The Fall of the White QB?

<p>Of course, I'm not being serious. But for two years in a row, 2 college-proven and promising White QBs have been shortchanged because of the luster of 2 superb Black QBs. I'm talking about Matt Leinart-Vince Young and Brady Quinn-JaMarcus Russell. Some rather mean comments are made about Leinart and Quinn, like "weak", "coach-controlled", "robotic", etc. </p>

<p>And to think there was once a time when nobody could picture a Black QB starting for an NFL team. Nowadays, it's the White QBs who have to slide down the draft as scouts are enamoured with their Black counterparts.</p>

<p>Well to be fair, both White QB's faced their black "counterparts" in a BCS bowl and both times the White QB's lost (rather badly in the case of Brady Quinn). And Vince Young was nothing short of spectacular in the Rose Bowl. Maybe if one of the white QB's would have won, then they would have been drafted higher.</p>

<p>Brady Quinn just went way way down...chosen at #22 instead of #2 or 3</p>

<p>For many years, black QBs got the shaft -- as did the fans of teams with GMs who were too obtuse to take a chance on them.</p>

<p>I'd argue that there's still some draft inflation for white QBs...but the playing field is nearly level now as black QBs have proven themselves against the skeptics.</p>

<p>Think back to 1988 when Tony Rice and Rodney Peete played in the Coliseum -- the only time that Notre Dame and Southern Cal met as #1 v. #2 -- and only Peete got drafted, as a "courtesy" pick of the Lions where he had an uncle on the coaching staff. Peete later proved himself -- I know because I got fat off of him on a fantasy league team.</p>

<p>Doug Williams is another pioneer black QB. In Tampa he was totally abused because of his race. Despite taking the team to its first playoffs, fans resented him being a black man who didn't know his place. His wife died of cancer and days afterwards an anonymous fan sent him a package with rotting watermelon because of...what? the playoff berth? sympathy for his wife? He got cut shortly afterwards by an owner who felt that the team needed another leader -- a white one, that is -- to continue keeping the team building towards a Super Bowl berth. His record-breaking Super Bowl performance shut up some people...but they still regarded black QBs as being "athletic" and not capable of being the "coach on the field."</p>

<p>If you look at head coaching opportunities for African-Americans in the NFL, you'll see the trendline is on a similar track. With Tony Dungy winning a Super Bowl and old-timer GMs fading away, people are waking up to a fact that most of America came to Jesus with years ago: it's just bad business to eliminate a significant portion of your talent pool on the basis of race.</p>

<p>There are still boneheads out there who still have firm beliefs that would win over the white-hooded set...but the good news is that as more and more teams are willing to recognize talent without discounting it for its color, the boneheads are going to find themselves paying a price for passing over better talent and better coaches. Too bad for their fans.</p>

<p>The QB is the quintessential American warrior-king. That's why it takes racists a long time to accept non-whites as QBs.</p>

<p>On another note, I would love to see a White RB. There's one in the CFL, I think. And I would also love to see any Asian football player not named Dat Nguyen.</p>

<p>Hines Ward is half korean:)</p>