The discouragement to play football in the white community has been going on for a while. Those players just aren't there in numbers to nurture and select from anymore. They are in somewhat safer soccer and lacrosse. I personally watched a handful of (white) moms channel their sons into other sports after one injury. In the old days, they'd have gone along and expected them to take the lumps.
I had a concussion making a tackle on a punt return when I was a junior in high school. I was taken out of the game. But I was back at practice on Monday. No concussion protocol in those days.
I think the wave of fewer kids caused people to sit up and take notice of things like concussion protocol... and other ways to save the one or two kids that anyone seems to have anymore.
Agree. Baseball offers a longer and less injury prone career if your son is athletic enough, plus each team can have up to 14 pitchers whereas most NFL teams have 3 QBs on their roster if throwing is your primary skill.
Pro football goes through phases and right now the quarterback who can run and throw is highly valued. Lamar Jackson is revolutionary and other teams are trying to duplicate Jackson's successful run. When Jackson was originally picked, it was expected that he would be some sort of hybrid. Instead, he became one of the finest players in the game.
Nearly twenty years ago, the Patriots made a virtually unnoticed trade for a white, pint-sized spare receiver and kick returner named Wes Welker. Welker revolutionized the position of slot receiver. Other teams also tried to make slot receivers stars but none succeeded like Welker. Today, the slot receiver is pretty much phased out of football. Perhaps that's because there are no Tom Bradys around who have the discipline to make an eight yard hitch throw.
Football has changed radically in the fifty-five years I've followed it. The first Super Bowl I can remember is Super Bowl 3, Joe Namath's claim to fame. The New York Jets and the Baltimore Colts were three-quarters white. Today's NFL is three-quarters black. I remember the position of nickel back was adopted by George Allen when he'd replace the middle linebacker with a defensive back on third downs. Nowadays, teams often have seven defensive backs in the game. Allen was one of the first coaches who put great value in special teams. Today, the kickoff has been de-emphasized because of the fear of injuries. Fullbacks used to be vital to an offense. Think of Jim Brown and Jim Taylor. Now the fullback position is almost obsolete and most teams do not have a fullback on their roster. Teams that have fullbacks rarely have them run the ball.
Perhaps the trend towards dual-threat QBs is also driven by the increasing size and mobility of defensive linemen. They not only are 300+ pounds…they can jump and get their hands up around 10 feet. Each year they are faster and jump higher. Running away from them is a good idea. I’ve noticed that many fast humans are darker-hued than me.
When William Perry was drafted at 315 pounds he was considered by many a wasted draft pick. I stopped paying attention to football for decades. Is 315 now standard? Amazing what you can do with performance enhancing drugs these days. Perry was natty.
315 pounds is probably slightly light for an interior defensive lineman. I'm old enough to remember the Redskins trading for the giant interior lineman Dave Butz, 280 pounds. Butz would be small today.
Quarterback has always been considered the most cerebral position and for as long as I can remember it has been a White guy so consistently that non-White QBs were noteworthy. You could get away with a running QB in high school where a highly skilled player simply ran past the defenders, and it was doable in college. It is out of vogue but back in the day lots of college teams ran the option which required a reasonably athletic QB.
It seems that the league desperately wants black QBs for, much as I hate the term, "woke" reasons. Rules to protect QBs, especially when they are running, has made it possible for the dual-threat QB to start to dominate in the league unlike days of yore when QBs stood in the pocket, read the coverage and passed.
It helps black quarterbacks that coaches have called the plays for over forty years. They don't have to think, they only have to react to pre-planned plays. Could you imagine Sid Luckman, Bart Starr or Johnny Unitas having their coaches calling their plays? Ridiculous.
> It seems that the league desperately wants black QBs for, much as I hate the term, "woke" reasons.
Rush Limbaugh got fired from ESPN 20 years ago for saying exactly this, although the company kept his radio show which was broadcast on WABC at the time
I believe I was about 10 years old when I attended my first NFL game at the Los Angeles Coliseum. A neighbor friend's father took us, my father had no interest in football and I really hadn't followed football as a fan, but we threw a football in the street quite a bit.
Anyway, during the night game I thought there was a religious revival happening in the upper stands. This guy kept on yelling "Gabriel, Gabriel". I think maybe passing the Jesus Saves sign off the Harbor on the way in provided inspiration.
-- Donovan McNabb and the "Inevitable Black Quarterback of the Future" phenomenon, circa mid-2000s ---
September 2003: Rush Limbaugh was fired unceremoniously from ESPN after being accused of anti-Black racism; or, more precisely, for belittling the (already-by-then) Inevitable Black Quarterback phenomenon:
.
Quote:
_______________
"I[W]hat we've had here [with the positive coverage of Black quarterback Donovan McNabb] is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well," Limbaugh said on Sunday's [ESPN] show. "There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team." [...] Limbaugh has denied the comments he made on the show were racially motivated..." /// (ESPN, "Limbaugh resigns from ESPN's NFL pregame show," Oct. 2, 2003).
________________
.
COMMENT: Historians of Wokeness, please take note of this, being from 2003, around fifteen years before this kind of thing is supposed to have been possible in the 2010s-centric Rise-of-Wokeness narratives I have heard much in the 2020s. Note not only that he was fired for these tame comments but that the ESPN staff writer, in 2003, including this strange phrase "Limbaugh denied that the comments were racially motivated" (what does THAT mean?).
Donovan McNabb has a career QB rating of 85.6. As of today that puts him at No.52 all-time among highly active quarterbacks (those with 1500+ NFL-career pass-attempts). There are 214 total qualifying quarterbacks on the list. This means McNabb is at about the 25th-percentile of quarterbacks. Above average; "great" is a stretch. Was Donovan McNabb over-hyped: Signs point to 'Yes.'
There are 12 NFL QBs who have completed their careers and have all-time QB ratings above 90, an imperfect but at least data-based listing of the "greats." These are:
- Aaron Rodgers (see **)
- Drew Brees,
- Tom Brady,
- Tony Romo,
- Steve Young,
- Peyton Manning,
- Philip Rivers,
- Kurt Warner,
- Matt Ryan,
- Ben Roethlisberger,
- Joe Montana,
- Chad Pennington.
(All the above are White. QB rating has been increasing over time, so a 2000s QB with an 85 rating might be considered the same as a 1980s with an 80 rating. Johnny Unitas, active late 1950s to early 1970s, had a lifetime 78 but was a top-tier QB in his time; so it's probably best to make these comparisons with similar-era players.)
**: Aaron Rodgers is still active in 2024. I include him because there is statistically no realistic way that his lifetime average QB rating drops below 90. He is still playing now at age 41 and will presumably soon retire. He holds the all-time No.1 slot right now, with a QB rating of 103. There is no realistic way he falls below 90, between now and whenever he does retire, so he deserves to be on the list of these top-twelve.
Rush had balls. He got fired for that. But it needed to be said.
McNabb was overrated by a lot. His lazy performance in the Super Bowl v. the Patriots, when he really needed to be hustling in a hurry up and had a chance to catch up, really showed what kind of weak leader and mediocre QB he was.
-- The notorious sexualized commercial involving NFL player Terrell Owens and a White woman in 2004 and the Inevitable Black Quarterback phenomenon --
In 2004, a year after Rush Limbaugh was fired from ESPN for anti-Black racism (see my comment at: https://www.stevesailer.net/p/the-rise-of-the-nfl-quarterblacks/comment/82530150), another Black NFL player of the day, Terrell Owens, was the center of a salacious controversy involving Big Media interests. I believe it "politically" overlaps considerably with the "Inevitable Black Quarterback of the Future" phenomenon (which was being promoted so heavily around the time but far from being a reality).
The controversy: Terrell Owens (a wide receiver, not a quarterback; but definitely Black) was placed in a major tv-commercial which contained highly sexually suggestive material involving him and a famous White woman. This was November 2004.
The overtly sexual and "interracial" contents of this instantly-notorious commercial may have been inspired by the Rush Limbaugh controversy of 2003, when Limbaugh, in thirty seconds of commentary, at once supposedly belittled Black players AND insinuated a media conspiracy to promote unqualified Blacks over Whites and was banned from ESPN's airwaves for his trouble. Terrell Owens and (the supposedly racially maligned) Donovan McNabb were on the same team at the time (Philadelphia Eagles). Lessons had to be driven home; Rush Limbaugh could not be allowed to "encourage the others" (to anglicize a phrase Steve Sailer likes to use).
The racial-sexual message of the Terrell Owens commercial of 2003 shocked millions who saw it on "Monday Night Football." It drew ire, too, from the pen of Sam Francis (published at VDare at the time, along with Steve Sailer and others). Most conservatives said they disapproved of the commercial for its being so openly sexual and shown on tv. Sam Francis said: No, the main problem is that it's sexualized plus racialized, it amounts to a political attack on Whites reminiscent of some sort of demoralization propaganda or maybe something bizarre out of Weimar (loosely paraphrasing).
Sam Francis had much reason to be proud of his body of work as of 2004, despite his life-ban from conservatism for Racism. He still had a few paper-newspapers running his column in those waning weeks of 2004. But after he attacked the Terrell Owens commercial head-on, the ADL and SPLC and such people denounced him in their most-hysterical terms yet. They succeeded in getting the last of his 'syndication' newspapers to axe him.
Sam Francis who was in poor health and died a few months after the commercial controversy. This concerted attack on him by the usual political thugs out there may have hastened his death. (VDare is now inaccessible, but this is a preserved copy of that incendiary column, one of Sam Francis' last: https://www.unz.com/sfrancis/morality-not-the-only-target-on-monday-night-football/).
When I was a teen I watched football with my sports-crazed brothers. There was a non-black wide receiver on the team and the announcers would refer to him as a "possession receiver". We referred to that position, using the term they were obviously avoiding, "white receiver".
Also if you slightly change the emphasis when you say "head coach" it's hilarious.
The top 3 rated quarterbacks in the incoming draft class are black. For what it is worth, I think Shedeur Sanders will be a bust, unlike his teammate Travis Hunter at WR. I have doubts Cam Ward and Jalen Milroe will have great success either. Sanders especially does not seem to be an accurate enough passer to make it in the NFL. If Carson Beck and Quinn Ewers outperform them as more traditional QBs it could start the swing evaluation of the position back the other way.
How many of these are 2nd and 3rd generation high-level football players? As you've pointed out, pro sports are becoming legacy systems where many superstars are the sons of previous players. Dad combines his athletic genes with his some knowledge about how to train for a high level and deal with high level distractions with a good mother and breeds a son with athletic talent who is ready for prime time, e.g. Stephen Curry, Peyton & Eli Manning, etc.
Wouldn't be surprised if many of these mulatto guys' Dads were black position players at D1/pro level but had some brains and morality, didn't waste their money, were well-spoken, and married a white girl and stayed married long enough to give the kid a two-family household with some coaching. In other words, these are not the sons of Terrell Owens's types, more the sons of Rosey Griers.
> ESPN has been tracking QuarterBack Rating since 2006
While all stats are contrived to one degree or another, QBR is especially so. The NFL uses Passer Rating and you can go back to the beginning of the NFL itself to find the leaders each year. The first black QB to lead the NFL in Passer Rating was Randall Cunningham of the Minnesota Vikings in 1998. This was well after the prime of his career with the Philadelphia Eagles where he was known as a running quarterback. In 1998 the next-best black quarterback was Charlie Batch of the Detroit Lions at 12.
Soccer is most popular outside the US where there is no one-drop rule and fuzzier racial boundaries. Black players are clearly over represented (2x-4x) in top European leagues.
Aside from native whites, big European clubs have players of the following types:
-African born or first-generation west Africans
-Mixed race European children. Real Madrid’s Mbappé has an Algerian mother and a Congolese father
-Latin American players who are pretty even along the whole colour spectrum
-players with one black grandparent - Chelsea’s standout midfielder Cole Palmer has a grandparent from St Kitts
I predict the grandparent cohort will rise quite a bit. Blacks and whites (add in East Asians) in Europe don’t really have social structures in place to enforce endogamy and tend to blend in after two generations.
Soccer isn’t nearly as specialised as gridiron and players of all ancestries can be found in all positions. Forwards tend to be a bit more black on average (more explosive speed) with defenders a bit less. Goalkeepers do tend to be the most white.
> In 2024, Mahomes has been worse than usual, ranking only 11th on the ESPN QBR rating. Yet the Kansas City Chiefs are 13-1 in won-loss.
The Chiefs won again today, improving their record to 14-1; if they can split the last two games of the season at Pittsburgh and Denver they will earn the AFC's first-round bye. Now the Chiefs are on nationally almost every week and it's amazing that Mahomes is doing it this year with smoke and mirrors; the Chiefs are NOT a dominant team this year despite their record.
Now those of a more cynical bent will point out that almost every close call and the most impactful penalties are called in favor of the Chiefs. I don't have a dog in the fight but it certainly seems like the Chiefs are using all nine of their lives this year. They also got the benefit of playing the 49ers and the NFC South as their 5 interconference games, all of whom are down this year. I am personally rooting for a Lions/Bills Super Bowl this year, as it will be the first one since Giants/Broncos where neither team had won before.
The rule changes that make it hard to do brutal hits to QBs (and really all other players) in the post-concussion NFL help running quarterbacks a lot. A running QB in the NFL can't outrun most defenders like he did in college (the college-pro gap is a big step), and so for decades the running QB faced a very hungry, very fast, very vicious defense wanting literal blood.
In the 1970s the evil (and I mean actually evil) Jack Tatum would hit most guys in ways that today are literally illegal; he paralyzed poor Darryl Stingley and never apologized for it. If the NFL suddenly time warped to the 1970s and Jack Tatum was around he would have murder board of all the current-day running QB's he'd kiled or paralyzed or permanently injured.
The discouragement to play football in the white community has been going on for a while. Those players just aren't there in numbers to nurture and select from anymore. They are in somewhat safer soccer and lacrosse. I personally watched a handful of (white) moms channel their sons into other sports after one injury. In the old days, they'd have gone along and expected them to take the lumps.
I had a concussion making a tackle on a punt return when I was a junior in high school. I was taken out of the game. But I was back at practice on Monday. No concussion protocol in those days.
I think the wave of fewer kids caused people to sit up and take notice of things like concussion protocol... and other ways to save the one or two kids that anyone seems to have anymore.
There are more concussions in soccer.
Agree. Baseball offers a longer and less injury prone career if your son is athletic enough, plus each team can have up to 14 pitchers whereas most NFL teams have 3 QBs on their roster if throwing is your primary skill.
The irony of you saying this is that Mahomes' father pitched in MLB for 11 seasons, albeit to a negative WAR
I know. Both Mahomes and Murray were drafted but thr allure of being the man in the NFL is pretty strong.
Pro football goes through phases and right now the quarterback who can run and throw is highly valued. Lamar Jackson is revolutionary and other teams are trying to duplicate Jackson's successful run. When Jackson was originally picked, it was expected that he would be some sort of hybrid. Instead, he became one of the finest players in the game.
Nearly twenty years ago, the Patriots made a virtually unnoticed trade for a white, pint-sized spare receiver and kick returner named Wes Welker. Welker revolutionized the position of slot receiver. Other teams also tried to make slot receivers stars but none succeeded like Welker. Today, the slot receiver is pretty much phased out of football. Perhaps that's because there are no Tom Bradys around who have the discipline to make an eight yard hitch throw.
Football has changed radically in the fifty-five years I've followed it. The first Super Bowl I can remember is Super Bowl 3, Joe Namath's claim to fame. The New York Jets and the Baltimore Colts were three-quarters white. Today's NFL is three-quarters black. I remember the position of nickel back was adopted by George Allen when he'd replace the middle linebacker with a defensive back on third downs. Nowadays, teams often have seven defensive backs in the game. Allen was one of the first coaches who put great value in special teams. Today, the kickoff has been de-emphasized because of the fear of injuries. Fullbacks used to be vital to an offense. Think of Jim Brown and Jim Taylor. Now the fullback position is almost obsolete and most teams do not have a fullback on their roster. Teams that have fullbacks rarely have them run the ball.
Perhaps the trend towards dual-threat QBs is also driven by the increasing size and mobility of defensive linemen. They not only are 300+ pounds…they can jump and get their hands up around 10 feet. Each year they are faster and jump higher. Running away from them is a good idea. I’ve noticed that many fast humans are darker-hued than me.
When William Perry was drafted at 315 pounds he was considered by many a wasted draft pick. I stopped paying attention to football for decades. Is 315 now standard? Amazing what you can do with performance enhancing drugs these days. Perry was natty.
315 pounds is probably slightly light for an interior defensive lineman. I'm old enough to remember the Redskins trading for the giant interior lineman Dave Butz, 280 pounds. Butz would be small today.
Didn't his brother Seymour write "The View from Under the Stands?"
If 1985 William Perry came into the NFL now, his nickname would be Bill
Ha!
Quarterback has always been considered the most cerebral position and for as long as I can remember it has been a White guy so consistently that non-White QBs were noteworthy. You could get away with a running QB in high school where a highly skilled player simply ran past the defenders, and it was doable in college. It is out of vogue but back in the day lots of college teams ran the option which required a reasonably athletic QB.
It seems that the league desperately wants black QBs for, much as I hate the term, "woke" reasons. Rules to protect QBs, especially when they are running, has made it possible for the dual-threat QB to start to dominate in the league unlike days of yore when QBs stood in the pocket, read the coverage and passed.
It helps black quarterbacks that coaches have called the plays for over forty years. They don't have to think, they only have to react to pre-planned plays. Could you imagine Sid Luckman, Bart Starr or Johnny Unitas having their coaches calling their plays? Ridiculous.
> It seems that the league desperately wants black QBs for, much as I hate the term, "woke" reasons.
Rush Limbaugh got fired from ESPN 20 years ago for saying exactly this, although the company kept his radio show which was broadcast on WABC at the time
I believe I was about 10 years old when I attended my first NFL game at the Los Angeles Coliseum. A neighbor friend's father took us, my father had no interest in football and I really hadn't followed football as a fan, but we threw a football in the street quite a bit.
Anyway, during the night game I thought there was a religious revival happening in the upper stands. This guy kept on yelling "Gabriel, Gabriel". I think maybe passing the Jesus Saves sign off the Harbor on the way in provided inspiration.
-- Donovan McNabb and the "Inevitable Black Quarterback of the Future" phenomenon, circa mid-2000s ---
September 2003: Rush Limbaugh was fired unceremoniously from ESPN after being accused of anti-Black racism; or, more precisely, for belittling the (already-by-then) Inevitable Black Quarterback phenomenon:
.
Quote:
_______________
"I[W]hat we've had here [with the positive coverage of Black quarterback Donovan McNabb] is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well," Limbaugh said on Sunday's [ESPN] show. "There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team." [...] Limbaugh has denied the comments he made on the show were racially motivated..." /// (ESPN, "Limbaugh resigns from ESPN's NFL pregame show," Oct. 2, 2003).
________________
.
COMMENT: Historians of Wokeness, please take note of this, being from 2003, around fifteen years before this kind of thing is supposed to have been possible in the 2010s-centric Rise-of-Wokeness narratives I have heard much in the 2020s. Note not only that he was fired for these tame comments but that the ESPN staff writer, in 2003, including this strange phrase "Limbaugh denied that the comments were racially motivated" (what does THAT mean?).
Donovan McNabb has a career QB rating of 85.6. As of today that puts him at No.52 all-time among highly active quarterbacks (those with 1500+ NFL-career pass-attempts). There are 214 total qualifying quarterbacks on the list. This means McNabb is at about the 25th-percentile of quarterbacks. Above average; "great" is a stretch. Was Donovan McNabb over-hyped: Signs point to 'Yes.'
There are 12 NFL QBs who have completed their careers and have all-time QB ratings above 90, an imperfect but at least data-based listing of the "greats." These are:
- Aaron Rodgers (see **)
- Drew Brees,
- Tom Brady,
- Tony Romo,
- Steve Young,
- Peyton Manning,
- Philip Rivers,
- Kurt Warner,
- Matt Ryan,
- Ben Roethlisberger,
- Joe Montana,
- Chad Pennington.
(All the above are White. QB rating has been increasing over time, so a 2000s QB with an 85 rating might be considered the same as a 1980s with an 80 rating. Johnny Unitas, active late 1950s to early 1970s, had a lifetime 78 but was a top-tier QB in his time; so it's probably best to make these comparisons with similar-era players.)
**: Aaron Rodgers is still active in 2024. I include him because there is statistically no realistic way that his lifetime average QB rating drops below 90. He is still playing now at age 41 and will presumably soon retire. He holds the all-time No.1 slot right now, with a QB rating of 103. There is no realistic way he falls below 90, between now and whenever he does retire, so he deserves to be on the list of these top-twelve.
---
EDIT: See also this comment on a racial-political NFL controversy of 2004, the year following to the Limbaugh firing of 2003: https://www.stevesailer.net/p/the-rise-of-the-nfl-quarterblacks/comment/82532129
Rush had balls. He got fired for that. But it needed to be said.
McNabb was overrated by a lot. His lazy performance in the Super Bowl v. the Patriots, when he really needed to be hustling in a hurry up and had a chance to catch up, really showed what kind of weak leader and mediocre QB he was.
-- The notorious sexualized commercial involving NFL player Terrell Owens and a White woman in 2004 and the Inevitable Black Quarterback phenomenon --
In 2004, a year after Rush Limbaugh was fired from ESPN for anti-Black racism (see my comment at: https://www.stevesailer.net/p/the-rise-of-the-nfl-quarterblacks/comment/82530150), another Black NFL player of the day, Terrell Owens, was the center of a salacious controversy involving Big Media interests. I believe it "politically" overlaps considerably with the "Inevitable Black Quarterback of the Future" phenomenon (which was being promoted so heavily around the time but far from being a reality).
The controversy: Terrell Owens (a wide receiver, not a quarterback; but definitely Black) was placed in a major tv-commercial which contained highly sexually suggestive material involving him and a famous White woman. This was November 2004.
The overtly sexual and "interracial" contents of this instantly-notorious commercial may have been inspired by the Rush Limbaugh controversy of 2003, when Limbaugh, in thirty seconds of commentary, at once supposedly belittled Black players AND insinuated a media conspiracy to promote unqualified Blacks over Whites and was banned from ESPN's airwaves for his trouble. Terrell Owens and (the supposedly racially maligned) Donovan McNabb were on the same team at the time (Philadelphia Eagles). Lessons had to be driven home; Rush Limbaugh could not be allowed to "encourage the others" (to anglicize a phrase Steve Sailer likes to use).
The racial-sexual message of the Terrell Owens commercial of 2003 shocked millions who saw it on "Monday Night Football." It drew ire, too, from the pen of Sam Francis (published at VDare at the time, along with Steve Sailer and others). Most conservatives said they disapproved of the commercial for its being so openly sexual and shown on tv. Sam Francis said: No, the main problem is that it's sexualized plus racialized, it amounts to a political attack on Whites reminiscent of some sort of demoralization propaganda or maybe something bizarre out of Weimar (loosely paraphrasing).
Sam Francis had much reason to be proud of his body of work as of 2004, despite his life-ban from conservatism for Racism. He still had a few paper-newspapers running his column in those waning weeks of 2004. But after he attacked the Terrell Owens commercial head-on, the ADL and SPLC and such people denounced him in their most-hysterical terms yet. They succeeded in getting the last of his 'syndication' newspapers to axe him.
Sam Francis who was in poor health and died a few months after the commercial controversy. This concerted attack on him by the usual political thugs out there may have hastened his death. (VDare is now inaccessible, but this is a preserved copy of that incendiary column, one of Sam Francis' last: https://www.unz.com/sfrancis/morality-not-the-only-target-on-monday-night-football/).
When I was a teen I watched football with my sports-crazed brothers. There was a non-black wide receiver on the team and the announcers would refer to him as a "possession receiver". We referred to that position, using the term they were obviously avoiding, "white receiver".
Also if you slightly change the emphasis when you say "head coach" it's hilarious.
The top 3 rated quarterbacks in the incoming draft class are black. For what it is worth, I think Shedeur Sanders will be a bust, unlike his teammate Travis Hunter at WR. I have doubts Cam Ward and Jalen Milroe will have great success either. Sanders especially does not seem to be an accurate enough passer to make it in the NFL. If Carson Beck and Quinn Ewers outperform them as more traditional QBs it could start the swing evaluation of the position back the other way.
CJ Stroud isn't white
O/T
R.I.P. Rickey Henderson (65.11)
How many of these are 2nd and 3rd generation high-level football players? As you've pointed out, pro sports are becoming legacy systems where many superstars are the sons of previous players. Dad combines his athletic genes with his some knowledge about how to train for a high level and deal with high level distractions with a good mother and breeds a son with athletic talent who is ready for prime time, e.g. Stephen Curry, Peyton & Eli Manning, etc.
Wouldn't be surprised if many of these mulatto guys' Dads were black position players at D1/pro level but had some brains and morality, didn't waste their money, were well-spoken, and married a white girl and stayed married long enough to give the kid a two-family household with some coaching. In other words, these are not the sons of Terrell Owens's types, more the sons of Rosey Griers.
> ESPN has been tracking QuarterBack Rating since 2006
While all stats are contrived to one degree or another, QBR is especially so. The NFL uses Passer Rating and you can go back to the beginning of the NFL itself to find the leaders each year. The first black QB to lead the NFL in Passer Rating was Randall Cunningham of the Minnesota Vikings in 1998. This was well after the prime of his career with the Philadelphia Eagles where he was known as a running quarterback. In 1998 the next-best black quarterback was Charlie Batch of the Detroit Lions at 12.
Soccer is most popular outside the US where there is no one-drop rule and fuzzier racial boundaries. Black players are clearly over represented (2x-4x) in top European leagues.
Aside from native whites, big European clubs have players of the following types:
-African born or first-generation west Africans
-Mixed race European children. Real Madrid’s Mbappé has an Algerian mother and a Congolese father
-Latin American players who are pretty even along the whole colour spectrum
-players with one black grandparent - Chelsea’s standout midfielder Cole Palmer has a grandparent from St Kitts
I predict the grandparent cohort will rise quite a bit. Blacks and whites (add in East Asians) in Europe don’t really have social structures in place to enforce endogamy and tend to blend in after two generations.
Soccer isn’t nearly as specialised as gridiron and players of all ancestries can be found in all positions. Forwards tend to be a bit more black on average (more explosive speed) with defenders a bit less. Goalkeepers do tend to be the most white.
> In 2024, Mahomes has been worse than usual, ranking only 11th on the ESPN QBR rating. Yet the Kansas City Chiefs are 13-1 in won-loss.
The Chiefs won again today, improving their record to 14-1; if they can split the last two games of the season at Pittsburgh and Denver they will earn the AFC's first-round bye. Now the Chiefs are on nationally almost every week and it's amazing that Mahomes is doing it this year with smoke and mirrors; the Chiefs are NOT a dominant team this year despite their record.
Now those of a more cynical bent will point out that almost every close call and the most impactful penalties are called in favor of the Chiefs. I don't have a dog in the fight but it certainly seems like the Chiefs are using all nine of their lives this year. They also got the benefit of playing the 49ers and the NFC South as their 5 interconference games, all of whom are down this year. I am personally rooting for a Lions/Bills Super Bowl this year, as it will be the first one since Giants/Broncos where neither team had won before.
The rule changes that make it hard to do brutal hits to QBs (and really all other players) in the post-concussion NFL help running quarterbacks a lot. A running QB in the NFL can't outrun most defenders like he did in college (the college-pro gap is a big step), and so for decades the running QB faced a very hungry, very fast, very vicious defense wanting literal blood.
In the 1970s the evil (and I mean actually evil) Jack Tatum would hit most guys in ways that today are literally illegal; he paralyzed poor Darryl Stingley and never apologized for it. If the NFL suddenly time warped to the 1970s and Jack Tatum was around he would have murder board of all the current-day running QB's he'd kiled or paralyzed or permanently injured.