While I’m not the type of person to sit around and watch sports commentary all day, all of the TVs in the cafeteria at work play ESPN around the clock. This has kept me abreast of all the latest sports scandals and related news. While none of our collections have extensive sports coverage, I did come across an interesting story, that while not coverage of a specific sporting event, is a piece of commentary on professional sports culture. Jimmy Snyder, born Dimetrios Georgios Synodinos, and known professionally as Jimmy the Greek, was a sports commentator on The NFL Today, a pregame show that aired on Sundays during the NFL season. His role was to predict the outcomes of the games, something he was known for even before he started on TV, in his previous job as a bookie. He became a minor celebrity, so when a Washington, D.C. reporter spotted him while he was doing a story on the progress of African Americans in honor of MLK’s birthday in 1988, the reporter asked him for his opinion about the progress African Americans had made in professional sports. more
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