Good Morning, Stumpers!

Ryder Cup Friday! Be sure to stay tuned in the Ryder Cup, MLB Standings, CFB Saturday, and NFL Sunday! If you can’t, don’t even worry for half a second! We’ll have you covered with a Monday recap! Today let’s talk about a guy wh ohas shown nothing but class in his 13 year career!

Stump Story / Glue Of The Day

🎯 A Dart is Thrown - The Subject of Today’s Class: Class

On Wednesday we talked about greatness, and enjoying it while it’s here. LeBron is an anomaly, performing at that level at this point in his career in ridiculous. What about the athletes who are not what they used to be. The way they handle that realization sure is something. A Dart was thrown this week, we’ll have to wait until Sunday to see where it lands, but what we did already get was a Russell Wilson reaction.

The number of interviews athletes have to do is insane. Pre-practice, post-practice, during the week, during the game, after the game. It’s crazy. Because of this, we get to put them under a microscope constantly, and as situations arise from day-to-day, we get to see how they react.

There are media outlets who solely react to these soundbites, and sometimes misconstrue what these athletes will say to create a “clickbaity“ headline.

This piece is not about the state of the New York Giants. We all know what the situation is (and truthfully there are too many Giants fans reading this to say the things they already know! LFG BOYS! LET’S GET A WIN ON SUNDAY!).

After Jaxson Dart was named the Giants’ starting QB, Russ had to go and have a 10-minute interview with the media about what his thoughts were on the situation.

Before the interview, the headlines were already flowing with titles such as “Should Russ retire?” or “Potential landing spots for Russell Wilson”. Those were the first questions he received during Wednesday’s interview.

“Right now it’s about the team, and my role is to lead from the front, and help Jaxson the best way I possibly can.”

It would go on to be 10 straight minutes of that. (Link to the video)

No trade requests. No pouting. No throwing anybody under the bus. No shades on and attitude filled responses. Just answering questions the way he has since 2012 when he was drafted. With class.

With every headline focused on Dart this week, and for good reason (man am I rooting for him to light the world on fire and beat the Chargers), it’s cool to look at the guy he just replaced, and commend the class he showed in the benching.

Again, this shouldn’t be surprising, Russ has always been a no-nonsense, no issues type of guy. And in the week of talking about not noticing the things that are right in front of us, I think about Russ. If a speech had to be made on Day 1 of Training Camp to a team about how they should conduct themselves as professionals, I would just play Russ clips for the whole meeting.

Misconstrue that.

Last thing for you, I guess you only find these things when you go looking, but Russ’ “Why Not You” Foundation, where he empowers kids in neighborhoods filled with poverty through education, and a ‘Why not you’ attitude, has been running since 2014, and I don’t think it’s nearly gotten talked about enough.

No, he’s not the only guy in the world with a foundation, but maybe we start looking at some of those, and highlight specific foundations here at The Stump.

Hmm.

In terms of just Stump stuff: I don’t know if you can feel it, but something happened this week. Something happened.

Caterpillar. Butterfly.

Happy Friday! Enjoy the massive slate of sports on this weekend!

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Of! The! Day’s!

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