Filed under: Football
Julious Threatts is 21 years old, but for some reason, he thinks he can create his own fountain of youth. Threatts was caught trying to impersonate a 14-year old so he could play in a youth football league.
Threatts used the alias Chad Jordan to register for Webb Middle School. The school is located in Tampa, Florida. Threatts told school administrators that he was homeless on the day of his arrival to the school.
After trying to enroll, the Department of Child and Families was called to assist in the situation. That's when Threatts was taken to the cafeteria and even given a snack. When the principal saw him, he immediately noticed that he was too old to be in middle school. He was eventually arrested on trespassing charges.
In addition to his trespassing charge, Threatts is being accused of violating the terms of his probation on an earlier burglary charge. He was kicked off the football team when coaches from other teams recognized him. He allegedly played in the same youth league a year earlier.
"I brought him into this room with seven of our board members and coaches and said, 'Come on now, tell us the truth, who are you?' " Ray McCloud, one of the youth coaches told MSNBC. "He looked me right in the eye and said, 'I swear I am who I say I am. I'm Chad Jordan.'
"This guy had us all fooled. I mean this guy acted just like a little kid. Everything about him was a little kid. He's a total scam artist."
Not only did Threatts' story include his own acting ability, it came with documentation. According to media reports, Threatts had a falsified birth certificate, as well as a detailed scouting report from a high school recruiting scout alleged to be from Rivals.com. The report analyzed Chad Jordan and said that he is "a very special prospect" who "hasn't signed" but has "offers from USC (University of Southern California), Texas and Florida."
It seems that Julious Threatts doesn't need prison as much as he needs a good psychologist. Some people will go to dramatic lengths to re-create their youth, and I am curious as to whether or not Threatts truly accepts or realizes that he is no longer a 14-year old.
I once recall speaking to a young black male who was 20-years old and still in high school. He was dropping out soon, since he'd failed so many grades that the school no longer desired his presence on campus. He was completely illiterate and unemployed. I asked the young man what he wanted to do with his life, and he said, "I want to be a football player."
The answer made me sad because not only was he not going to graduate from high school anytime soon, he'd also never played organized football before. He wasn't very big, and didn't seem to have any form of extraordinary athletic ability. All he had was the dream of playing sports that he obtained from watching football every Sunday. He never lived out his dream of being a football player, but was instead sent to prison just two years after our conversation.
This story, as well as the one of Julious Threatts, makes me think of the infantilization of the black male in America. Through sports and hip hop, black men are in a peculiar partnership with the educational, economic and criminal justice system to keep themselves uneducated, marginalized and perpetually immature. We have 35-year old men running around with their pants sagging, hats cocked to the side, imitating hip hop artists who have far more money than they will ever see in their lives. There are also former athletes with few professional skills in their late thirties, hoping for another tryout with a team who will accept an aging journeyman. It's incredibly sad to watch, and it's time that we all enforce codes of educational effort among African American men. It doesn't matter if you're not the brightest bulb on the tree, but no one should try their best to remain ignorant.
For us as black men, sports becomes our beacon of hope in a world that has become virtually hopeless. Perhaps by embracing education and simultaneously requesting accountability on the part of school systems that refuse to educate us, we can allow ourselves to become men. How this relates to Julious Threatts, I can't say with complete certainty, but I am convinced that there is a connection.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.