Smith opened up the six-minute segment by citing some of the instances of racism and disregard for players that were documented in a 2016 article published by The Nation reporter Dave Zirin. According to Zirin's research, Ditka was known to throw players back out onto the field after suffering concussions and according to former Bears safety, Dave Duerson didn't have a care for the welfare of his guys, whether it be their physical welfare or social welfare off of the field. Zirin went on to note how Ditka became known for bullying players who wouldn't cross the picket line during the player strike of 1987. From then until now, if there is one thing that has been constant, according to Smith, it has been what Smith regarded a "flagrantly insensitive" attitude towards people who've historically had the odds stacked up against them.
"To sit up here and to have a history that spans centuries, that is well documented and undeniable even amongst the racists in this country; to sit up there and say there's no oppression that you see, that you've witnessed, that you understand or comprehend, is the height of ignorance," Smith said.
Max Kellerman's angle wasn't all that different from Smith's on the topic of Ditka's comments. Kellerman confessed that he has now come to a place where he finds himself grouping Ditka in with a bunch whose positions he could not defend. It is in seeing how swiftly the 77-year-old beleaguered legend could dismiss Jim Crow and the other obvious systems of institutional oppression that came to bear after slavery and reconstruction. Ditka was 23 years old when the Civil Rights Act was passed into law, Kellerman noted, and in knowing that much about the man, the host expressed an inability to reconcile how Ditka was able to go about his life while passing a blind eye over disadvantages faced by his Black American counterparts.
