Spike Lee Wants to See More Black Sports Writers

I'm certainly not going to criticize the director Spike Lee for raising $1 million to start a new sports journalism program at his alma mater, historically black Morehouse College. Raising money for higher education is always a good thing, and more diversity in sports writing -- which Lee says is his goal -- would be a positive step.

And yet I can't help but wonder if Lee's priorities are a little bit out of whack here. Wouldn't money spent training journalists be better if it were training journalists who would cover politics or medicine or religion? Lee responds:

"I've always had this argument with people - I would say shortsighted individuals - who underplay the importance of sports. Many of the social gains this country has gone through took place in sports before they took place with the rest of the public."

I get that, but looking at Lee's own career, think of how much more meaningful and powerful his non-sports films, like Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X and When the Levees Broke, are than his sports films, like He Got Game and Jim Brown: All American. If students at Morehouse want to emulate Spike Lee, they'd make a bigger impact on the world by patterning themselves on the work Lee does away from sports.