White Men Can Run

Jordy Nelson takes on the caste system

Ever seen the Mark Wahlberg film Invincible? I've always believed that this movie - the story of 30-year-old Vince Papale who became a receiver/special teams player for the Philadelphia Eagles after impressing coaches at an open tryout - and Miracle are Disney apologizing for the lies they promulgated in Remember the Titans.

Purchasing the book the film is based on led me to this passage that was left out of the script (Invincible, p. 84), where Papale talks about the open tryouts for the Eagles and the blistering 4.5 40 time he posted. One of the position coaches didn't see him run the time, so he was on the verge of being left behind:

I was being shut for reasons I didn't know. Unlike the decathlon, I couldn't let this opportunity pass. For once I stood up from myself. I yelled out, "What is the criteria?" 

The coach, who had begun to walk away, turned around and shot me a look. He couldn't believe I was challenging him. 

"We're taking the fastest forty times," he said.  

"I ran a four five, that was the fastest forty time here," I said. 

"Yeah, but I've never seen a white guy run that fast. My assistant must have timed you wrong," he said to me. 

"Give me another chance," I said, stepping forward. 

Papale tells how four coaches timed his run this time. All the clocks read 4.5 when he finished. The motivational story of Invincible would never have been told, had Papale not said "give me another chance," and he would have been denied the opportunity for success because of the conditioned belief that white guys can't run.

It is indisputable that Black people - well, Black people of West African descent - hold the top 200 times in the 100 meter dash. But this does not necessarily mean that ALL Black people are fast, and that they alone hold a monopoly on 'speed'; conversely, there are white athletes, like Papale, whose athleticism was questioned as a 'mistake' because of the widespread belief that a lack of melanin means some kind of 'speed' deficiency.

 It all starts at the high school, when talent scouts - representing Rivals and Scout.com - evaluate potential blue-chip recruits and hand out 'star' ratings. Rarely does a white athlete at a 'skilled position' (running back, wide receiver, safety, or corner back) receive more than a 3 out of 5. Tom Lemming, the founding father of recruiting guides, told Michael Lewis in The Blind Side that white high school athletes were discriminated against by college scouts and coaches because they couldn't possibly be as a fast as Black athletes. He told the same thing to The Chicago Sun Times; he told the same thing to the South Bend Tribune.

White guys can never be fast. It's a conditioned stereotype. When fans of college football teams see white players at skill positions, they instinctively believe their team is at a disadvantage and that the white player is a liability. Back in 2002, the Kentucky Wildcat started three white wide receivers (who all stood out, as few of the 12-member Southeastern Conference - SEC - schools start one white wide receiver) including the super talented Derek Abney.

The Black players dubbed them "The Snow Storm":

The Wildcats' all-white starting receiving corps of Aaron Boone, Derek Abney and Tommy Cook has combined for 77 catches, 1,235 yards, 13 touchdowns and one catchy nickname. Seems some of the black players on the team have jokingly referred to the trio as "The Snow Storm." Lead storm trooper Abney, generously listed at 5-10 and 172 pounds, now has returned five kicks for touchdowns this year, after taking back two punts last week against Mississippi State. White Lightning is averaging 19.2 yards every time he touches the ball and is the only Division I-A player with at least 450 yards in receptions, punt returns and kickoff returns. His six career kick-return TDs ties the SEC record set by Vanderbilt's Lee "Long Gone" Nalley in the 1940s. "At one particular point it amazed me how tough this kid is," coach Guy Morriss said. "He's taken some shots, and he'll bounce back up like he's made out of Flubber, almost. It's almost like he's sending back a message to the guy that hit him, 'That didn't hurt me.' "

Abney, like so many white receivers before and after him, never got a real shot at the National Football League (NFL), where receivers like Terrell Owens - who recently had an arrest warrant out for failure to pay child support - are lauded by fans, coaches, and analysts for their "speed" and antics on the field that draw attention to themselves.

Drawing attention to themselves is something that that the white receiver (only 15 percent of the receivers in the NFL are white) has a tendency to do, as primarily Black defensive backs laugh when they line up to guard a "white boy." This article from Sports Illustrated back in 1991 illustrates the problem perfectly:

Brian Hartline: One of the NFL's most underrated players

The Taunts start early for Phoenix Cardinal wide receiver Ricky Proehl on most fall Sundays. "Hey, slow white boy!" opposing cornerbacks scream at him. "You ain't going anywhere today. You ain't catching nothing!" 

Proehl thinks the Philadelphia Eagle defensive backs are the loudest, but they aren't alone in singling him out—Proehl's one of only five white wide receivers who were starters for most or all of last season. "Most cornerbacks take it personally when they get beat by a white guy," Proehl says. "Even in practice, when I beat a corner deep, I get compliments. It's like I'm not supposed to do it." 

The preference for blacks is not restricted to the NFL. "When I was in high school trying to get a college scholarship, most of the college coaches would shy away when they found out I was white," says Proehl. And according to New York Jet assistant coach Kippy Brown, when he was a Tennessee assistant in 1990, the other Volunteer coaches "looked at me like I was nuts" when they found out he was recruiting a white receiver. That player, Craig Faulkner, is a starter for Tennessee this fall. 

Nineteen years ago Brown became the first black quarterback in Memphis State history, and he equates the blacks-can't-play-quarterback controversy of years past to the white receivers' situation of today. "The myth about black quarterbacks has been exploded, and it's been proven you have to make decisions based on ability, not skin color," Brown says. "But the mentality of a lot of people in this business is that the white kids can't play certain positions." 

The overwhelming need for speed at receiver and cornerback can be traced to NFL rule changes enacted in 1978. Offensive linemen were allowed to use their hands to thwart onrushing defenders, and defensive backs were restricted to bumping wideouts in an area within five yards of the line of scrimmage. All of a sudden, the quick, small black wideout became a huge factor, and an adjustment had to be made on the other side of the ball. At the end of last season the NFL had only six whites who were starting at defensive back—and none of them were cornerbacks.

Rare is the high school white receiver who gets a scholarship or an offer. Fitting that 1991 was also the year that Ben Brown decided to write a book called Saint Bobby and the Barbarians that documented the Florida State football team under Bobby Bowden, one of the coaches who was influenced by the belief that there were few, if any, white athletes worthy of being recruited to play college football (even laughing at the suggestion of a white running back). On page 75 of that book, we learn about Matt Frier, the last white starting receiver for FSU; he's from a  proud family, and would eventually graduate with a degree in advertising and seamlessly move into the world of regional commerce.

But at FSU, he would have to outwork the other receivers (all Black) for a spot in the playing rotation:

(John) Eason - the FSU receivers coach - noted sarcastically that Frier may have been the victim of a racist stereotype. Because he was white in a position dominated by black athletes, he was assumed to be slow and awkward. But Frier's straight-ahead speed probably put him in the middle of the pack among receivers and running backs. And his desire and toughness were unrivaled. 

Rarer is the white starting wide receiver who earns a scholarship to an SEC or Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) school.

It is the flashy Black receiver ready to dance after every reception and perform some gratuitous touchdown celebration that fans and coaches have been conditioned to believe can only excel in the either college or the NFL.

Stanford University held a conference on racial stereotyping in sports back in 1995, and a white receiver from that school described his experiences from NFL draft evaluations:

(Justin) Armour, a public policy major, told of his experience in February at a National Football League training camp where he was the only white among 44 wide receivers who were being looked over for the draft. In informal conversations with the mostly white physicians, coaches and trainers, he said, he was frequently asked about his academic work and non-athletics-related plans for the future. The same people, when talking to black players, he said, were not only less talkative but brought up "nothing to do with scholarship." 

During a pencil-and-paper problem-solving test, he said, some of the black athletes pretended to be sneaking a peek at his paper. This joking behavior, he said, was encouraged by league representatives in the room. On the field, he said, coaches made comments when seeing him about having a "smart guy" in the group. Only after the camp was over, Armour said, did it strike him how pervasive the stereotyping had been. "It is perpetuated over and over," he said, by well-educated people. "What scares me about racism is that the majority of it is pretty subtle."

This is not an example of racism, but merely of conditioning. College recruiters will not sign a white receiver (or running back) for fear of being called a 'racist' by other coaches who will tell Black athletes that a rival school favors white players. For other reason but "racism" would a major university disadvantage their offense by signing a slow white athlete to catch passes?

Enter the very white Wes Welker, one of the leading receivers in the NFL. He stars for the New England Patriots, though no team dared draft the former high school Gatorade Player of the Year in Oklahoma. In fact, only one school - Texas Tech - gave him a scholarship, as he had planned to walk-on at Oklahoma State.

Only because former Texas Tech coach Mike Leech saw something he liked in the "frat boy" looking Welker's film, did he offer him a scholarship. For four years, he would be the top receiver for the Red Raiders. Now, he is one of the top receivers in the NFL, though like so many other white high school stars, he almost never got the chance to even play college football.

The same goes for Indianapolis Colts receiver Blair White, who had to walk-on at Michigan State ('walking-on' means that the player didn't receive an academic scholarship and must pay their own way into school, and that they start very low on the totem pole when it comes to the depth chart). The same goes for former walk-on Oregon white wide receiver Jeff Maehl, who despite putting up insane numbers at the 2011 NFL combine, wasn't drafted. Here's what was said of him before the BCS championship game in 2011:

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- The question seemed innocent enough, but Oregon receivers coach Scott Frost didn't view it that way. 

When a reporter noted that wide receiver Jeff Maehl has deceptive speed, often turning short passes into long gains, Frost took exception to the perceived implication. 

"Unfortunately, he's a white receiver so you give him that stereo type," Frost said. "I don't know why you give him that stereotype, but he's gonna run a better 40 time than three fourths of the receiving coming out in the draft." 

Fair enough. Maehl is more than a possession receiver who runs precise routes. His leaping 45-yard touchdown catch in the USC game was highlight-reel material. 

Maehl is aware of the stereotype surrounding "white receivers" and if anything it has worked to his ad vantage. 

"I guess that's just kind of my advantage if teams think I might be slow or something," said Maehl, a 6-foot-1, 184-pound senior from Paradise, Calif. "I'm guessing it's out there in the media and in the back of some guys' heads, that's probably what they're thinking."

Another white walk-on receiver, Mike Hass of Oregon State, would go to win the Biletnikoff Award, annually given to the top receiver in college football. Drafted by the New Orleans Saints, he never got a chance to play in the NFL. Bouncing around between a few teams, he languished on practice squads. But no college team offered him a free-ride; he had to walk-on and fight for everything at Oregon State.

Though one college football site joked about discrimination toward white receivers, the reality of white high school players getting passed over is real.

Tim Dwight, who was nicknamed "white lightning" was once one of the fastest players in the NFL. Sadly, he was used primarily as a special teams player instead of a receiver. The Green Bay Press Gazette wrote an article about the problems facing white receivers in the league, which inadvertently shed light onto one of the reasons there are so few lining up for NFL teams:

"We're a minority," (Brett) Schroeder said. "In many ways being a white receiver is kind of like being an African-American golfer. I don't know why it's like that, but that's just the way it is."

Part of the reason is the NFL has fewer white players than ever. Just 25 years ago, 70 percent of the NFL was white. Now, it's 30 percent.

"The league has changed," NFL analyst and former Cincinnati Bengals receiver Cris Collinsworth said on NFL.com. "It's difficult to compare anything now in the NFL to what it was like 25 years ago."

In 1981, Collinsworth was one of four white receivers to play in the Pro Bowl. He joined San Francisco's Dwight Clark, Denver's Steve Watson and Seattle's Steve Largent.

In the past decade, Denver's Ed McCaffrey is the only white receiver to be selected to the Pro Bowl. McCaffrey made it in 1998 and 1999, but in the last six seasons, no white receiver has been selected.

Tennessee Titans receiver Drew Bennett had a Pro Bowl-type season in 2004 when he had 1,247 yards and 11 touchdowns, but he didn't receive an invitation. After that season, he was referred to as "The Best White Receiver in the NFL." It's a tag Bennett doesn't like.

"I guess you always want to be the best at something," Bennett said sarcastically. "I don't control what people say."

In the last five seasons, there have been 105 1,000-yard seasons, but only two of them — Bennett and Indianapolis' Brandon Stokley in 2004 — have come from white receivers.

"There are plenty of good, white receivers in the NFL," Bennett said. "I'm not going to get obsessed over stats."

But the statistics can be very telling. Last season, only six white receivers — Bennett, Stokley, St. Louis' Kevin Curtis, Atlanta's Brian Finneran, Carolina's Ricky Proehl and Seattle's Joe Jurevicius — finished among their teams' top three receivers. Curtis led all white receivers with 801 yards and Bennett was the only one to lead his team in receiving.

Packers receivers coach Jimmy Robinson has been coaching receivers for 21 years, including 17 in the NFL. Robinson said there's one simple reason why there are fewer white receivers in the NFL than ever before.

"Obviously, it comes down to talent," Robinson said. "Teams are committed to keeping the guys who are the best ones, regardless of color."

During the 2005 draft one of the players who was causing the most commotion was Matt Jones, a 6-foot-6, 230-pounder who played quarterback at Arkansas.

The Jacksonville Jaguars were so enamored with Jones that they took him with the 21st pick.

When the Jaguars drafted Jones, it was the first time in over a decade a white receiver was taken in the first round.

Packers cornerback Ahmad Carroll remembers when he got burnt by a white receiver during his rookie season in 2004 when the Packers were hosting the Titans on "Monday Night Football." The Packers were torched for three passing touchdowns in the 48-27 loss, but the one play Carroll remembers the most was the 11-yard touchdown pass from Steve McNair to Eddie Berlin.

Berlin is white.

"If I get burned by a white receiver, I'm going to hear about it more than if that's not the case," Carroll said. "Anybody who says otherwise is tripping."

Bennett said he has gotten the sense defenders may actually try harder to make sure they don't get beaten by a white player.

"I think they take me seriously. If you're in this league, you can obviously play," Bennett said. "Now, does it bother them a little more if I burn them for a touchdown? Well, you'd have to ask them that."

White guys can't be fast, which means that if a Black defensive player gets beat by one of the "speed" deficient white men in the NFL, they'll take a lot of criticism from other players and coaches. Which brings us to Jordy Nelson of the Green Bay Packers. A former walk-on at Kansas State, Nelson was a rarely used receiver until the 2010 season.

He helped lead the Packers to a Super Bowl title; this season, he has become one of the top receivers in the league (and, along with fellow white receiver Eric Decker of the Broncos, is near the top of league in touchdown receptions). And certainly one of the most talked about, after letting slip the reason for his success. Here's the Washington Post on a "controversy" that would garner opinions and bloviating from ESPN, Rush Limbaugh, and, well, the entire sports world:

“I was talking to ‘Wood’ in the fourth quarter and he said, ‘When you see Jordy out there, you think, “Oh well, he’s a white wide receiver. He won’t be very athletic.” But Jordy sort of breaks all those stereotypes,’” (Aaron) Rodgers recounted during his weekly radio show on WAUK-AM, an ESPN Radio affiliate. “I am not sure why he keeps sneaking up on guys.” 

Jennings, Nelson’s fellow wide receiver and friend, knows exactly why Nelson keeps sneaking up on opponents: He’s white. 

“They underestimate him. And honestly, he uses that to his advantage,” said Jennings, who like Woodson is black. “Seriously . a lot of it has to do with the fact that guys look at him and say, ‘OK, he’s the white guy, he can’t be that good.’ Well, he is that good, he’s proven to be that good and it’s because of the work and the time that he’s put in -- not only on the field but in his preparation off the field.”

Like Dwight, Nelson is nicknamed "white lightning"; unlike Dwight, Nelson was given the opportunity to succeed in the NFL (largely due to injury attrition) and made the most of it. Though his success has been questioned, just like Papale's speed:

When asked by the Green Bay Press Gazette if racial bias is a factor in Nelson's on-field success, he replied: "Honestly, I think it is." 

Nelson and his teammates believe that, with so few elite white receivers in the league, opposing players are likely to dismiss Nelson's abilities on the field. 

"As receivers, we've talked about it." Nelson told the Press Gazette. "I know [cornerbacks coach] Joe Whitt tells me all the time, when all the rookies come in, he gives them the heads up, 'Don't let him fool ya.' That's fine with me."

Wes Welker, the NFL's best receiver

Nelson had to prove his worth to Kansas State coaches as a walk-on, because no college would give him a scholarship. Welker was basically in those shoes, especially as an undrafted receiver. How many talented white high school receivers never get the chance to even lace up their boots in the college ranks, because of the institutionalized bias that only Black people have "speed?"

Steve Sailer pointed out that Matt Jones (whose cocaine addiction ended what should have been a stellar NFL career), the first white receiver drafted in the first round in years, was asked to gain weight to play tight end:

Of course, wide receiver is mostly a black position, so lots of NFL guys tried to talk Jones into playing tight end, a position where whites are more common. Chris Mortensen of ESPN wrote: 

"You know, it's funny," one AFC head coach told me last week. "We asked [Jones] about putting on some weight and playing tight end, and he made it clear that he thought it was foolish. He said, 'So you want me to put on 20 pounds and be a 4.57 guy instead of a 4.37 guy?' When you put that into context, you have to admit he makes sense.

So there is something to what Jordy Nelson intimated. White guys aren't supposed to be 'fast' or play wide receiver. Not at the collegiate level; not at the professional level.

To excel means that they are outliers, freakish white athletes that stand out from the sloth-like masses of white people. In reality, to excel at receiver you must be able to run precise routes (because quarterbacks have timed drop backs that require concise route running from the receiver to operate properly); good spatial recognition (to determine where to make cuts for optimal positioning against a zone defense to get open; and enough speed to get separation from the defensive back.

Plenty of white receivers can and do excel at this; sadly, coaches don't believe white guys have the intangibles and necessary metrics (fast 40 time) to compete at the college level. This is a burden of entry for many talented white high school athletes who are then forced to walk-on if they want to play college football.

And because fans and coaches (and players) have been conditioned to believe only Black people possess "speed," any white athlete who excels at receiver in the NFL will be instantly singled-out by the media and opposing defenses - led by entirely Black corners and safeties - for ridicule. Just ask Brian Hartline of the Miami Dolphins, a white receiver from the Ohio State University. He happens to be one of the NFL's most underrated receivers:

The NFL is a melting pot full of players from every city and every background under the sun. There aren’t many white wide receivers, though. Hartline says he and his teammates have some laughs about that. 

Among the NFL’s top 30 in terms of 2010 receiving yards, Dallas’ Jason Witten and Hartline are the only Caucasians. 

“We have a lot of fun with it,” Hartline said. “No doubt, you hear a lot of talk, along the lines of, ‘That white boy ... don’t sleep on him.’”

Or Mike Furrey, a white receiver who caught 98 passes a few years ago for the Lions in one season, and quickly found himself unemployed the next.

What about Drew Bennett, a white wide receiver who retired from the game in 2009. ESPN The Magazine published this account of the un-drafted, former college quarterback, who went on to be one of the more productive receivers of the 2000 - 2010 years:

On a cool March evening under a clear Spanish sky, he slides out of a rickety wooden chair in a cozy café in Barcelona's Plaza Real. The gangly and goofy American can feel the rubbernecking stare of the natives. He's 6'5'' in a land where men are an average of 5'9''. He wears gray suede Pumas with an orange stripe in a land where people seldom wear tennis shoes. He orders toasted ham and cheese and a beer using butchered Spanish ("Oon bikini ee oon Guinness, poor fevoor") in a land where people speak a language called Catalan. Clearly, Drew Bennett does not belong. 

So, what else is new? 

Forget for a moment that Bennett, in Spain visiting his younger brother Mark, who's a student there, is a white guy playing a position dominated by black guys. Disregard that he's a former backup UCLA quarterback who's now the Tennessee Titans' No. 1 wide receiver. Ignore the fact that he's gone from his childhood home in the Bay Area to Nashville, from the cradle of conservation to a place where recycling means buying another Harley. All of it pales in comparison with the mother of fish-outta-water scenarios: making it in the NFL as an undrafted free agent.

Ask Austin Collie of the Indianapolis Colts, who excelled at Brigham Young University as a receiver. BYU is known for having great quarterbacks who throw to primarily white Mormon receivers, and Collie is easily the best receiver the school has ever produced.

Perhaps his success is fueled partly because he had a good support system at BYU, instead of being constantly ridiculed by his teammates for being a "slow, white receiver." Because BYU actually recruits student-athletes instead of any Black kid who can run a fast 40 time, white athletes aren't unfairly criticized and made fun of; with most of the team being white guys, there a sense of camaraderie that talented white players don't feel elsewhere.

That's the point of sports; to develop sound work ethics and pride in yourself, because you are part of a team.   Recently retired NFL fullback Heath Evans once alluded to the fact that many NFL teams have racial animosity (imagine being one of the few white guys on a team of predominately Black players), and you can understand how white receivers might have difficulty adjusting to a culture dominated by Black morals and social customs.

The same can be said of the college level.

At the high school, it's not a liability to have a white receiver; coaches can't recruit (save at private schools) and can only play those athletes who live in their school district. White receivers excel and develop chemistry with their teammates, but rarely have the opportunity to advance to the next level, because college recruiters have prejudicial opinions of their innate abilities.

In spite of this, talented players like Wes Welker and Jordy Nelson found a way to excel. If that meant walking-on and having Black defensive backs (we won't even discuss the kind of hate Jason Sehorn faced) be dismissive of their talents because they were white, so be it.

It's this simple: sports provide the primary medium where Black people can provide positive contributions to American life. Though trivial, many people derive their entire identity from their alma mater or professional football team they follow (because there is no such thing as an "American Identity" anymore).

Because the concept of Black Supremacy in sports is so ingrained, predominately white sports fans believe that having a white athlete at a position dominated by Blacks (especially wide receiver) that their team is at a distinct disadvantage.

How can they compete against such fast Black players?

Just ask Vince Papale how you compete against coaches and talent scouts who believe white men can't run fast.

Just ask Jordy Nelson and Wes Welker, who never had Rival or Scout salivating over their abilities, and were forced to fight for everything they earned as either a walk-on or as a player given the last scholarship.

How many talented white high school receivers could have developed were they given that opportunity?

White Men Can Run (with apologies to Amby Burfoot), its just a system has been erected that denies the lot of them an opportunity to prove it at the collegiate level. Those that break free then face an even greater burden of proof at the NFL level to showcase their talents, because white guys aren't supposed to be fast.

White Men Can Run... it's just universally accepted and constantly stipulated that they can't. Just ask Jordy Nelson, who is having a tremendous season in spite of his debilitating whiteness.

Line Unbroken: Southern Methodist University White Running Back Zach Line Succeeds Despite "The Standard"

Zach Line got one scholarship offer: to play linebacker from SMU

Never forget what happened in 2009, when Stanford white running back Toby Gerhart won the Doak Walker Award and came in second in the Heisman Trophy vote. Coming out of high school, Stanford was the only school to offer Gerhart the opportunity to be a feature tailback. The University of Southern California wanted him to play fullback and other schools thought he'd be better suited as a linebacker.

Never forget what pioneering recruiting guru Tom Lemming said about how college recruiters no longer recruit white players to play certain positions like tailback, corner back, and wide receiver, positions that fans and coaches alike have been conditioned to believe where only Black athletes can excel.

Take the words of former Southern Methodist running back Eric Dickerson on the issue:

"They can’t compete with us,” NFL Hall of Fame running back Eric Dickerson once said. "The black athlete, especially at that position, is faster, more elusive. That’s a position made for agility.

"It’s kind of like our chosen position.”

Chosen position or just a position that few white athletes get the chance to play in college, negating opportunities for white running backs in the National Football League (NFL)? Just look at the criticism running back Jacob Hester took at Louisiana State University (LSU) in 2007 from predominately Black defenses, who questioned why he wasn't playing at the Air Force Academy. Just look at the criticism Peyton Hillis took in 2010 from predominately Black defenses in the NF, even as he ran over, around and through them on his way to being the first white running back to run for more than 1,000 yards in a season in 20 seasons. 

Draft analysts questioned whether Toby Gerhart could succeed as a running back in the NFL before the 2010 draft (he would picked by Minnesota), largely due to The Standard being applied to his being a white running back.

One has to wonder how many white players coming out of high school, who excelled at running back, wide receiver, corner back or safety were switched to play another position - or just weren't recruited - because of The Standard being applied and the belief that white kids aren't fast enough (blessed with enough speed) to compete for the big time conference teams.

Enter Southern Methodist University (SMU) white running back Zach Line. In 2010, he nearly ran for 1500 yards, challenging Eric Dickerson's single-season rushing record at the school. In a game against Northwestern State on September 18, 2011, he broke the SMU record for touchdowns in a game. He's in the top ten in rushing yards for the season (and the nation's scoring leader) thus far in the Football Bowl Championship (FBS) classification, after scoring three more touchdowns and tallying 136 yards rushing in a 42-0 blitz of Memphis today.

And he's done all of this despite being recruited to play linebacker at SMU, after putting up huge numbers in high school as a running back. No school wanted him to play running back for them in college (after all, he's one of those hundred's of white running backs Tom Lemming said that doesn't get the chance to play college ball because of The Standard).

Here's what the Memphis Commercial Appeal wrote about Zach Line:

He was recruited to SMU to play linebacker, a position at which he excelled during a standout prep career in Oxford, Mich.

As he prepares for Saturday's Conference USA game against the University of Memphis at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, Zach Line's objective is to punish linebackers who obstruct his well-worn path to the end zone.

Line is SMU's unlikely star, a 6-1, 230-pound running back who held no scholarship offers from Football Bowl Subdivision programs out of Oxford High, but who enters Saturday's game tied for the national lead in scoring (16 points per game) and atop C-USA in rushing (109 yards per game).

''He's a big bruiser back, but he has enough agility and speed to punish you,'' said Tiger co-defensive coordinator Galen Scott. ''And he's averaging six yards a carry. He's good at what he does and they're good up front.''

Even though he has eight touchdowns in three games -- including a school-record five in last week's 40-7 win over Northwestern State -- Line isn't in the midst of a breakout season. That was last fall when Line earned first-team All C-USA honors by rushing for 1,494 yards, the second-highest total in SMU history and trailing former Mustang and NFL great Eric Dickerson.

It's been an ideal marriage between Line and SMU, one arranged by Bill Keenist, the Detroit Lions' senior vice president of communications. Keenist's son played with Line in high school and Keenist sent a DVD of Line's highlights to SMU coach June Jones, a former quarterbacks coach for the Lions.

Jones had every intention of playing Line at linebacker, where he had 154 tackles, eight forced fumbles and four fumble recoveries as a high school senior.

''They recruited me as a linebacker, but on the first day of spring ball (in 2009) they moved me to running back,'' Line said. ''They told me they needed somebody at running back.

''I had put my running highlights on my (high school DVD) so I think they knew I could play a little bit. I was a pretty good blocker and I think my wrestling background helped me become a blocker.''

Line was used mostly as a short-yardage back as a freshman and ended his first season with 189 yards. Last year, he started 12 of 14 games and was largely responsible for SMU's first West Division title and its first back-to-back bowl appearances in 25 years. Line's rushing total was the most ever by a Jones-coached running back.

''I think Coach Jones gained some confidence in me last year,'' Line said. ''When the passing game wasn't working, we'd run the ball. We ended up running more than normal (516 pass attempts, 304 rush attempts).
''Teams still have to defend the pass against us. That puts them in a rough spot. We still run four-wide sets every time, we have four receivers who are fast and can get down the field in a hurry. So they have to cover that and then we can hit the draw play or the trap play.''

Mostly a power back in high school, Line said he had to learn ''how to make people miss'' in college.
Line said he had trimmed from 242 pounds to 225 upon making the switch to running back, but has settled into an effective playing weight of 230.

''Zach is a very good inside runner,'' Jones said. ''He's tough with quick steps. And he can block. Zach is a good football player.''

 Running a 4.6 40-yard-dash (the end-all, be-all metric used to gauge speed by college and NFL scouts), Line's only offer for a college scholarship from SMU is indicative of the challenges that white athletes face from college evaluating services like Rivals.com and Scout.com, which dictate which players colleges will try and secure a commitment from. Check out this article from ESPNDallas.com, where you learn Line's father played at Michigan State and he had hoped to line up for the Spartans:

Sophomore Zach Line, a Michigan native, didn't know much at all about SMU when coach June Jones called to offer him a scholarship.

"I had never even been to Dallas," Line said. "I just knew SMU was a small school in a big city."

But Line bought into Jones' plan to rebuild the Mustangs -- and the warmer Texas weather -- and is helping to make bowl trips an annual occurrence on The Hilltop. The 6-1, 225-pound running back collected 1,391 yards on 227 carries to lead Conference USA in rushing in 2010.

He'll be a big factor in the SMU offense in Thursday's Armed Forces Bowl against Army, a program that can appreciate a good, hard-nosed running back.

Line, though, didn't figure he'd be a Mustang as he played his senior year of high school in Michigan. Line thought he'd run around the Michigan State Spartans' backfield, attending his father's alma mater and playing for the school he'd cheered for as a kid. But Michigan State, like the rest of the Football Bowl Subdivision schools, didn't offer Line a scholarship.

That's when Bill Keenist, the Detroit Lions' senior VP of communications, decided to help. Keenist's son had played with Line at Oxford High School, and Keenist was convinced that Line could play at a top college football program. So he sent a DVD of Line's exploits to Jones, a former coach for the Lions who was at Hawaii.

"A week later Coach Jones called and said they wanted me to visit Hawaii, but that was postponed and the next thing I know he's at SMU," Line said. "He called and said I needed to send him another tape because he couldn't take that tape from Hawaii."

Jones saw what he thought was a capable linebacker and recruited Line to SMU. But once Jones and the staff started slotting guys into positions, they moved Line to running back.

"Bill Keenist knew what we were looking for in a running back," Jones said. "We want a guy that can block a guy off the edge and has quickness to run the ball when we hand it to him. Zach will block anybody and he can run."

Last year, as a freshman, Line was the blocking back for Shawnbrey McNeal, who rushed for more than 1,000 yards. Line did find the end zone a handful of times in short-yardage situations, but was primarily a blocker. This season, having more carries has allowed him to show not only his toughness in carrying tacklers for extra yards but also his elusiveness.

"He has real good inside running instincts," Jones said. "We didn't give him the ball enough on some runs last year to really see that. He can run faster than what guys think he can run."

Jones said Line probably runs a 4.6-second 40-yard dash. That speed combined with his powerful frame has made Line a critical part of the offense. He credits losing 17 pounds in the offseason -- dropping from 242 to 225 -- with allowing him to add a little quickness.

"Coming in here, I felt a lot quicker, more shifty," Line said. "I took it upon myself that to do what I wanted to do, I had to lose weight. My quickness is in the box running and side to side. Getting 10 yards in the box is hard to do and that's what they're looking for. I feel like I can do that."

 Before this season is out, don't be surprised if Zach Line breaks Eric Dickerson's rushing yards in a season record at Southern Methodist University. Accomplishing this despite the running back position - in the words of Dickerson - being the chosen position for Black athletes.

Actually, it's a position that white athletes don't get the chance to play that often because of The Standard. When they do, it's hard to hold the line of white athletes not being talented enough to be a feature running back. Even when they were initially recruited to play linebacker, the lone offer they received to play college ball.

Just look at what Zach Line is doing for SMU.

How many white kids out there playing football in high school on Friday nights all across the country, never get the chance to play for their favorite college team (remember, Line wasn't recruited by Michigan State, the school he grew up loving) because of The Standard, the belief that white guys aren't talented enough to compete in a sport that fans and coaches have been conditioned to believe only Black people can excel in? 

CollegeFootballnews.com is Wrong on how to save College Football; Give the "Death Penalty" to the University of Miami

What does a Black dude have in common with Freddie Steinmark?

I just finished reading Courage Beyond the Game: The Freddie Steinmark Story by Jim Dent. Having been made aware of Freddie Steinmark's incredible story by reading Horn, Hogs & Nixon Coming: Texas vs. Arkansas in Dixie's Last Stand, I found myself overcome with emotion after reading Dent's new book.

Steinmark was an undersized white defensive back that played for the University of Texas from 1967 - 1969. He was part of the 1969 National Championship team at Texas, the last all-white university to win that honor. That season, Steinmark would play every game with debilitating pain in his leg but would still lead Texas's defensive secondary as the starting safety.

Only after the "Game of the Century" was played with Arkansas - they also fielded an all-white squad - would Steinmark learn that he had bone cancer and immediately he would have his leg amputated. Within a couple of years, he was dead.

A devout Catholic, Steinmark was studying to be a chemical engineer. Sure he would have liked to make it to the NFL, but with his size he would need different vocational aspirations. Tragically bone cancer would end all of that.

Starting Friday, SBPDL will unveil a radical look at the 2011 college football season. It might surprise you to learn that most of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) football teams didn't integrate until the early 1970s. In this preview (largely of the SEC), you will learn how these universities sport student bodies that are almost all more than 90 percent white, but have football teams that are more than 80 percent Black.

College football was far more popular in the 1950s - 1970s then it is now. The difference between now and then is that every game is televised, Internet message boards and recruiting Web sites allow every minor or major nuance of a program to be tracked and discussed, and salaries for the coaches and revenue generated through television contracts means big time money is flowing into the various athletic conferences aligned with the Bowl Championship Series (BCS).

But perhaps the most obvious difference is the preponderance of Black athletes, the majority of whom have no business being admitted to a major university were it not for the perceived need to recruit Black players to stay competitive. Steve Spurrier, the head coach of South Carolina, nearly quit over academic standards for enrollment to the university that disqualified Black football recruits (calling them student-athletes is disrespectful to all of the actual student-athletes who once played for South Carolina before integration).

It is hard to imagine a major university in 2011 recruiting a white boy like Freddie Steinmark to play defensive back.

An article on former Notre Dame safety (2003-2006) and current Baltimore Raven defensive back Tom Zbikowski contained this nugget of wisdom:

"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."

The character and quality of the student-athletes recruited by major college and universities has changed dramatically since integration and the major programs became majority Black. Whereas college football - it was arguably more popular before integration than after in most places - used to have athletes represent colleges and universities who had aspirations of becoming doctors, lawyers, engineers, scholars, and businessman, now multi-million dollar academic centers are erected on campuses with the hopes of keeping Black players academically eligible.

Never mind how rare it is to find an academically eligible Black athlete ready for college, a large percentage of the Black athletes playing in football stadiums across the nation on beautiful fall afternoons in front of crowds - that consist of 95-99 percent white alumni, fans, or current students - are recruited only for their athletic abilities. Jim Harbaugh, the former coach of Stanford and current San Francisco 49ers coach, refused to coach at Michigan because they recruit "poor academic students."

Harbaugh's teams at Stanford started anywhere from 14 - 17 white players, a far cry from the University of Florida in 2011, who will only start a white quarterback out of the 22 starters. Florida has a student body that is 63 percent white and roughly 8.5 percent of the student body is Black.

The past two college football seasons have seen unprecedented cheating scandals erupt at Auburn University, Ohio State University, University of Oregon, and most recently, the University of Miami. Yahoo sports reporter Charles Robinson broke this story of Thug U - for those unaware, the University of Miami has been known as Thug U since the 1980s when the school started relying on Black thugs to win football games - that shows the out-of-control nature of having Black athletes on a campus where getting a degree is the last thing on their minds:

A University of Miami booster, incarcerated for his role in a $930 million Ponzi scheme, has told Yahoo! Sports he provided thousands of impermissible benefits to at least 72 athletes from 2002 through 2010.

In 100 hours of jailhouse interviews during Yahoo! Sports’ 11-month investigation, Hurricanes booster Nevin Shapiro described a sustained, eight-year run of rampant NCAA rule-breaking, some of it with the knowledge or direct participation of at least seven coaches from the Miami football and basketball programs. At a cost that Shapiro estimates in the millions of dollars, he said his benefits to athletes included but were not limited to cash, prostitutes, entertainment in his multimillion-dollar homes and yacht, paid trips to high-end restaurants and nightclubs, jewelry, bounties for on-field play (including bounties for injuring opposing players), travel and, on one occasion, an abortion.

You can bet that no Freddie Steinmark would be recruited by Thug U (or The U as it has come to be known) to play defensive back in this day and age. The best an individual like Steinmark could hope to do now is play for a Division II or Division III team or try and walk-on at one a school like Miami.

Collegefootballnews.com is the best site for reading about college football and they have had plenty of coverage on the University of Miami scandal. Personally, I think Miami should drop its football program (Sports Illustrated wrote the same thing back in the early 1990s) and schools should go back to recruiting actual student-athletes, cut-down on creating "fake" degrees - management at Georgia Tech and housing at the University of Georgia that the majority of Black players major in - that Black athletes "cluster" in, and stop accepting special admission students.

Well, in a piece called State of the Game 2011: How to Stop the Cheating, one writer at collegefootballnews.com says this:

By Matt Zemek

Go big if you get just one wish from a college sports genie. My “ONE thing” would be to allow football and basketball players (women’s basketball included) to sign with schools as “football” or “basketball” majors with no requirements to study other courses. “Majoring in football” or basketball would involve agents coming to classrooms to talk about financial management and related topics. Representatives from companies in the athletic-industrial complex would provide lectures and courses on media relations, the science of pharmacology, sports medicine, setting up charitable foundations, and other things that would-be professional athletes should be trained to do. Society would benefit from it, and so would the athletes themselves.

Let’s liberate big-ticket athletes who are interested in careers as athletes or sports broadcasters. However, this act of liberation should bring agents – and other people currently in the shadows of college sports – into the bright sunlight of transparency and accountability. Let agents be educators. Train athletes to be athletes not just in terms of the weight room or the practice field, but in terms of the off-field and at-home obligations they might have when they start families and, ultimately, end their playing careers. Such a systemic shift will in one sense strip away the veneer of amateurism, but in another sense, it will renew it: Sports will be a subject of classroom teaching with an ultimate focus on the whole human person’s lifelong goals, hopes and needs. The NCAA currently presides over a system that incentivizes shadowy and secretive behavior. Let’s do something to incentivize transparency and, even more so, holistic education. Yeah, holistic education – what our universities are ostensibly supposed to provide young people in the first place. What a concept, right?

This proposal by Zemek should be laughed at by anyone hoping to maintain some modicum of academic standards at universities and college and, more importantly, maintain the value of the degree that non-athletes will receive by actually studying and receiving a diploma in a legitimate major.

You know how to liberate college football from a lot of the nasty scandals that we see today? Stop recruiting Black athlete-students that For-Profit universities and colleges wouldn't accept. Don't lower standards to allow Black athlete-students with horrible academic transcripts and ACT/SAT scores into the university or college. No more 'oversigning' of players in case a Black athlete fails to academically qualify then another Black athlete can take his place.

Guess what would happen? You'd have your University of Alabama's, University of Oklahoma's, and University of Texas's finding a lot of quality people like Freddie Steinmark again.

And don't get started on how Black kids are from disadvantaged backgrounds. The only reason they are disadvantaged is because their parents (well, since the dad is probably out of the picture) mother got knocked up by some Black dude and left them to be cared for by the state. Plenty of white kids are disadvantaged, but it's in times of recruitment for athletics - most notably football and basketball - that we heart the whining about how some poor Black kid got lousy grades because of a disadvantaged background. Were it not for Section 8 Housing, EBT/Food Stamps, TANF/Welfare, and free lunches at school, how would that Black kid have lived?

Sean and Leigh Anne Roberts Tuohy can't adopt every potential Michael Oher that Black mother's neglect afterbirth (that Black father's don't even care for in the first place). 

The best way to stop the cheating in college football is for National Football League (NFL) teams to start recruiting and training kids when they are in high school like the European soccer teams do with their various academies. Since most Black males don't finish high school, let NFL teams pick off those that do (but have no business in college) and spend a few years developing them both physically and mentally. 


Reading about Freddie Steinmark made me realize what a great country we once were, when college football programs existed, not as a stepping stone to the NFL, but as institutions of pride for entire regions. Strange that when the schools were all-white, actual student-athletes were recruited who would go on to have careers in vocations completely unrelated to football.


Castefootball.us - every year - compiles the racial breakdown of the starting lineups for the major college football programs. It is exhausting work, but it is interesting to see patterns emerge. The SEC has fanbase's and alumni support that are overwhelmingly white, but football programs that start anywhere from one white player (at the University of Florida) to two white players (the University of Georgia) out of 22 players.

Which teams start the most white players?

1-Boise State-16

2-Air Force, Colorado, Northwestern, Wyoming-15

6-Ball State, BYU, Nebraska, Rice, Stanford, Wisconsin-14

12-Army, Boston College, Washington State-13

15-Kent State, Michigan State, Navy, Ohio, Ohio State, San Diego State-12

Notice any patterns? Not one of those schools is in the south or the SEC. One of the primary reasons for this is because southern schools have no problem accepting and recruiting academically challenged Black athletes. The Wall Street Journal reported this back in 2008:

The historical knock on SEC schools among rivals is that their success is predicated on a willingness to stockpile great players by violating NCAA rules on recruiting and athlete benefits. While some of the sanctions have been minor, every SEC school but Vanderbilt has been on probation in the last 25 years.

Another charge is that lower academic standards give SEC teams an advantage in recruiting. Just three SEC schools -- Vanderbilt, Florida and Georgia -- were cited among the top 80 universities in U.S. News & World Report's 2009 college rankings, while all 11 members of the Big Ten were in the top 80. Last year, in a statement on that conference's Web site, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany wrote: "I love speed and the SEC has great speed ... but there are appropriate balances when mixing academics and athletics." Mr. Delany declined to comment for this story.

SEC commissioner Mike Slive says the SEC has made a point of cleaning up the practices that have led to NCAA sanctions, and that the academic performance of its athletes has improved and all SEC schools are in compliance with the NCAA's new academic guidelines for athletes. Because the SEC's schools are located in a economically challenged region, Mr. Slive says, they serve a different mission -- to provide opportunity. "There are differences in elementary and secondary-school systems in this part of the country," he says.

There was a time when schools like Auburn, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, Ole Miss, Clemson, Georgia Tech, UGA and Tennessee didn't recruit Black players. They still won games and built up traditions without them and this was as late as 1972.

Schools from other regions - the University of Southern California and Michigan State University - would recruit Black players from the south that the SEC schools passed on recruiting. Here's an article on Michigan State's Blackness in a 1966 game against Notre Dame:

Before top-ranked Notre Dame played second-ranked Michigan State University (MSU) in November 1966, the media built up the contest as "the game of the century." It was the first time in college-football history that the top two teams would meet so late in the season. Millions of college-football fans anticipated what they hoped would be "the greatest battle since Hector fought Achilles." (1) Equally remarkable was the racial makeup of each team: Michigan State would start twelve black players while Notre Dame had only one. By 1966, MSU fielded so many black players that the team was often compared to those of Historically Black Colleges and Universities like Grambling, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical, and Morgan State. (2) For Michigan State star player Charles "Bubba" Smith, a black Texas native who had never played in an integrated stadium until he went to college, this would be the pinnacle of his college career. If Smith symbolized Michigan State football, Jim Lynch, a white Irish-Catholic Ohioan and All-American linebacker, epitomized the kind of player for whom Notre Dame fans were used to cheering. At a pep rally two days before the game, on Notre Dame's pristine campus in South Bend, Indiana, forty-five hundred students and fans flooded the old field house as the marching band played the school's fight song. With chants of "cheer, cheer for Old Notre Dame" ringing from the rafters, the overwhelmingly white male crowd hanged Bubba Smith in effigy next to a sign that read "LYNCH 'EM." (3)

Coaches and athletes were often hanged in effigy by the fans and students of opposing schools, but "hanging" Smith next to a sign that said lynch 'em suggested some mixture of insensitivity and outfight racial bias at Notre Dame. Two years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and nearly twenty years after Jackie Robinson broke major-league baseball's color barrier, the "dummy in the green uniform with a number 95" represented not only Bubba Smith but a rejection of racial equality/Well into the twentieth century lynching had expressed and enforced white supremacy in the South, and the powerful memory of mob rule was reinforced for African Americans in the 1960s when their churches were bombed, or they were clubbed and hosed by police or stoned by white crowds. Notre Dame's rally was emblematic of a dominant white sports culture that resisted integration.

The racial makeup of each school's football team illustrates the uneven progress of the civil fights movement. On one end of the spectrum, Notre Dame represented how hard blacks had to struggle to move beyond token athletic integration at predominantly white institutions. At the other end, Michigan State's squad was an example of what a fully integrated team might look like. While many northern football programs firmly believed that it would be dangerous to play more blacks than whites, in 1966 Michigan State's defense started eight black players and three whites. The offensive backfield started two black running backs and a black quarterback, and the team's two captains were black. In an era that accepted without question the myths that teams could not win by playing more blacks than whites and that black players did not have the intelligence to handle leadership positions, Michigan State's 1965 and 1966 football teams were unlike any others in the prior history of integrated college football.

Why more schools from around the country don't recruit the talented white players from the suburbs of Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Washington D.C., Nashville, Orlando, Tampa, etc., is beyond me, but Tom Lemming did allude to the reasons above when he talked about white defensive backs, tail backs and receivers in high school. The SEC only wants white kids to enroll as students; leave the football to the Black kids.

And to think, we were once a country that produced heroes like Freddie Steinmark.

It's time for major colleges to start recruiting players like him again. That is how you save college football.