This website will serve to educate the general public on Black people and the Stuff That Black People Don't Like. Black people have many interesting eccentricities, which include disliking a litany of everyday events, places, household objects and other aspects of their everyday life.
Black people are an interesting subject matter and this website will chronicle the many problems in life that agitate this group of people.
To suggest material, please contact sbpdl1@gmail.com
Peyton Hillis has exposed the Caste System in sports
An article on former Notre Dame safety and current Baltimore Raven defensive back Tom Zbikowski contained this nugget of wisdom that will come in handy as we discuss an achievement that transpired last Sunday:
"When you're a white athlete, you're never fast," Ed (Zbikowski, Tom's father) said without a hint of resentment or disrespect in his voice. "It's reality, and we dealt with it."
Recruiting analyst Tom Lemming of CSTV and the Prep Football Report, said Zbikowski's saga is hardly isolated.
"When it comes to football, white athletes have to prove themselves more than black athletes at certain positions -- cornerback, wide receiver and running back," Lemming said. "There's a prejudice amongst a lot of college coaches -- not all of them -- that white guys can't play those positions. So when they get to college, they get switched right away to other positions.
Lemming was quoted in The Blind Side saying something quite similar (page 37):
"And there were anti-types: lord help the white receiver or the white running back, or until the earlier 1990s, the black quarterback."
It has been a wild ride for Hillis who led the Denver Broncos in his rookie season but was sidelined due to an injury at the end of his inaugural season in the NFL. In his sophomore season, first year head coach Josh McDaniels made the big back the fourth stringer and he amassed only 13 carries the entire year. In the offseason, he was traded to the Browns with a draft pick for Brady Quinn. McDaniels was fired this week while Hillis continues to punish NFL defenses week in and week out.
When Hillis looks back on those days, he can't come up with an adequate explanation as to why nobody could see him in a feature role. Even in Cleveland, he started as a fullback until injuries led to a shot in a Week 3 game against Baltimore, a chance that Hillis turned into a 144-yard effort.
"I think it was about not being in the right place at the right time," he said. "Or maybe it was about not being in the right scheme. But I'm not worried about that now. I'm just focused on being in the right situation here."
Since Hillis can't make sense of his past, I'll take a stab at it. His previous coaches likely spent so much time looking for runners with certain skill sets that they never envisioned that Hillis could be more than what he was. He got placed in a box, and that's not just because of his skin color. It's because this is what happens when people don't have the vision to see beyond the expectations they've already established in their own minds.
If you think this is flawed logic, just consider the plight of black quarterbacks in the past. Many were labeled as "athletes" or "scramblers" and rarely given a chance to show their abilities as passers because they didn't fit a certain NFL mold. The irony now is that mobility is a treasured asset in quarterbacks, but that's also beside the point. In those days, if you didn't look the part, you didn't get the part.
Caste Football is a Web site that documents the trend in professional sports for white players to be actively discriminated against, and the Peyton Hillis situation has been the story that finally shown the brightest veracity upon their position.
White players are discriminated against, starting at the high school level. In the past, Black players were "stacked" at certain positions, but today it is white players who are "stacked" at the quarterback, tight end, offensive line and thrown the occasional scrapes of defensive end, linebacker and safety on defense.
Hillis has aptly shown what happens when a white player gets an opportunity at forbidden positions (just as Gerhart and Hester did in college football). And remember, it took a number of injuries for him to finally have the chance to excel.
I would not argue that no amount of stereotyping happens in pro athletics. But I'd like to see something more detailed and less based on vague impressions. I've linked to this before, but I think this Josh Levin piece establishes a pretty convincing pattern in the NBA.
Look, the evidence has been documented with exceptional detail at Caste Football. Stereotyping does exist and Hillis has helped show how pervasive this stereotyping has become. His 1,000+ rushing yards in 2010 has undeniably altered the debate about just where discrimination currently can be found.
How many thousands of white athletes at the high school have been dissuaded from pursing collegiate athletics because a coach moved them from a certain position to a more racially appropriate one or a talent evaluator (like Lemming) saw no reason in promoting them at a position that is quickly becoming off-limits to white players (see running back, corner, safety or receiver)?
Peyton Hillis running for more than 1,000 yards despite attempts to pigeon-hole him as a fullback has finally vindicated Caste Football and proved the conspiracy exists as the Web site has always maintained.
Stuff Black People Don't Like includes Peyton Hillis rushing for more than 1,000 yards, for a white running back isn't supposed to be fast enough to elude the tackles of superior Black athletes on defense. Sports --basketball (which ESPN promotes tirelessly) and football-- are the play grounds for Black people to showcase their talents; and for a white boy to run around, over and through Black people is a blow to the entire rigged system that Caste Football has been declaring exists.
Once the college football season ends after the final bowl game, athlete-students begin preparing for potential employment in the NFL by participating in post season games (such as the Senior Bowl in Mobile) and training for invitation-only scouting combines, where professional scouts dissect every attribute (both physically and mentally) of the potential employee.
After the Super Bowl, all football fans turn their attention to the NFL Draft where they anxiously anticipate the selection of new athletes to love and admire, simultaneously spending countless hours of wasted productivity memorizing all of the physical attributes of the players (without getting paid as professional scouts mind you).
The NFL Draft is a topic that dominates sports pages and television for the better part of two months, as a frenzied amount of talk and hyperbole is expended over virtual and mock-drafts regarding players perceived value to potential employers.
The NFL Combine (now available for all-day viewing on the NFL Network) is an invitation-only event where the top college prospects compete before a vast audience of scouts, team personnel and fans to assess their physical gifts (40 time, number of times they can bench press 225, shuttle run and Wonderlic) .
ESPN employs an army of scouts who rank prospective athletes on a year-long revolving basis - led by Mel Kiper Jr. - who has a profound influence over how the draft will play out. Todd McShay, a diminutive white guy who appears to have played only paper football in his time on earth, acts as Kiper's lurking No. 2 (much as No.2 was to Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers trilogy) in analyzing the draft months before it actually plays itself out.
Now, the NFL is a league that employs Black people at 69 percent of the available active-roster positions. Thus, the NFL Draft is obviously a celebration of the Black athletes superiority and more so - thanks to the year-long obsession with the NFL Draft provided by ESPN and other sports outlets - a shining example of BRA at work.
The continuous - positive - images of potential NFL employees is a veritable panorama of Black faces, succeeding at running the football, catching the football, blocking for those aforementioned individuals and/or tackling those people. Occasionally you might even see a Black person excel at throwing the football (although two Black quarterbacks were drafted in the 2010, neither are projected to play that position in the NFL).
Whereas society is hard-pressed to find positive images of Black people (if you watch the local nightly news, such images are exceedingly rare), sports and Hollywood (though completely fabricated) create an entertainment-enhanced view of Black people and their actual, lingering contributions.
It could be argued that without sports and Hollywood, Black people would have no positive images to substantiate the tolerance that America bestows Black people for the pernicious rates of crime, rape, murder and ubiquitous mayhem they cause.
Shortly before the Super Bowl, all-pro defensive player Ray Lewis stood trial for double murder. While the prosecution dismissed the other charges, Lewis pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, admitting that he lied to the police during their double homicide investigation.
In "Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL," authors Jeff Benedict and Don Yaeger estimate that of the 1996/97 NFL players, 21 percent competed with criminal records, up to and including allegations of rape and assault. (Among non-football-playing young men, 15 percent have criminal records.) This means that 79 percent of players possess clean records. Still, the sports role model pool seems a tad shallow.
Here's the problem. The type of person and attitude required to succeed in sports -- especially violent sports like football -- make athletes, almost by definition, a tough sell as role models. Sports psychologist Julian Morrow says, "What makes a player successful on the field -- anger, risk-taking, limited impulse control -- may not make him someone you want living next door."
And in last year's Super Bowl, St. Louis Rams linebacker Leonard Little played. Earlier that season, Little pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter for driving under the influence and causing an accident that resulted in the death of a St. Louis mother. His sentence? Ninety days in jail, but the judge allowed Little to serve some time on work release.
Propensity to criminality as a pre-condition for employment in the NFL seems to be on the list of qualifications necessary for draft status, and the 2010 NFL Draft offered us a glimpse into a future seeded with a number of individuals absolutely locked for inclusion in future entries on NFLcrimes.com.
“Any employer has rules,” NFL spokesman Aiello said. “When an employee breaks them, they can take disciplinary action.”
Earlier this month, Goodell sent a memo to teams that said “NFL and club personnel must do more than simply avoid criminal behavior.”
“The impact of those behaviors, even if noncriminal, are immediately felt, readily apparent and have an obvious impact on our brand and what we’re trying to stand for as a league,” said Birch, the NFL VP.
Knowing this and knowing that college football is played by a 50/50 white and Black mixture and the NFL is roughly 69 percent, you can imagine that the similarities between the NFL Draft and old fashioned slave markets that might come up. With this in mind, a controversial paper entitled The Erotic Gaze in the NFL Draft had this to say:
In addition to such routines, extensive media-facilitated public display of the athletic body, presented as entertainment, has become a staple of sports media coverage. The media that cover the league frequently find excuses to profile the bodies of players, exposing them for the pleasures of their mostly male readership. These occasions for stripping NFL athletes for public view have increased in recent years.
This move towards a more public celebration and inspection of the male form as entertainment corresponds with a so-called ‘‘disappearance’’ of whites from elite leagues like the NFL. While the league was not long ago dominated by white men, recent shifts mean that roughly two-thirds of NFL players are now black. African Americans are now even well represented at quarterback, a position which until recently was the near exclusive preserve of whites. The visibility of blacks in the draft is even more prominent. More than three-fourths of first-round picks from2000 2006 were African American.
Usually, these strange demographics pass without comment. Popular theories of why blacks are so over-represented continue to emphasize racialized theories of biological difference, such as those offered in Jon Entine’s recent book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It . Public discussion of such discrepancies is, however, as Entine’s title suggests (while overstating the case), often considered rude. Nevertheless, recent years have seen mainstream writers broach the topic to express a palpable uneasiness about the supposed ‘‘disappearance of the white athlete.’’
A 1997 Sports Illustrated cover story that asked ‘‘Whatever Happened to the White Athlete?’’ announced with a palpable sense of alarm that ‘‘Whites have in some respects become sports’ second-class citizens’’ in the face of the presumed domination of blacks. This new development had even led to the development of an athletic inferiority complex for whites: ‘‘White athletes are frequently the ones now tagged by the stereotypes of skin color. The twist: whites themselves are doing much of the tagging.’’ As evidence of the widespread belief in white athletic inferiority, Sports Illustrated offered the results of an unscientific survey that suggested ‘‘cracks’’ in ‘‘the self confidence among young White males’’: 34 percent of whites surveyed agreed with the statement ‘‘African American players have become so dominant in sports like football and basketball that many White athletes feel they cannot compete at the same level.’’
Sports trigger a delusion that Black people are able to excel in that particular field alone, as sports remain the last segment of American society untainted by affirmative action programs and governed strictly by a distinct meritocracy.
Thus, Black people are better athletes than the white majority, and the over-representation of Black people in football (remember, Black people are only 13 percent of the population: imagine if more Black kids were in college than in jail and thus, eligible for the NFL Draft and you realize it is conceivable that the NFL should be 80 percent Black ) is proof that merit shines above racism, although we have to admit the infatuation with the NFL Draft and the physical attributes of the players is quite freaky (talking to you Mel Kiper).
However, the 2010 NFL Draft offered something shocking in its midst, a running back who is white. Toby Gerhart complained of prejudice prior to his eventual selection by the Minnesota Vikings in the 2nd Round, but he landed with a team that will utilize his skills as a running back instead of the dreaded fullback position that so many white runners are saddled with in the NFL.
We at SBPDL have discussed Gerhart before and wish him success in the NFL. Tim Tebow, a surprise 1st Round selection by the Denver Broncos offers intrigue through his charisma, piety and drive. He will be an outstanding quarterback in the NFL, though some sports fans find him to be lily-white and a Nazi:
Just when you thought you knew everything about Tim Tebow, a Boston sports radio station informed us that he is probably a Nazi.
The host was joking, but then so was Don Imus when he insulted Rutgers women's basketball team. CBS fired him. Will it do the same when the race-based insults are directed at Tebow?
Why do I get the feeling Tebow will be Denver's starting quarterback before Fred Toettcher is out of a job?
"Toucher," as he is known to his listeners on 98.5 The Sports Hub, had this observation on Tebow's draft-night gathering.
"It looked like some kind of Nazi rally ... so lily-white is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, Stepford Wives."
Come to think of it, I didn't see much diversity at the Tebow house. Maybe all that missionary stuff is just a cover, and his family has really spent years setting up a skinhead movement in the Philippines.
You see, the NFL is a Black league and white people are being conspicuously purged from the league. The audacity that Tim Tebow wouldn't have a Black person present at his house when he was picked offers the terrifying proof that he is a NAZI! White people who dare associate only with white people are ready to don the white sheets and march in file to military tunes, you see.
Gerhart, for having the audacity to point that the NFL scouts asked him about being a white running back in a league with no white running backs was demonized as well.
Interesting story from USA Today about Myron Rolle, the former Florida State safety turned Oxford University Rhodes scholar. We’ve read a lot of Rolle stories recently, leading into the NFL Draft. But this one stands out because it brings to light the ridiculous notion some NFL types have that Rolle is somehow uncommitted to football because he chose to put his athletic career on hold to accept perhaps the most prestigious academic scholarship in the world.
Unbelievable.
In a league that not only accepts but in some cases makes stars out of those like Pacman Jones and Ben Roethlisberger, it boggles the mind that some in leadership positions in the NFL have the gall to question Rolle’s character. Yet that’s what this story shows.
From the USA Today piece: “To some in NFL circles, the former Florida State star’s decision to put football on hold for a year while studying at one of the world’s foremost academic institutions — not to mention his plans to become a neurosurgeon — indicates a lack of commitment to the game, and Rolle is aware of this.”
And this: “During the [NFL scouting] combine, former Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick said Rolle’s situation comes down to “a character issue.” It not about personal conduct, but whether Rolle is totally committed to playing pro football. Billick also said Rolle’s intellect can be a hindrance on the field: “If you want to create hesitation on a guy, make him think. This guy can’t help but think.”
ESPN broadcast of the NFL draft has drawn the most viewers ever.
With the first two rounds held in prime time for the first time, ESPN’s three-day telecast had 3.7 million viewers, up 27 percent from 2009. It also attracted 2.85 million households, second most in draft history and up 24 percent from last year, according to Nielsen Media Research.
The most households to watch a draft on ESPN came in 2006, when 2,000 more homes than this year tuned in.
Even ratings for the third day, with Rounds 4-7, increased 10 percent to a 1.8. The final day was on Saturday this year, Sunday in 2009.
The majority of the 1st Round picks viewed by a massive audience were Black people (three white players, Sam Bradford, Tim Tebow and some white guy ESPN told us "looked like a Green Bay Packer), which further justifies the fact that sports operate under as a meritocracy.
J.B. Cash has been arguing for years on his Caste Football website that pro and college football teams discriminate against white players. Most of the racial patterns in football are clearly due to obvious physical and cognitive differences between the races, but are they all?
Cash has assembled a fair amount of anecdotal evidence for his discrimination hypothesis, but I'd like to see a thorough statistical study because in competitive markets like the NFL, irrational discrimination is punished by losing. Of course, the NFL is a cartel that shares the wealth and spreads the good seasons around using the draft and manipulating the schedule to prevent dynasties and to build up bad teams, so the pressure of the marketplace on NFL teams not to discriminate isn't as strong as in say, the British Premiere soccer league where teams with bad records get "relegated" down to the minor leagues...
One thing that strikes all observers of India is the incredible stability of the caste system. I wonder whether football coaches use this caste-like division of labor among the races to cut down on racial conflict within the team. In big time football, blacks mostly compete with blacks for starting jobs and whites with whites. This reduces the likelihood of disappointed players stirring up racial divisiveness within the team and in the media, where lots of white sportswriters are quick to denounce anything they perceive as discrimination against blacks (while remaining wholly silent on the questions Cash brings up).
One of the more sophisticated aspects of Cash's critique of the football establishment is embodied in his use of the term "caste." He contends that, as among the Hindus, different jobs are reserved for people of different ancestries. Some positions are open to whites -- offensive lineman, kicker, punter, tight end, quarterback (although to a diminishing extent) -- while some positions are somewhat open to both races -- linebacker, safety, defensive tackle, blocking back -- while others are just about off-limits -- tailback, cornerback, wide receiver.
So, teams can vary racially on two dimensions -- both percentage of whites overall and percentage of whites at typically black positions. For example, the class act of the NFL, the Patriots, have had an above-average percentage of whites on their team during their dynasty, but their white players have been mostly found at stereotypically white positions, with the partial exception of linebacker, where they've had an above average percentage of white linebackers. Overall, though, the Patriots have been just whiter at mostly white positions than other teams, rather than say, starting white tailbacks and cornerbacks.
QB-13 out of 15 white but the two blacks drafted will almost definitely not play that position in the NFL.
RB- 1 out of 14 white.
WR- 7 out of 27 white. Surprising to see Mcgaha, White, and Jurovich get snubbed.
TE-8 out of 20 white if we count Aaron Hernandez. Disappointing to see Colin Peek left on the board.
Offensive linemen- 13 out of 35. This is just despicable. That's just under 40%.
Defensive linemen-3 out of 59. They can't be serious!!!!!!!!
Linebackers- 9 out of 36. That's exactly 25 %.
Cornerback- 0 out of 35. The same as every year.
Safeties- 1 out of 16.
It is safe to say the Black dominance of the league will continue (thanks to the Rooney Rule - which mandates the interviewing of a Black coach for every head coaching position available in the NFL - the league will soon have 32 Black bosses. The Steelers and 49ers are coached by Black people and neither team drafted a white player). For those who don't believe Castefootball, look at the attributes of Kent State's Jameson Konz, a white utility offensive player who runs a 4.4 40, has a vertical jump of 46 inches and weighs 230. That raw physicality should have correlated to a 3rd or 4th round pic, but he slipped to the 7th round. Was it due to the handicap in the NFL's eyes - his whiteness?
SBPDL knows sports are what keeps aloft Black Run Ameria. It is what enabled Mein Obama to get to the White House:
Obviously, there are so many factors that have been applied, incrementally, over a long time to bring us to a place where an African-American can be elected president. But I cannot help believing that the ubiquity and esteem of the black man in sport has played a significant part in this transformation of the body politic's thinking.
However, we at SBPDL are forced to ask a serious question: is the NFL an entertainment league - like Vince McMahon's WWE/WWF? Is there an incentive to keep the league increasingly Black, to uphold that belief in Black superiority and keep alive BRA?
The NFL Draft had three unique players we at SBPDL followed intensely: Gerhart, Tebow and Rolle.
Rolle is a Black athlete who is intelligent, but he might be to intelligent for his fellow Black athletes in the NFL according to NFL personnel.
Gerhart is a white running back. He will be one of 64 (32 teams usually deploy a two-back attack) that carries the ball more than 40 times in the NFL in 2010.
Tebow is called a Nazi by those who follow sports for daring to spend his draft night with only white people. His resume includes stints in prison, but only to testify to Black people on death row and help them find salvation. Hardly the work of a Nazi.
FSTA research shows that only 1.6% of fantasy players are black, 2.3% are Latino and 1.1% are Asian. And the more I learn about the typical fantasy player, the more I think most minorities simply have better things to do. "The people who play fantasy are more into sports, more hard-core than the average fan," Berry says. "The reason the NFL embraced fantasy in such a big way is that it found that fantasy players watch three hours more football a week than the average football fan."
In searching for an Actual Black Person who plays fantasy sports, I wind up talking to noted comedian Guy Torry, who's got a famous bit called "Learning From White Folks." Turns out I stumbled onto the biggest black fantasy football fan of all time. "Who the f are you calling a nerd?" he screams at me. "Nobody loves fantasy more than me." The laugh as an exclamation point never arrives. Damn, this brother's serious. "Man, you don't know the half," he says.
Of all the opinions I collected on the racial disparity, though, one of the most interesting came from Kim Beason, an associate professor at Ole Miss who is also the CEO of Fantasy Sport Research Specialists. Basically, Beason's six years of research shows that people who have well-paying jobs with fast Internet connections are more likely to play fantasy sports. "When you break it down, it appears the disparity has to do with a critical mass of individuals who are together discussing fantasy sports," he tells me. "Up to now, that has mostly occurred in the white workplace. And a lot of time, it's on the Internet." But as the web grows, this potential audience is becoming more diverse, which makes Matt Berry a happy man.
You don't see the NFL fretting over the lack of white players in the league as Major League Baseball does (with the leagues dwindling number of Black players) or writers asking if the Oakland Raiders or Washington Redskins are too Black (as one National Basketball Association writer stated the Indiana Pacers were too white).
Black people are expected to dominate sports and whenever a white player threatens their turf, it must be exposed as a virulent form of racism to keep white players employed.
Thus, the lack of Black players in baseball is evil and must be fixed. Too many white players on a team in the NBA equates to racism and white players hoping to play in the NFL are uncerimoniously not drafted.
Those represent SBPDL's thoughts on the NFL Draft of 2010.
Toby Gerhart stands as an albatross, carrying the heavy burden of being the lone white running back to be considered a top draft pick for the National Football League (NFL) in years.
The Heisman Trophy runner-up and Doak Walker award winner is the inconvenient beneficiary of genes from a white female and a white male, a lethal combination for any ambitious white high school or collegiate running back hoping for an NFL career:
They will usually accept the backhanded compliments without complaint: "Hey, you're pretty fast for a white dude." They will smile when they get tagged with a nickname like Eminem or K-Fed. (Get it? They're Caucasian guys trying to do what African-Americans tend to do better.) White running backs will take all the good-natured teasing you've got, and they'll ask for only one thing in return -- the football.
Doesn't seem like much, does it? Just give them the ball and with it the chance to prove that productive rushers come in more than one shade. But coaches don't seem to have that handoff in their playbook. You're more likely to see Bill Belichick dance the hokeypokey on the sideline than find a white tailback in the NFL. There isn't a single white feature back on any of the 32 teams; the Bengals' Brian Leonard leads all white rushers in carries, with 25 (for 67 yards). White running backs break through slightly more often on the college level, where Stanford's Toby Gerhart leads in the nation in rushing -- but there is only one other white back, Nevada's Luke Lippincott, among the top 50 ground-gainers. Of the BCS teams Stanford is the only one whose primary running back is white.
Maybe you're thinking that the racial imbalance is because Caucasian backs just can't keep up. You watch Adrian Peterson and Maurice Jones-Drew and say, "Find me a white runner who can do that." But there's plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that white backs haven't been competing just against other players; they've also been battling the perception that they're not cut out for the job. Four years ago Gerhart was a hotshot at Norco (Calif.) High, visiting USC on a recruiting trip with fellow runners C.J. Gable and Stafon Johnson, who are black. The Trojans told Gerhart they would love to have him -- as an outside linebacker or a fullback to block for guys like Johnson and Gable
Thus, Gerhart is a "Great White Hope": that individual who comes along every half century who gives the majority of fans who purchases tickets (white people) hope that they will have someone who looks like them to cheer for, as opposed to a professional baby-maker like Travis Henry.
03/03/10 - Toby Gerhart had heard all the stories about exhausting interviews, endless medical tests and stressful on-field drills — about the NFL scouting combine being a nerve-racking experience for draft prospects. "I thought it was fun," Gerhart said Monday. "I had a real good time." In more ways than one. The highlight of Gerhart's four days in Indianapolis was running the 40-yard dash in 4.53 seconds — fast enough to silence the skeptics, impress the scouts and solidify his status as one of the top tailbacks in the draft.
"For me, there was a lot riding on the 40, because the big question mark was the speed," Gerhart said. —I just told myself, 'Stay relaxed and do what you do. Don't try to overrun.' " Anything over 4.6 seconds and Gerhart, a power runner who weighs 231 pounds, would have been projected as a fullback — and fallen several rounds in the draft. But the 40-yard-dash time, combined with impressive results in the bench press and vertical leap, place Gerhart firmly in the tailback grouping. His time, which he recorded Sunday, was faster than that of former Ohio State bruiser Chris Wells (4.59 seconds), who was drafted at the end of the first round by Arizona last year. - Jon Wilner, The Mercury News
Speed and brawn are a lethal combination, but packaged in the body of a white tailback create a potential marketing sensation for whichever NFL picks him up. Worse, Gerhart deemed the Wonderlic Test (the bane of many Black potential NFL participants) "easy", as he scored a phenomenal 30, a score many deviations ahead of the individuals who run the ball for a living in the NFL:
It looks like that Stanford education is already starting to pay dividends for running back Toby Gerhart.
The Heisman Trophy finalist—who led the country in rushing yards (1,871) and touchdowns (28) in 2009—brought home the top score in the Wonderlic exam among this year’s running back class with a 30, according to a league source.
The Wonderlic test is a 12-minute, 50 question exam aimed at evaluating a prospect’s problem-solving abilities.
There has been much debate (especially from our readers) as to whether or not the test has any real significance in determining how a college football player will perform at the next level.
Some of the other top performers among the running backs include BYU’s Manase Tonga (29), LSU’s Charles Scott (26), Tennessee’s MontarioHardesty (25), Mississippi State’s Anthony Dixon (25) and North Dakota State’s Pat Paschall (25).
Jahvid Best (California): 24 LeGarretteBlount (Oregon): 16 Jonathan Dwyer (Georgia Tech): 17 Ryan Mathews (Fresno State): 16 Dexter McCluster (Ole Miss): 18
The Wonderlic Test is just that, a simple intelligence test that has no true predicative correlation with NFL success but merely provides fodder for sports writers and fans to debate the relative intelligence (or lack thereof) of the heroes they will cheer for on Sunday:
If the NFL draft is a meat market, the NFL draft combine is where the beef is weighed and measured. Beginning today in Indianapolis, and for several days, our future Sunday heroes will take a full physical, sit for X-rays, face an interview, bench press 225 pounds for show and dough, jump broadly and vertically, and run the 40.And, of course, they'll take the Wonderlic. (Click here, and you can take it, too.)
The Wonderlic is an IQ test with only 50 questions -- it's a short version of the longer test routinely given to kids. Players have just 12 minutes to take it, and most don't finish. But, in fact, the average NFL test-taker scores a little above average.
The first questions on the test are easy, but they get harder and harder.
An easy question: In the following set of words, which word is different from the others? 1) copper, 2) nickel, 3) aluminum, 4) wood, 5) bronze.
A tougher one: A rectangular bin, completely filled, holds 640 cubic feet of grain. If the bin is 8 feet wide and 10 feet long, how deep is it?
Some teams consider the test results critical. Others say they dismiss the results, except for players who score at the extremes. What's an extreme? Well, former Bengals punter and Harvard grad Pat McInally scored a perfect 50 -- the only NFL player known to do so -- while at least one player, it is rumored, scored a 1. Charlie Wonderlic Jr., president of Wonderlic Inc., says, "A score of 10 is literacy, that's about all we can say." If that's the case, more than a few pros are being delivered the Books-on-Tape version of the playbook.
Each year, about 2.5 million job applicants, in every line of work, take the Wonderlic. The average NFL combiner scores about the same as the average applicant for any other job, a 21. A 20 indicates the test-taker has an IQ of 100, which is average.
Some people disagree with the whole idea of IQ testing because they believe the tests are culturally biased and inaccurate. But Charlie Wonderlic doesn't make grand claims for the score derived from his test. "What the score does is help match training methods with a player's ability," he says. "It could be a playbook -- what is the best way to teach a player a play? On the field, the higher the IQ, the greater the ability to understand and handle contingencies and make sound decisions on the fly."
In general, says Wonderlic, "The closer you are to the ball, the higher your score."
This assessment roughly corresponds to the averages revealed, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, by an NFL personnel man in Paul Zimmerman's "The New Thinking man's Guide to Pro Football," which are:
Gerhart's score of a 30 places him in uncharted territory for a running back, who average a pedestrian 16 on the Wonderlic (which means most of those tailbacks you cheer for on Sunday would have the luxury of a security guard or warehouse worker as a vocation, save for their gift of running a football).
CJSpiller's score (a Black running back from Clemson) of 10 is qualified as "literate". Good for him!
Tim Tebow, the universally loathed quarterback from the University of Florida, scored a 22 and was universally chided for his "low" score, a tell-tale sign of his inability to grasp a complex NFL playbook (wait, we thought the Wonderlic was a predictor of NFL failure or success)?
Tebow is hated because he doesn't have the same complexion of Michael Vick and yet performs with a greater drive and determination than Ron Mexico had for his side venture of dog rearing.
Tebow's score of 22 on the Wonderlic is only 2 points off the quarterback average, and correlates to an IQ of between 100 - 105, as opposed to Vince Young's outstanding 15:
A Palm Beach Post writer claims to have the Wonderlictest scores of Tim Tebowand other notable QB prospects from this year's NFL Scouting Combine.
Such as the cases of Favre and Marino, a high Wonderlic score doesn't always equal NFL success.
Last year's first round draft pick for the Gators, Percy Harvin, also named the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, scored a 12 on his Wonderlic test.
There are those who would ditch the Wonderlic Test as an outdated method of testing intelligence, for when the scores are tallied a racial gap appears that mirrors the racial gap in learning between Black-and-white students at all levels of education.
Eric Decker, a wide receiver prospect from the Big Ten's Minnesota Golden Gopher program, scored a 43 out of 50. He too, has the same calamitous skin condition that plagues both Gerhart's and Tebow's pro chances: white skin.
And with the NFL being a league that is 69 percent Black, continually drafting prospective employees who perform lowly on the Wonderlic Test seems an exercise in futility (considering that 78 percent of NFL players go bankrupt after they retire from the league, it is obvious economic literacy and saving money for the future is a low priority for Black players).
Tim Tebow is hated and bad-mouthed constantly by critics and scouts, because they see in the Heisman Trophy winner all of the hopes and dreams for solid Black quarterback in the frame of a white, overtly Christian gunslinger.
Toby Gerhart, that rare white running back that can't be shuttled to fullback, is not only a talented football player, but also is blessed with cognitive gifts that will rival accountants and lawyers for the franchise that eventually drafts him.
In The Blind Side, Michael Lewis relates a tale from the lips of Tom Lemming (one of the top high school football scouts... ever), and how any white high school tailback or receiver is automatically discriminated against. They have little chance for success and for being recruited by a top college (unlike the virtually illiterate Michael Oher or any Black football player not named Myron Rolle).
Stuff Black People Don't Like wishes both Tim Tebow and Toby Gerhart success in the upcoming NFL Draft. They are both outstanding players and young men who run counter to the prevailing trends noticeable in the league as chronicled by Jeff Benedict in his outstanding book Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL.
Sports will always matter. People who refuse to acknowledge the power of sports in changing American minds and influencing individual perceptions lack a basic understanding of the world.
Consider what Jackie Robinson did for Black people when he integrated baseball (a sport Black people oddly refuse to play now) in 1947:
“The integration of organized baseball preceded the civil-rights revolution, and in reality baseball helped make later reforms politically feasible by giving white Americans black heroes with whom to identify.”
We have briefly discussed Invictus, a film that explores why the Afrikaners finally capitulated to African National Congress (ANC) rule in South Africa: the ability to play international rugby.
It is anecdotally stated that the 1970 Southern California- Alabama football contest did more to bring integration to the Southern states than any Civil Rights activists could ever have hoped to attain.
The defeat by a racially integrated Trojan team over the all-white Crimson Tide was enough to convince Bear Bryant that to compete in college football, Black players would be necessary.
More importantly, the winning ways of the 2009 New Orleans Saints have propelled that town into a euphoric sense of racial solidarity that not even the election of the post-racial Mein Obamacould create:
“Few things unite New Orleans in this way: Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest and now -- perhaps more than ever -- the Saints.
With every victory, the Saints (13-0) improve not only their record but also the city's infamously complex and oft divisive race relations.
"It's not that it will cure race or magically make disappear the racial tensions, which are rooted in real issues, structural problems, historic inequalities and resentment. But it does remind you that in this city people have more in common than they realize, " said Dr. Lawrence Powell, who teaches southern history, race relations and Holocaust studies at Tulane. "That we can share in this special moment in the athletic history of the city should remind us that we can sit down and talk, as well as cheer and chant and have a good time."
You see, there has only been one murder (!!!!) in New Orleans this season when the Saints have been playing a home game, a nearly implausible trend when you consider the horrible crime rate that the city has long suffered:
“Maybe you use bizarre trends, such as an NOPD cop telling me the 911 calls almost stop when the Saints play and there's been only one murder during a game this year.”
The Superdome, French Quarter and Bourbon Street are the scenes of true “Beer Summits” that have done more to bring a town - notorious for a deep racial divide – together than any piece of legislation, initiative or Act of God could (although some would say the Saints making the Super Bowl is an act of God). The Saints are a franchise that was so hapless, fans would wear grocery bags on their heads lest they be seen attending a game:
“That history includes years in which the team lost a lot and was nicknamed the Aints, and some fans wore paper bags on their heads in shame."
Yes, the “Chocolate city” is seeing a revival of sorts after the horrors of Hurricane Katrina exposed a Haitian-esque constituency living amongst the citizens of New Orleans.
In fact, that deep connection to Haiti that former New Orleans’ citizens exhibited has been transferred to other cities:
“New Orleans police say they have never seen so much peace and quiet on the city's streets.
"We haven't seen a robbery since the beginning of August," said Lt. Troy Savage, who patrols what was once the city's most violent neighborhood.
"We're probably at this point, one of the safest communities in the United States," he said. .
Since Hurricane Katrina forced most of the residents to relocate, police say, the daily shootings and killings have stopped.
"This was the most lethal criminal underclass in the United States," said Dr. Peter Scharf, director of the University of New Orleans Center for Society, Law and Justice. "We were heading for a murder rate of 72 per 100,000. New York City is at seven."
Scharf says, according to city records, there were 265 murders in New Orleans last year, 258 murders in 2003, and 275 in 2002…
By some estimates, hardcore criminals in New Orleans numbered in the tens of thousands, and they're now living in other cities -- Baton Rouge, Dallas, Atlanta, and Houston.
Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt says crime is up in neighborhoods where large numbers of evacuees have settled.
He says he needs 400 new officers and has asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for financial assistance.”
Crime through the relocation of Black people was New Orleans top export from 2005 - 2007 and the city rallied around the Saints football franchise and clung to the success of the team like a security blanket.
Sadly, that lone murder occurred during a game that they were losing (although they did come back after the murder had transpired), thus bringing a correlation to the Saints losing and crime since both have such an intricate to the city.
In 2003, New Orleans’s murder rate was nearly eight times the national average—and since then, murder has increased. In 2002 and 2003, New Orleans had the highest per capita city homicide rate in the United States, with 59 people killed per year per 100,000 citizens—compared to New York City’s seven. New Orleans is a New York with nearly 5,000 murders a year—an unlivable place. The city’s economy has sputtered over the past generation partly because local and state officials have failed to do the most elementary job of government: to secure the personal safety of citizens.
The president wasn’t alone in his misperception of what ails New Orleans. In the aftermath of the storm, hand-wringers wondered why they hadn’t noticed before that so many American blacks live in Third World conditions—supposedly only because they’re black. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer voiced white America’s knee-jerk best: “You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals. . . . So many of these people, almost all of them that we see, are so poor, and they are so black,” he mused on the air…
But the grisly truth is that awful violence in New Orleans is never an aberration—whether before or after Katrina. Just consider the following snippets from the Times-Picayune, all printed in the month before Katrina hit. They seem just as hysterical as some of Katrina’s wildest tales.
“Violence tests the limits of mortician’s art.” “Some neighborhoods are being terrorized by thugs who have figured out that they have little to fear from the justice system.” “Almost nightly images of violent crime bludgeon New Orleans.” “Violent crime has emerged as . . . an ongoing source of national embarrassment.” “Murders are so common we have become numbed to their sting.” “Killers are killed, Orleans police say.” “The city is becoming scarier.” “Violence shows no signs of letup.” “Three men killed in seven hours; all are shot to death on New Orleans streets.” “After a short reprieve from murder and mayhem in New Orleans on Friday, six men lost their lives.” “This is Iraq right here in New Orleans. By 2020 there might not be any black people left.” “There’s a different type of murder occurring now and a different type of criminal out there.” “New Orleans area continues to log murder after murder.” “Something must be done to curb the violence festering in New Orleans.” “Now we’re in a bloody war nobody’s safe from.”
The history of the New Orleans Saints is one of a morbid franchise situated in a city renowned for its motto - Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez – and an incredible amount of Black crime that is now displaced among neighboring states largest cities.
The football team though is working overtime to bring together racial harmony in a town plagued by racial animosity that few wish to acknowledge (even though the Superdome is packed with white and Black fans high-fiving in jubilation every Sunday the Saints are in town):
“In one of the clearest signs yet of Hurricane Katrina’s lasting demographic impact, the City Council is about to have a white majority for the first time in over two decades, pointing up again the storm’s displacement of thousands of residents, mostly black…
Since the mid-1980s, black politicians have held virtually all of the reins of power in a city where interest groups are sharply factionalized along racial lines and blacks were once two-thirds of the population. Saturday’s vote indicated a transition is in the making, perhaps similar to the one that occurred at the end of the segregation era here.
White candidates made other gains on Saturday, taking two New Orleans seats in the Louisiana Legislature long held by blacks, and a state court judgeship that had also been occupied by a black judge.”
And like Atlanta, Black people are on the verge of losing power in New Orleans with the election of a white mayor, Mitch Landrieu:
Black professionals refer to the office (of mayor) as “the franchise,” the counterweight to the economic power of New Orleans’s white elite. For the past three decades, the black private sector — the lawyers, businessmen and architects — has relied on the franchise: they may not always be able to become board members at the city’s white-owned firms, but black professionals turned to the city government for contracts and jobs.
But after Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Charbonnet said, the importance of keeping the franchise often paled next to immediate crises, like the city’s shortage of health care facilities, the slow recovery of the black middle-class neighborhoods of Gentilly and New Orleans East, and the widespread scattering of the city’s population. Some members of the city’s black middle class found Atlanta, St. Louis or Chicago to be more welcoming; though blacks are still in the majority here, their numbers have shrunk.
“We’re not attuned to politics as we once were,” Mr. Charbonnet said. But that is unfortunate, he added. The prospect of a white mayor, he said, is “an earth-shaking event.”
Sports help create myths. Sometimes the myth endures, becoming a legend in the process. Other times, the myth dies a violent death, as many have at the hands of the Black underclass in New Orleans.
The New Orleans Saints have developed a myth surrounding them since 2005, as they have become a team of destiny thanks to Hurricane Katrina.
Heath Evans, a white fullback for the Saints, had this to say about the team chemistry in pre-season (notice how it reflects the mood of the city):
"You have some teams that are racially divided. You have some teams that are positionally divided. Some teams divided between offense and defense. Everyone has to buy in and be on the same page."
Nurturing such an environment in the "me generation" can be difficult. If not managed properly, the wealth and fame associated with the NFL can be hazardous to a locker room's cultural health.
"I believe the difference between winning and losing, between first and last place, is this much," Evans said, holding his thumb and index finger an inch apart. "Not every team has great leadership."
This team will appear in the Super Bowl to face the Indianapolis Colts, with a chance of bringing home the Lombardi Trophy for a parade the likes of which New Orleans has never seen.
However, like Black businesses returning to New Orleans, the prospect of a loss in the Super Bowl strikes citizens of the city with a deep sense of dread.
For, Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes the New Orleans Saints losing, for the team’s success at bringing racial harmony to the city is predicated upon them winning. Most of their history was spent losing football games, which resulted in massive loss of life.
With only one murder during the 2009 season (when the Saints played a home game), we have now seen how to bring about safe New Orleans. The team must win, to keep Black people from committing murder. The power of sports can create strange delusions.
The New Orleans Saints seem to be bringing a city together by winning, but reality paints a much different picture. Remember, sports are just entertainment. “Let the good times roll?”… if the Saints lose the Super Bowl, expect business as usual in “the Chocolate City” that same night. Not even the Saints winning can keep nature at bay for long.
The National Football League (NFL) boasts one of the most impressive business models in all of American business. Capable of controlling the fortunes of entire television networks is a powerful weapon and the NFL wields that ability effectively:
“The television rights to broadcast National Football League (NFL) games are the most lucrative and expensive rights of any American sport. It was television that brought Professional Football into prominence in the modern era of technology. Since then, NFL broadcasts have become among the most-watched programs on American television, and the fortunes of entire networks have rested on owning NFL broadcasting rights. This has raised questions about the impartiality of the networks' coverage of games.
Currently, three American terrestrial televisionnetworksCBS ($3.73B), NBC ($3.6B) and Fox ($4.27B), as well as cable television's ESPN ($8.8B) are paying a combined total of $20.4 billion[1] to broadcast NFL games through the 2011 season for CBS, Fox, and NBC and through 2013 for ESPN. However, the league imposes several strict television policies to ensure that stadiums are filled and sold out,[2][3][4] to maximize TV ratings, and to help leverage content on these networks.”
That $20 billion dollars that networks invest into the proven commodity of football is spent wisely, as an incredible return on investment is made each season:
“TV ratings for NFL games this season are up 15 percent from last season and are at a 20-year high for this point in a season; average television viewership is 17.2 million per game, according to the league. Through Sunday, 11 of the 12 most-watched sporting events since the Super Bowl in February were NFL games. Even with the Washington Redskins' struggles, all seven of their games have been the highest-rated shows in the D.C. area in the weeks in which they aired.
Ratings for NFL games this season are up 20 percent on NBC, 19 percent on Fox, 4 percent on CBS and 18 percent on ESPN, according to the league. Last Sunday's Minnesota Vikings-Green Bay Packers game on Fox drew 29.8 million viewers and was the highest-rated telecast on any network since the Academy Awards in February.”
NFL franchise owners (32 in all) have been enriched beyond their wildest dreams thanks to these television deals, for without them smaller market teams (think Kansas City and Green Bay) would have a difficult competing. However, nearly all of the franchises have seen their market value decrease with the onset of the financial collapse (see Forbes list here of value of NFL teams) and many are seeing rising costs of operating:
“Last season, the league fell short of its predicted revenue figure by $50 to $60 million. A quarter of the league’s franchises lost value for the first time in ten years in this past year. The lowly Oakland Raiders and Detroit Lions fell 7% and 6% in value, respectively. Even the perennial Super Bowl contenders, the Indianapolis Colts, fell 5%. Only an economic recession could slow the NFL profit machine.”
Amid all the good news for the NFL rests the unpleasant news of ticket sales declining, employee deaths and player arrests (list of players arrested since 2000 can be found here), lack of Black owners and worse, the failed implementation of the Rooney Rule.
“In 1989, Raiders owner Al Davis hired Art Shell as the first black head coach of the NFL's modern era and first since Fritz Pollard in the 1920s.
Progress was slow.
In 2002, attorneys Johnnie Cochran and Cyrus Mehri published a report titled "Black Coaches in the National Football League: Superior Performances, Inferior Opportunities." At the time, the report cited an alarming statistic: Since the NFL began in 1920, more than 400 head coaches had been hired, but only six of them African-Americans.
The same year, influential Steelers owner Dan Rooney proposed a rule, known colloquially as the Rooney Rule, requiring teams to interview at least one minority candidate for any head coaching vacancy.
Currently, six of the NFL's 32 teams have black coaches, though nearly 70 percent of players are African-American.”
“The Rooney Rule, established in 2003,[1] requires National Football League teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operations opportunities. The rule is named for Dan Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the chairman of the league's diversity committee, and indirectly the Rooney family in general, due to the Steelers' long history of giving African Americans opportunities to serve in team leadership roles. It is often cited as an example of affirmative action.
The Rule was established to ensure that minority coaches were considered for high-level coaching positions. Until 1979, Fritz Pollard was the only minority head coach in NFL history (which was during the league's early years in the 1920's) and by the time the Rule was implemented, only Tom Flores, Art Shell, Dennis Green, Ray Rhodes, Tony Dungy, and Herman Edwards had ever held head coaching jobs…
In 2003, the NFL fined the Detroit Lions $200,000 for failure to interview minority candidates for the team's vacant head coaching job. After Marty Mornhinweg was fired, the Lions immediately hired former San Francisco 49ers head coach Steve Mariucci to replace him without interviewing any other candidates. The Lions claimed they attempted to interview other candidates but that the minority candidates withdrew from interviews, believing Mariucci's hiring was inevitable.”
Black people look upon this rule with suspicion, believing it to be the creation of “The Man” to placate prospective Black coaches before the owner goes ahead and hires a hot shot white coach:
“The Redskins hired Mike Shanahan, a former two-time Super Bowl-winning coach for the Denver Broncos, after satisfying the rule by interviewing one of their assistant coaches, Jerry Gray, before firing Jim Zorn as head coach.
The Seahawks, who announced Monday they had agreed to a contract with Pete Carroll, satisfied the rule by interviewing Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier on Saturday, after some media outlets reported Friday that a tentative deal with Carroll already was in place.
Former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy said in a televised interview Monday that he feels Frazier's interview with the Seahawks "was done in fairness and the spirit of the law" but he thinks that Gray's interview with the Redskins set a "terrible precedent" because it was conducted before Zorn was fired.
"I just think that's wrong," Dungy said on ESPN's "Outside The Lines."
Dungy also said on the program that "you can get around rules. . . . I don't know there's anything you can do to mandate fairness."
Listening to Tony Dungy speak is hard for many Black people, for people look at him as a potential candidate for office soon, and yet he speaks with such a malleable voice when discussing the perfunctory Rooney Rule.
Until all jobs in the NFL are staffed by Black people, then and only then will Black people refrain from discussing “fairness” and “mandating”. Dungy – like all Black people – believes all 32 head coaching positions should be taken by Black coaches, disregarding “fairness” completely for white people.
“There have been many positives that have come about because of the Rooney Rule.
But now it has outlived its purpose and is being manipulated to the point where it has become a joke.
It's bad enough when minority coaches go through sham interviews just so clubs can comply with the rule and avoid being fined.
But now those entrusted with overseeing the rule is implemented seem compliant with the back-room maneuvering to dance around the rule."
Black people know better though, as they believe the Rooney Rule doesn’t go far enough into “mandating fairness”. The Rooney Rule should be applied to all levels of society whether it be for job, standardized test scores, acceptance to law and medical school, and other position where Black applicants are subjected to consideration with white people.
However, Black people also see the Rooney Rule as a back-handed compliment, an officially-licensed endorsement by the NFL – a brand beloved the world over – that Black candidates for a head coaching position at one of the 32 franchises don’t stand on the same surface as white applicants and therefore need a helping hand from the Plantation owner.
The Rooney Rule – to Black people – is basically the NFL saying, “We’ll consider this Black candidate, but not really consider him.”
Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes the Rooney Rule, for Black people know that the only way to “mandate fairness” is to abolish any rule that places equal weight upon white applicants with Black applicants for every vocational position in America. Instead, implement the “Obama Rule”: Black people are the only candidate considered.
Only when Black people control every segment of society will the dream of “mandated fairness” be equitably distributed.The Rooney Rule is a slap in the face to prospective Black NFL head coaches and the "Obama Rule" must be implemented immediately.
