After losing the Elite Eight game against the Iowa Hawkeyes in the 2024 NCAA tournament, former LSU Center Angel Reese was in tears. She described the horrific ordeals of relentless abuse and unwarranted hate she had to bear since the 2023 NCAA championship. At the same time, her AI-generated NFSW deep fakes flooded the social media scene. However, even after a deep-hearted confession, her words haven’t found resonance among prominent sports personalities such as the former Eagles Linebacker and Fox 1 analyst Emmanuel Acho.
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On his ‘Speak’ pod, terming his take as “gender neutral“, Acho stated,
“In sports, you can’t act like the big bad wolf, then cry like courage the cowardly dog.”
These comments haven’t sat well with the actress Amanda Seales. The 42-year-old went to Shannon Sharpe’s ‘Club Club Shay’ and had a scathing criticism of Acho. She stamped Echo as a “white people savior”. The actor pointed out 22-year-old Angel Reese’s age and reproached the Fox 1 analyst for his comments.
An angry Amanda Seales stated, “She is a young person, do you know how disgusting this is? That cornball who loves to make himself look like he is the white people savior?” The Club Shay Shay host inquired, “Who’s that?” A fired-up Seales replied, “Emmanuel Acho. Come talk to me white people! I am the black guy that’s nice. Cut it out, it is ridiculous.”
Sharpe looked visibly uncomfortable when Seales went off on Acho. He took a deep sigh and said, ”Man, I know these people”. Acho had been his colleague on FS1 and also shared the NFL link. Apart from Seales, Matt Barnes and Acho’s colleague Taylor Rooks have also countered the former Eagles athlete.
Emmanuel Acho gets called out
Matt Barnes took to his Instagram to disapprove of Acho’s comments who believed the WNBA-bound center wasn’t playing the victim and just sharing her inner struggles. He admitted that the 2023 Most Outstanding Player of the Year did accept the “villain” label. But for the 44-year-old, she was emotional because it was her last game for the LSU and she was merely recalling a hectic year,
“if you think about it Acho, it’s her last college game. She’s going to the league, so she got a great run at LSU, captivated the world, helped change really the viewership in women’s basketball… So of course after a tough loss she’s gonna kind of reflect and be emotional.”
Meanwhile, renowned sports journalist Taylor Rooks wrote a lengthy post on X to disagree with her colleague. She stated that Acho can’t dish out a “gender-neutral” and “racially indifferent” take because those components are vital in Reese’s case.
A few days before the press conference after the Iowa loss, LA Times’ Ben Bloch wrote a controversial article about Reese’s “villain” persona. Like Acho’s comments, that article also received a significant backlash for being racist and insensitive towards young women. All these incidents collectively amounted to Reese’s emotional outburst which is completely natural considering the pressure such young athletes bear while playing.
