The "Black" Quarterback

The National Football League (NFL) has been the most popular professional sporting league in the United States for the past 47 years (NFL Communications Staff, 2013), and it likely will remain that way for many years to come.  Television has built entire Networks devoted solely to professional football (The NFLNetwork), and it seems “all sports” networks like ESPN, NBCSN, and FoxSports 1 might as well be.  It’s safe to say, for at least roughly five months of the year, Americans’ lives are saturated with football content.

            Though it is a league characterized by hard hits, touchdown dances, and intricate play calling, the NFL has long been synonymous with one word: Quarterback.  As the “Leader of all Leaders” no sporting position in the United States is more glamorized or scrutinized, with hours upon hours of Sporting Television devoted to the 32 starting NFL quarterbacks each day.  John Elway, Dan Marino, Johnny Unitas, Peyton Manning, Joe Montana, and Tom Brady are consistently regarded as some of the greatest to ever play the position, and have been referred to as being “pocket passers”, “readers of the defense”, “hard-workers”, “studiers of film”, “mentally tough”, “field generals”, and “smart.”  What seem odd however, is that for a league that has been dominated by African-American players, every athlete I listed above is White.  For the last 40 years, having a White quarterback to lead your team was essentially the “rule”, and there were few exceptions.  But in 2013, there were nine Black quarterbacks starting in week 1, the most in NFL history (Johnson, 2013).  It’s obvious that both Black and White men can excel at the position; however, the ways in which Sporting Television defines the talents of the  “Black quarterback” creates poor representations of these tremendous athletes and of the race as a whole.

           

“The Black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way, because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back, and they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs and he's bred to be the better athlete because this goes back all the way to the Civil War when during the slave trade … the slave owner would breed his big Black to his big woman so that he could have a big Black kid”- Jimmy “The Greek” Synder, 1988

            Synder, a CBS sports commentator, was fired for these comments twenty-five years ago when he stated that African-Americans were “bred” to be better athletes than Whites.  The odd thing is, many sports commentators are saying the exact same things today… just not quite as bluntly.  Turn on ESPN and it’s not atypical to find yourself staring at a young quarterback comparison, for example the Black Robert Griffin III (RGIII) being compared to the White Andrew Luck. Before either played an official NFL game, pundits were already comparing Luck and Griffin.  Statistically, both quarterbacks were very similar:  Both lead top-tier Division 1 programs, were multiple year starters and passed for over 10,000 in college, were exceptionally smart student-athletes, and were first and second in a close Heisman voting.  The similarities continued at the NFL Scouting Combine where Griffin proved to be only slightly faster in the 40 yard-dash (by less than .2 seconds) and Luck proved to be only 10 pounds heavier and an inch and a half taller.  Luck and Griffin were drafted one-two in the 2012 draft, marking yet another indication of their sameness. 

Yet, on ESPN’s widely popular debate show, First Take, RGIII (Griffin) was referred to as an “enigma, we don’t know what we’re going to get” based off his ability to run and pass, while Luck was quoted as being the “quintessential prototypical quarterback, you drop back to pass, you purview the landscape, you look at defenses, you call plays, and you wing that football, this dude is the real deal” (First Take).

How could two quarterbacks with so many similarities, two quarterbacks who both played in and won their first preseason games as rookies, be regarded in such different ways?  Was RGIII really that inferior to Luck?  As it turns out, both would go on to have great Rookie NFL seasons, with RGIII being named Rookie of the Year and Luck helping the Colts win nine more games than they did the year prior.  Aside from race, it seems these men could not be any more similar, and yet Luck was looked upon positively for his ability to run an offense, read the defense, and memorize a playbook, while Griffin was considered a mystery because he seemingly only possessed outstanding athletic ability and not much more.

            Both men are excellent quarterbacks, but the consistent representation of Black quarterbacks as “dual threat quarterbacks”, “scramblers”, “natural athletes”, and “possessing great physical intangibles” on sporting television creates for a certain representation of the Black quarterback.  By being continuously praised for their “God-given” abilities (speed, strength, quickness, etc…) rather than skills that come about through hard-work, mental acuity, and effort (accuracy, ability to read defenses, being a field general, etc…) Sporting Television creates a skewed representation of the Black quarterback which in turn may lead viewers to think a certain way regarding Black Americans as a whole.

  As a minority group in America today, the representation of African-Americans on television plays a key role in real-world perception.  It’s quite possible that for many White Americans, their only exposure to Black Americans comes from television, and when the most talked about Black athlete in the most talked about sport is rarely praised for his hard work or effort, it has the potential to put many African-Americans at a disadvantage.  As Casey Gane-McCalla so eloquently states in his blog, “Sports stereotypes have a real effect in the real world. Most employers are not concerned with employees' natural athletic abilities, so stereotypes of African-Americans being athletically superior for the most part do not help Blacks in the real world. However, the stereotypes of Whites being hard working, disciplined and smart are helpful to them in finding employment.”  When there are few alternative sources for information, the portrayals of minorities that make it on television in front of a nation-wide audience hold quite a bit of weight.  By consistently referring back to the Black Quarterbacks’ athletic ability, the other components of their game, such as hard work, effort, and leadership, components that we as an American Society have come to associate with the all-important American Dream, are largely ignored.

            The agenda has been set by Sporting Television, and thus far they have chosen to focus only on certain aspects of the Black quarterbacks’ abilities.  The way Black quarterbacks are portrayed on television reinforces the stereotype that African-Americans are only valued by their bodies rather than their skill, hard work, or brains; a stereotype that is rooted long ago in the Africans’ ability to perform grueling physical labor on plantations.  One of the greatest quarterbacks of all time (who also happens to be Black), Warren Moon, once remarked, “Not only did you have to play well for yourself, but you had to play well for your race.”  Now it seems, the burden of being a Black quarterback means that one not only must play well, but they also must play a certain way to be accepted as a true quarterback, rather than as a “Black quarterback”.  If only winning was the only thing that mattered…

           

Gane-McCalla, C. (2009, April 19). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/casey-ganemccalla/athletic-blacks-vs-smart_b_187386.html

Johnson, T., (2013, September 5). Nfl season opens with 9 starting black quarterbacks. The Grio. Retrieved from http://thegrio.com/2013/09/05/nfl-season-opens-with-9-starting-black-quarterbacks/

NFL Communications Staff. (2013, January 17). The harris poll: Nfl continues 47-year run as america's most popular sport. Retrieved from http://nflcommunications.com/2013/01/17/the-harris-poll-nfl-continues-47-year-run-as-americas-most-popular-sport/

SuperBallerLife. (Producer). (2013, May 22). Skip Bayless and Stephen A Smith on Better Debut - Andrew Luck or RG3! - ESPN First Take [Web Video]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnFQzFg_Mow