Members of the mass media have asserted that sport provides Black people with an invaluable mechanism for socio-economic mobility. Sport, is also suggested, is the great equalizer which promotes interracial harmony. This media-created depiction finds its support primarily in the analyses of members of the broadcasting and publishing industries themselves-analyses which focus upon the number of Black males who excel in, or have succeeded because of, sport. Overlooked in the popular accounts of what sport might accomplish for Black males, however, are the consequences of these highly acclaimed success stories. While granting to a select number of Black male athletes whatever benefits they may have reaped, there remains the problem of identifying the second and third order consequences for the majority of Black people, attributable in part to the highly publicized exploits of a few. Edwards was one of the first to quarrel with the notion that sport has been a panacea for Black Americans. From his perspective, sport has had a sedative effect upon Blacks.1 He explained: Given the functions of sport for the fan, the successful black athlete stimulates black people's individual hopes for eventually competing as equals in society. A major consequence, however, is that young blacks are encouraged toward attempts at making it through athletic participation, rather than through pursuit of other occupations that hold greater potential for meeting the real political and material needs of both themselves and their people. Athletics, then, stifles the pursuit of rational alternatives by black people.2 Not only has sport served as a retardant to the economic, political, and social aspirations, according to Edwards, but advancement in sport has itself been limited. In the latter regard, Edwards cited