says that the recent outburst during the Jets game happened after the Bucs tried to make him go back into the game, even though Brown told them that he injured himself. He alleged that the Bucs told him that he was fine to go back in the game, but Brown knew his own body well enough to know that he wasn’t okay. It’s unclear whether or not Brown was telling the truth, but Brown is a professional athlete. There are very few people in the world who know their own bodies better than professional athletes do. Brown’s body is his livelihood, and if he thought that there was even an ounce of a chance that he would irritate an injury, he’s smart to keep himself on the sideline. I would do the exact same thing if I were in his situation.

Antonio Brown is by every definition, a character. He’s undoubtedly odd, and we may not always understand him, but that’s not an excuse to disregard his personhood and his sanity. Our lack of empathy and compassion, combined with our gullibility, has given us a heightened sense of superiority, and we don’t deserve it. We (myself included) take headlines and tweets at surface-value without considering that our ignorance is limiting our nuance and objectivity. We don’t know Antonio Brown. We don’t know what’s going on in his head at any given moment, and we never will. Who’s to say that he’s reacting poorly? And who can honestly say that they would do any differently if they were living his life, and getting his backlash? We’re all products of our environments, our interactions, our algorithms. I might be seen as crazy too, if I had to navigate an Antonio Brown- adjacent lifestyle. There’s not a shadow of doubt in my mind that if I’d been born as Antonio Brown, I’d also be trotting around naked in the middle of MetLife stadium.