After Sunday’s Super Bowl clinching win by the Seattle Seahawks, the internet exploded with reactions to Richard Sherman’s post game interview. If you’ve not seen the interview look it up to understand what America’s buzzing about.

I saw the interview live and thought nothing of it. Who wouldn’t be pumped after tipping the game winning play to your teammate for an interception!? Not only did it win the NFC Championship game for the Seahawks, but earned them a spot in the Super Bowl.

My reaction to Sherman’s interview was, “Good for him, he’s worked hard and earned the right to have an enthusiastic post-game interview.” It wasn’t until Monday morning until I heard about the awful, racist comments on twitter.

Going back to the debut of the issue, Crabtree is a trash talker to Sherman, as well as many players in the NFL. In the summer, when Sherman tried to shake Crabtree’s hand at a charity event, the 49ers receiver pushed away his hand and tried to fight the all-pro corner-back. The last place to start fights over nothing is at a charity event.

We know who antagonized the situation, but the guy who pushes back always gets the blame, right? Despite this, people don’t know the real Richard Sherman. The man who grew up in Compton, an area where gang-banging is a daily affair and only 57% of kids graduate high school. He graduated high school with a 4.2 GPA, then went on to play football at one of the most prestigious academic institutions in America, Stanford University. Sherman has also started his very own charitable non-profit organization. There was a documentary done on him, showing his dedication and examination of the game. He doesn’t drink like the 20+ NFL athletes who received DUI charges this past off-season. Instead he studies film, analyzing the complex offenses and brilliant athletes across the league, making him one of the smartest players in the NFL.

The key issue in this is the racism shown across the twitter-sphere the past few days.

Sherman discussed his dissatisfaction, “People find it easy to take shots on Twitter, and to use racial slurs and bullying language far worse than what you’ll see from me. It’s sad and somewhat unbelievable to me that the world is still this way, but it is. I can handle it.”

Richard Sherman is currently seen as a “thug” and “trash-talker” when realistically he’s one of the hardest working, and smartest players across professional sports. The man is an intelligent, charitable, and talented athlete who shows what it means to be an exceptional player in the NFL. He’s an extraordinary player and an exceptional man. The racist and life-threatening tweets against him were appalling and ignorant, and wouldn’t have been made if the world knew the real Richard Sherman.