There is No Place for the Race Card in Sports
Written by B-Dub, Thursday November 11 2010
Apparently the national media now thinks that Donovan McNabb's benching was racially motivated. As someone who watched every pass of McNabb's 11-year career with the Philadelphia Eagles, I can honestly say that race had nothing to do with it. McNabb just isn't as great as everybody thinks he is and Mike Shanahan realizes that he got duped by the Eagles in that Easter Sunday trade.
Oh sure there is plenty of racism in America today. I certainly can't deny that fact. It's unfortunate that people of all races can be so small-minded. But I don't think there is racism in American professional sports leagues.
There are athletes in American sports from almost every single nationality around the globe. The NBA leads the way with the latest wave of European players in that league. There are even plenty of "minority" owners in sports today. Yes, the vast majority of American sports franchise owners are rich white guys, but that doesn't mean sports leagues are racist. Anybody with the money can buy a franchise.
As for the athletes themselves, I don't see them as black or white or whatever. I see all athletes as green. As in the color of money. Athletes are all just a bunch of mercenaries, available to the highest bidder. There is nothing wrong with that, but let's not pretend that there is some nefarious movement to keep African American athletes down. The facts clearly refute such a ridiculous argument.
The very idea that there is widespread racism in sports today is absurd. If there was racism in sports, then why are there so many minorities playing professional sports these days? And why are some of them the highest paid athletes on the planet.
The last time I checked Alex Rodriquez wasn't a white guy and he makes more per season than anyone else in professional team sports. Before he was incarcerated, Michael Vick signed the most lucrative contract in the history of the NFL. Now that he's starting with the Eagles, he is in line to sign another mega-contract after this season when he becomes a free agent. And the kicker there is that I believe he will sign with his hometown Washington Redskins. That would be the very same Washington Redskins coached by Mike Shanahan who is being vilified for his explanation for benching McNabb.
To review, Shanahan at first said that McNabb didn't know the two-minute offense as well as backup Rex Grossman. That is both true and absurd all at the same time. Obviously Grossman knows the offense better because he was in the same offense the previous season with offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan in Houston. But it is absurd to think that Donovan McNabb isn't intelligent enough to grasp the offense in the six months that he has been in Washington. McNabb played in a similar West-Coast offense his entire professional career in Philly. McNabb may be annoying, arrogant, passive-aggressive and maybe even delusional, but he is definitely not stupid.
Being mindful that some may think that he was promoting a stereotype about black quarterbacks, Shanahan changed his story in his day-after press conference, saying that he took out McNabb because of "cardiovascular" issues. That means that within a span of 24 hours Shanahan seemingly called McNabb "stupid" and "fat". If McNabb got drunk we could call him "Flounder" from "Animal House". "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son."
Then last week someone inside the team told ESPN's Chris Mortensen that the Shanahans had to cut their playbook in half for McNabb. That would bring us right back to "stupid". And that is where the national media is claiming that Shanahan is guilty of racial stereotyping. Washington Post writer John Feinstein even accused Shanahan of "racial coding" and called for the coach to be fired.
That is preposterous. As I said, I watched McNabb for the first 11 years of his career in Philadelphia. I don't find it at all shocking that Shanahan would think that another quarterback would give him the best chance to win a game late in the 4th quarter in the hurry-up offense. I lived through Super Bowl XXXIX, where McNabb took seven minutes to run a hurry-up offense in the fourth quarter. Players in the huddle claimed that McNabb either threw up or was out of breath during that elongated TD drive. Either way, that sounds pretty similar to what Shanahan said, doesn't it?
As for the race card that the media is now trying to put on this situation, I say shame on them. Playing the race card is what lazy or stupid people do when they don't have anything intelligent to say. I saw one idiot in the media point to that fact that Shanahan has never had an African American starting QB before McNabb as evidence of his racial bias. Oh please. In his 14 years in Denver his starting quarterbacks were Brian Griese, Jake Plummer, Jay Cutler and some guy named Elway. Was he supposed to go out and sign Kordell Stewart or something?
I don't think Mike or Kyle Shanahan are racist. They just found out what I've been saying for years; that Donovan McNabb is a very good quarterback, but not a championship quarterback who comes through in the clutch.
And this isn't the first time that McNabb has been in the middle of a racial controversy cooked up by the national media. How could anyone forget about the Rush Limbaugh incident? Or when the leader of the Philadelphia NAACP, J. Whyatt Mondesire basically said McNabb wasn't black enough, in criticizing him. Or the whole "Black-on-black crime" foolishness that McNabb concocted when he had a little schoolgirl fight with T.O.
To McNabb's credit, he is not getting sucked into this controversy.....yet. He knows he can't really say anything because he's a free agent after the season and he wants nothing more than to sign with his hometown Arizona Cardinals. I'm sure he'll eventually say something stupid though. He always plays the "pity card" himself.
And before any of you call me a racist, you might want to consider that I have season tickets for the Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles currently have Michael Vick at quarterback and have had Donovan McNabb, Rodney Peete and Randall Cunningham manning the position over the years. That means that the Eagles have had an African American quarterback for more seasons than they've had a white quarterback during my lifetime. I cheered for each of them because they were Eagles. I bleed Green, not black or white.
That doesn't mean that the Eagles franchise was trying to be trailblazers or social activists. It just means that they thought that the best athletes for the job happened to be minorities. If you think an organization or coach would not play an athlete because of the color of their skin then you obviously don't understand the money involved in professional sports. Money rules everything in sports.
Some of the most recognizable figures in the history of sports are minorities. Muhammed Ali, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods. The list goes on and on, but my point is simple. There is no racism in professional sports leagues in America. If they were, then the leagues wouldn't be racially integrated from top to bottom.
I don't find it odd that the Shanahans realized that McNabb isn't the QB that the national media thinks he is. What I really find odd is that it took Eagles coach Andy Reid 11 years to realize that McNabb wasn't a championship QB. If you don't think Reid eventually came to that conclusion, then explain to me why he traded McNabb within the division when he could have easily shipped him off to Buffalo or Oakland.
McNabb isn't a leader on or off the field and Shanahan knows it. That's the reason McNabb got benched, not because of some racial bias. All you need to know about how Shanahan feels about McNabb's ability is to look at the fact that the Redskins haven't made any effort to resign him for next season.
The people who believe that McNabb's benching was racial motivated are clueless. If you don't believe me then maybe you'll believe Charles Barkley who was interviewed on the Philadelphia ESPN radio station today and said that anyone who thinks McNabb's benching was racially motivated is "an idiot."
Playing the race card is a cheap ploy by "idiots" who are just looking for a way to create controversy. And I don't think there is any place for the race card in sports. Like I said, professional athletes are all green, the color of money.
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B-Dub, after mentioning Peete, McNabb, Cunningham, and Vick as former/current Eagles quarterbacks, you said the organization, "thought that the best athletes for the job happened to be minorities." Why the word athlete? Why not the best quarterback? You're a racist! Just kidding, B-Dub. I still believe there is racism in pro sports, but it's institutionalized. It doesn't affect the construction of teams, but there are some ignorant people in organizations or covering pro sports. Every once and a while we'll hear some stupid idiot say something they must apologize for. But these people are very rare, thankfully. As for Shannahan vs. McNabb, that racism charge is new to me and doesn't belong in this conversation. People always want to stir up controversey. The P.C. crowd is killing me nowadays.