In an interview with HBO’s Real Sports to air tonight, Donovan McNabb says that Black quarterbacks face more criticism in the NFL than White quarterbacks.
After handling the T.O. drama and the Rush Limbaugh fiasco with such grace, it’s surprising that McNabb would drop such a bomb.
Nobody is arguing that there is a paucity of Black starting quarterbacks in the league. There are currently six: McNabb, Steve McNair, Vince Young, David Garrard (who replaced Byron Leftwich), Jason Campbell, and Tarvaris Jackson.
However, they face a lot of scrutiny because they’re not very good, not because they’re Black. McNabb is probably the best of the lot and the reason he’s facing so much scrutiny this season is that he’s nine months out of ACL surgery, he looks skittish, he has no wide receivers, a coach who won’t help him by running, and has always been thought of as being overrated. You add all that up and you get ”not good” not “not white.”
Simply changing the skin color of any of those six men doesn’t magically make them as good as Peyton Manning or Carson Palmer. It would however, make Vince Young Uncle Rico from Napolean Dynamite and that would be pretty cool.
Hell, in Oakland, they’re clamoring for one of two Black quarterbacks to replace their very mediocre white starting QB. And until recently, Michael Vick, a very mediocre quarterback who is also Black, was the face of the NFL, and despite his play on the field, he seemed impervious to scrutiny.
There are certainly race inequality issues in the NFL especially in the front office and with Black quarterbacks, a point that McNabb makes and one that is also finely illustrated by Willie Beamen in the underrated classic Any Given Sunday but to say that McNabb, McNair, Young, Garrard, Campbell and Jackson get it more because they are Black makes it seem like Damon Huard is living on easy street in Kansas City with no fear of job security.
It should also be noted that the stuff that Byron Leftwich has had to deal with - that scouts and fans immediately assume that he should be mobile just because he’s Black - is particularly insidious.
What McNabb should have said is, “Quarterbacks face more scrutiny than any other position in the game and those of us who are a bit older and coming off of a career threatening injury get it the worst. And after some progress, there are still not enough Black quarterbacks, coaches, owners and general managers in the league.”
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