One of my favorite all time athletes was Doug Williams. The reason is Williams exploded the myth that African American quarterbacks could not be winning quarterbacks. Williams was not the first black NFL quarterback. Apparently, the aptly named Willie Thrower was the first African American to start for an NFL team (PDF), the Chicago Bears. But Williams was the first highly touted black quarterback, drafted in the first round by the Tampa Bay Bucs in 1978.
Williams led the Bucs to the NFC championship game, but left after then Bucs owner Hugh Culverhouse refused to pay Williams a market rate for starting QBs in the NFL:
[D]uring his tenure in Tampa, Williams was only paid $120,000 a year—far and away the lowest salary for a starting quarterback in the league, and behind 12 backups. After the 1982 season, Williams asked for a $600,000 contract. Bucs owner Hugh Culverhouse refused to budge from his initial offer of $400,000 despite protests from coach John McKay. While Culverhouse's offer was still more than triple Williams' previous salary, he would have still been among the lowest-paid starters in the league.
Williams left the Bucs and joined the USFL. He later returned to the NFL to make history, becoming the first (and to date only) African American QB to lead his team to victory in Super Bowl XXII over the Denver Broncos, 42-10. I believe that Williams' achievement was a watershed event, doing great work to break the back of the racist idea that African Americans could not play quarterback.
Another black QB who suffered under this racist notion was Warren Moon, the Hall of Fame QB who could not even get a chance in the NFL when he came out of the University of Washington. After years of excellence in the CFL, Moon joined the Houston Oilers (now Tennessee Titans) and became, as I mentioned, a Hall of Famer.
Fast forward to the present. In the Spring, Auburn QB Cam Newton had just led his team to the college football national championship and was, by a mile, the best player in college football and, in my view, the best prospect available for the NFL draft. But Newton had his detractors. Moon, no doubt remembering his own treatment, deemed the criticism racist:
"A lot of the criticism he's receiving is unfortunate and racially based," Moon told CBS Sports. "I thought we were all past this. I don't see other quarterbacks in the draft being criticized by the media or fans about their smile or called a phony. "He's being held to different standards from white quarterbacks. I thought we were past all this stuff about African-American quarterbacks, but I guess we're not."
The Carolina Panthers chose Newton with the first pick ion the 2011 NFL draft, despite the naysayers. After Newton's spectacular start in this NFL season, Moon stuck by his guns:
"Some of the criticism was racial... I started to feel the same way I felt back in 1978 coming out of college when guys were saying I was too small and my arm wasn't strong enough. Some of the same type of blind criticism was being laid on Cam.''
My own view is that Moon is right. I think this is even more apparent when you consider how some of the criticism was not about Newton's play but rather on his supposed "attitude." Like Moon, I was and am rooting for Cam to prove the doubters wrong.
But in some respects, this is a two way street when it comes to sports. At other positions, it is the white athlete who is stereotyped as lacking the athletic skills. And some racists, in order to propel their racist notions regarding intelligence and race, adopt the notion of innate African American athletic superiority. The paucity of white players at the skill positions, other than QB, is also, in my opinion, partially a consequence of racist assumptions.
And I think this transcends football. Before the European and South American influx, the notion of a skilled and athletic white basketball player was considered quaint as well. Also consider the emergence of the Eastern European fighter in boxing. It is true that United States caucasians in general do not pursue athletics in the same way as non-whites. But I do not accept that this is a question of innate ability, but rather a question of societal factors.
In any event, a topic for discussion. If you want to discuss something else, feel free. Remember the group rules.