Introduction

Stereotyping African Americans has long been a favorite American past-time. Complicit in the stereotyping of African Americans has been the American media. In part, because of the manner in which the print and electronic media frame African Americans some non-Blacks, especially whites have unflattering opinions of African Americans. Black men appear to receive the lion’s share of this pejorative coverage when African Americans are the subject of inquiry. Nightly news telecasts as well as television programs like COPS appear to disproportionately showcase Black males as the perpetrators of criminal offenses that involve drug trafficking and an assortment of violent crimes. Also even though, the majority of welfare recipients have historically been white, for many, African Americans are viewed as welfare’s primary beneficiaries. And even though people of all races as well as white females have benefited enormously from Affirmative Action programs, again for many, African Americans are the face of Affirmative Action.

While African Americans are as disparate and/or heterogeneous as any white community, historically the media has framed African Americans in a fashion that is not commensurate with reality. That the media frames events, people and places is well documented; they do so by deciding what things to cover, whether to highlight or downplay them and what to say about them. Media framing transcends story lines and subject matter. Below are two such examples:

When Hurricane Katrina touched down in the state of Louisiana, it dealt a deadly and costly blow to numerous towns and jurisdictions in the Gulf coast region. New Orleans was the largest city hit by the hurricane. Consequently, many of the people stranded there were forced to break into supermarkets and neighborhood mom and pop establishments to get food in order to survive. Although both Blacks and whites scrambled for supplies, some in the media found reason to condemn the actions of Blacks while seemingly giving whites a free pass. Case in point: when photos were published on Yahoo.com that showed two separate incidents of New Orleans residents taking food from grocery stores, the caption for the white couple described them as “finding bread and soda” while the caption below the photo of the black person described him as “looting” (Hurricane Katrina 2006). The contrast in language is not inconsequential given the negative connotation that looting has.

Media framing of sporting events is also commonplace. One of the most unfortunate, but widely known instances of framing in sports occurred in 1986 and involved major league baseball player Bill Buckner. The play of Buckner, a veteran first baseman for the Boston Red Sox is largely considered the reason for Boston’s defeat in that year’s World Series. During game six, with Boston leading the New York Mets three games to two, a slow ground ball was hit toward first base. As Buckner went to field the weak grounder the ball squirted through his legs enabling the Mets to squeak by and force a seventh and deciding game. The Mets went on to win game seven and their first World Series since 1969, leaving Red Sox fans heart-broken. The story could have been framed as one in which the Red Sox as a team squandered a two run lead allowing the Mets to engineer an unlikely comeback in the tenth inning. The media could also have framed the loss of the series as one in which the entire Boston team failed to close out the Mets in a seventh and deciding game. Unfortunately the Red Sox loss is commonly attributed to Buckner’s late inning blunder, thus casting him as one of sports all-time infamous goats.

This paper is concerned with exploring whether stereotypes come into play in the way that NFL draft experts frame African American athletes. More specifically, we are interested in finding out whether draft experts who are ostensibly well-educated, buy into and/or promote racial stereotypes of African Americans when evaluating Black college quarterbacks. We contend that NFL draft experts consistently rate African American quarterbacks higher than whites in the areas of physical abilities and lower in the areas of cognitive abilities, thus perpetuating racial stereotypes of African Americans.

In the age of Social Darwinism, science, in particular, gave tremendous currency to a belief that associated dark skin with might and strength, instinctual behavior, and intellectual inferiority. This scientific perspective, which fell squarely within the canon of that era, allowed specific beliefs to be institutionalized in mainstream society. Despite the fact that these racial ideologies were promulgated years ago, to some extent, they still manage to form the beliefs of many Americans. Athletics is just one such area in which this view has persisted (Coakley 2004).

Sport has been classified as an indicator of racial progress. It is often suggested that race relations in the USA have improved drastically when we view the percentages of Blacks on professional and collegiate athletic teams (Hawkins 2002). In the last 40 years, not only have the numbers of African American athletes drastically increased, but more Blacks are now playing positions traditionally reserved for whites than ever before. No sport is more evident of this than football. And from our standpoint no position is a better indicator of the country’s racial progress (or lack thereof) than quarterback.

No other position on the football field is expected to demonstrate, as much leadership, intelligence and poise than that of the quarterback, attributes that run counter to the prevailing sentiment about Black mentality. Despite the increased numbers of Blacks on collegiate and professional football teams, the numbers of Black quarterbacks in the professional ranks are still relatively small. The reasons for these small numbers may to some extent be a barometer of American race relations in the twenty-first century.

Black Quarterbacks in the National Football League: A Truncated History

While there has always been a dearth of Black quarterbacks in the National Football League, black quarterbacks have appeared on NFL rosters at least as early as 1953. Backup Chicago Bears quarterback Willie Thrower became the first African American to play quarterback in an NFL game on October 18, 1953 when he took several snaps against the San Francisco 49ers. That same year George Taliaferro, a single-wing tailback from Indiana University started two games as a T-formation quarterback for the Baltimore Colts. His opportunity to play came when the team suffered a rash of injuries at the quarterback position. The next African American to get a chance to stand under center was Charlie “Choo Choo” Brackins in 1955 for the Green Bay Packers. Selected in the 16th round of the 1955 draft out of Prairie View A & M College, Brackins played in the closing minutes of a blowout against the Cleveland Browns on October 23, 1955. Brackins was released later that same season, reportedly for violating team rules.

In the decade that followed, it appeared as though Black quarterbacks were on the verge of a breakthrough. In 1968 the Oakland Raiders drafted Eldridge Dickey out of Tennessee A & I University (later Tennessee State University) in the first round with the 25th pick. Dickey became the first African American quarterback selected in the first round by an American Football League (AFL) or National Football League (NFL) team. He had hopes of becoming the first Black quarterback to start on a regular basis, but his dreams never materialized. Instead it was Marlin Briscoe who was drafted that same year, out of the University of Omaha on the 14th round by the Denver Broncos who made a lasting impression during the 1968 season. Due to injuries to the starting and backup quarterbacks, Briscoe played in 11 games, 7 of which he started. He finished with a Broncos rookie record of 1,589 passing yards and 14 touchdowns, plus more than three hundred yards rushing (Briscoe and Schaller 2002). Briscoe would go on to have a solid career as a wide receiver, playing for several teams, one of which was the 1972 Super Bowl champion Miami Dolphins.

The following season in 1969, the Buffalo Bills drafted James Harris out of Grambling State University in the eighth round of the AFL draft and the Los Angeles Rams drafted John Walton out of Elizabeth City State University. Walton, a perennial backup who saw little action played ten years in the NFL and the World Football League, the last three for the Philadelphia Eagles. His shining moment came on a Monday night in 1979 when he led the Eagles to a dramatic win against the Dallas Cowboys after starter Ron Jaworski was taken out of the game due to injury. Harris faired better than his predecessors, most of whom, were forced to switch to other positions for self-preservation’s sake. Ironically, a few of the passes that Harris threw in 1969 were completed to Marlin Briscoe who switched to wide receiver when he signed with the Buffalo Bills. Harris’s career lasted 12 years. Some of his highlights include being the first African American quarterback named to the Pro Bowl during the 1974–1975 season, earning MVP honors for his outstanding play.

No African American quarterback (up to that point) had had a more stellar collegiate career than Joe Gilliam. Like Eldridge Dickey, Gilliam played at Tennessee State University from 1969 to 1971 where he broke every major record held by a Black college quarterback. An All-American his last 2 years at TSU, still Gilliam fell to the eleventh round where he was selected by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1972. Gilliam would get his chance in 1974 when a strike pushed him into the starting line-up. Gilliam led the Steelers to a 4–1–1 record. When Bradshaw returned however, he reclaimed the starting job. Two years later Gilliam was out of the NFL.

Five years after Gilliam was drafted, the Chicago Bears, sorely in need of a quarterback, took another African American quarterback—USC’s Vince Evans on the sixth round. Evans played sparingly his first few years in the league, but would later start in a backfield that featured future Hall of Famer Walter Payton. Evans played 16 rather nondescript years for the Bears and Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders mostly in a backup capacity.

Given the checkered careers of African American quarterbacks who came into the league, one could argue that NFL owners, general managers and coaches were still not sold on Blacks playing the quarterback position, hence were reluctant to invest heavily in them. Indeed not until 1978 was a Black quarterback taken on the first round of the NFL draft since the 1970 merger between the NFL and the AFL. That year Doug Williams (another Grambling product) was taken by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with the seventeenth pick. Not until the early 1980s were there two consistently starting Black quarterbacks in the NFL.Footnote 1 The Oakland Raiders’ selection of Louisiana State University (LSU) quarterback JaMarcus Russell as the overall number-one pick in the 2007 draft is only the second time in NFL history that a Black quarterback had been drafted number-one overall. Michael Vick was the first in 2002 when he was chosen by the Atlanta Falcons.

Reasons for Dearth of Black Quarterbacks

In the past, some NFL general managers, scouts and coaches have blamed the dearth of Black NFL quarterbacks on the fact that Black college quarterbacks lacked the skill-set necessary to matriculate at the professional level. There is an extensive list about whom this has been said. In the late 1950s, this was said of Wilburn Hollis who quarterbacked the University of Iowa to a Big Ten co-championship in 1958, but never got the opportunity to play professionally. In 1962 Sanford “Sandy” Stephens II led the University of Minnesota to the Rose Bowl and a national championship, becoming the first major college African American quarterback to be named All-American. Drafted on the second round by the Cleveland Browns and selected fifth overall in the AFL Draft by the New York Titans, coaches and owners made it clear that they were not interested in Stephens as a quarterback. Tony Dungy, the head coach of the Super Bowl Champion Indianapolis Colts, suffered a similar fate in the late 1970s. Following in the footsteps of Stephens, the University of Minnesota record-setting Dungy went un-drafted in 1977. In the mid 1980s NFL teams bypassed Cal State Fullerton’s Damon Allen and Nebraska’s highly successful Turner Gill and in the 1990s Charlie Ward fell victim to this same bizarre line of reasoning, despite winning the Heisman Trophy and leading Florida State University to a national title.

Oddly enough, some of the same critics that claimed that Black quarterbacks lacked the skill-set to play in the NFL maintained that playing in a pro-style system rather than in a college-suited offense would greatly enhance Black athletes’ chances of playing the quarterback position in the NFL. Tony Dungy remembered Chuck Ealey, who led a highly sophisticated offense at the University of Toledo in the mid 1970s, winning all 35 games in which he played. Said Dungy, “You’d think that’s what things are all about. But [the NFL] would say, ‘Well, he’s not a pro-style player’” (Color-Blind 1999, p. 2). Quarterback Willie Totten, whose favorite target at historically Black Mississippi Valley State University was Jerry Rice was unable to garner much interest from the NFL despite executing the pro-style run-and-shoot offense to near perfection.

Others say the lack of Black NFL quarterbacks is a direct result of the low numbers of Black college quarterbacks in general. One explanation for this is the result of self-selection by the athletes themselves. Young people tend to choose positions played by those they admire. Since few African American youth see quarterbacks that look like them they may tend to shy away from the position. In a USA Today article titled “Black QBs are Seldom Seen on Western Frontiers,” Fresno State football coach Jim Sweeney commented on the lack of Black quarterbacks in the west coast: “They [black players] just weren’t quarterbacks in the West. They were raised, I think, to believe they weren’t quarterbacks, and therefore they didn’t compete in high school as quarterbacks” (USA Today 2005, p. 9c). This explanation is not without merit, however considering the number of successful Black college quarterbacks over the years who were asked to change positionsFootnote 2 upon entering the NFL or who opted to play in the Canadian Football League (often with a fair amount of success) rather than switch positions, not to mention the numbers of Black high school quarterbacks who changed positions after matriculating to college, Sweeney’s experience does not fully explain the lack of available, quality Black high school and college quarterbacks in America generally.Footnote 3

Blacks who have played quarterback in college and/or the NFL claim that the principal reason for the dearth of Black quarterbacks is racism. Some fans do not want to see their teams run by a Black quarterback. The Trojans of the University of Southern California (USC) in the 1970s, coach John Robinson said, he and quarterback Vince Evans endured threats from whites angered that the Trojans would start a Black quarterback (Color-Blind 1999). Doug Williams experienced similar hostility as the quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the late 1970s. When Williams held out for more money in 1983 he received hate mail from fans who thought Williams should have been grateful that he was the forty-third-highest paid quarterback in the league (Williams and Hunter 1990). One of the parcels of mail that Williams received was especially nasty. It contained a watermelon and a note that read, “Throw this nigger” (Williams and Hunter 1990).

More troubling than the fans, Blacks are convinced that behind closed doors some coaches and team owners question whether Blacks are smart enough to run NFL offenses. One journalist who covered the NFL extensively admitted that on occasion when certain team officials were considering a Black quarterback, the red flags usually came down to a couple of things: “Can’t read defenses, can’t grasp the terminology” (Finney 2001, p. 1). Aware of such commonly held views, former NFL quarterback John Walton said “There’s a stigma to a black quarterback that some coaches still haven’t overcome” (Donnellon 2007, p. 1).

Some have argued that coaches spend less time bringing Black quarterbacks along than they do white quarterbacks. In other words, Black quarterbacks do not receive the kind of mentorship and tutelage that many White quarterbacks do. Few Black quarterbacks are given the amount of time to mature and develop that was for example, afforded players such as Hall of Famers Roger Staubach, Terry Bradshaw, Steve Young and Troy Aikman and less celebrated players such as Phil Simms, Doug Flutie, Vinnie Testaverde and Jim Harbaugh to name a few. It would take Staubach, Bradshaw, Young and Aikman several years before they developed into the kind of player that is expected of a high first round draft choice. While Testaverde, Flutie and Harbaugh had productive NFL careers all were given ample tutelage, not to mention opportunity to succeed. Of the four, Simms, a lifetime New York Giant, would go on to have the most accomplished career, winning two Super Bowls. Still it would take nearly 5 years before Simms’s play justified being selected on the first round coming from a small campus like Morehead State University. During his first five seasons, Simms threw as many interceptions as he did touchdowns. Testaverde after several years was still a much sought-after commodity despite throwing more than 30 interceptions in his second year in the league and being labeled a disappointment by Tampa Bay Buccaneer officials and fans.

Blacks also assert that coaches were quicker to bench a Black quarterback after an errant throw or an interception than they would have been if it had been a white quarterback. Simply put, with few exceptions, coaches exhibit more patience with white quarterbacks than with Black quarterbacks. Consequently, Black quarterbacks face tremendous external as well as internal pressure to succeed. Reflecting on his NFL career, James Harris said,

I tried to play it perfectly, and you can’t play that way.

I held onto the ball a little too long, not wanting to throw an interception… And when I left the game, I knew I had never played up to my potential like I did [at Grambling], where I just played. In the NFL, each interception meant my time might not be long. I don’t ever want players to feel pressured to play that way because of some stereotype (Wilbon 2006, p. E-1).

Journeyman quarterback Tony Banks believed that he was held to a different standard. “At times I felt like I had to walk on water …” (Richardson 1999, p. A1).

Some Black athletes argue that team owners, general managers and coaches simply do not want a Black leading their team; this racism is reflected in draft experts’ evaluations of Black college quarterbacks. In other words, NFL draft experts and scouts evaluate Black quarterbacks in a manner that perpetuate racial stereotypes and that do not appeal to NFL owners, general managers, scouts and coaches.

The impetus for embarking on this study stemmed from several impromptu conversations between the two authors of this manuscript regarding the draft coverage of some of the most well respected and widely circulated publications in sports. As football enthusiasts we recalled reading clips over the years that framed Black quarterbacks in unflattering ways. For example, even though 6’5” inch 210 pound Randall Cunningham, an NFL prototype, had excelled at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV), leading his team to a victory in the California Bowl in 1984 and winning the game’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) award for his “eye-popping play” in the East-West Shrine game, Cunningham was labeled a good fit for the CFL. The brass within the Philadelphia Eagles organization ignored the critics and selected Cunningham, albeit in the second round of the 1985 draft.

More recent examples include University of Georgia quarterback Quincy Carter who was described by The Sporting News (2001) as a “Great athlete who hasn’t learned to play quarterback.” In the cases of Dante Culpepper (sportsillustrated.com 1999) and Tee Martin (sportsillustrated.com 2000) of the University of Tennessee phrases such as “physical specimen” and “impressive specimen” were used to describe both men. Conversely, white quarterbacks tended to be described as “productive,” “heady,” and “intelligent.” These seemingly anecdotal remembrances motivated us to conduct this study.

Since 1999 when several Black college quarterbacks were selected in that year’s NFL draft, there has been a recurring discourse on the supposed changing landscape of professional football. Of the first 11 players chosen in that year’s draft three were African American Quarterbacks. Some believe that race relations in America have improved significantly. And as America goes so goes American sports. In other words, people are more accepting of Black quarterbacks than they were 30 years ago. One writer has incredulously gone so far as to dub this era as the Golden Age of Black Quarterbacks (Chapman 2001, p. 26). From Chapman’s vantage point the relatively high numbers of Black quarterbacks on NFL rosters compared to years past suggests that on this matter racism ended. He points out that African American punters are far rarer than Black quarterbacks; given this Chapman asked, “What deep-rooted racial stereotypes could explain that?” Chapman posed an interesting but disingenuous question. To be sure, there are significantly fewer Black punters than there are Black quarterbacks but he failed to acknowledge that the low numbers are perhaps because of a lack of interest on the part of African American players. Among the reasons might be: (1) the punter’s job is not as glamorous as that of quarterback; (2) the punter’s play does not typically decide the outcome of the game in the way that the quarterback position does; (3) a punter’s salary is typically significantly lower than that of the quarterback’s; and (4) of all the positions the punter is perhaps the least prestigious.

Recent Literature

Scholarly journal articles, of which Black quarterbacks are the subjects, range from trying to make meaning of the recent rise in the number of Black quarterbacks to content analyzing college and professional football broadcast commentary in order to detect racial bias to exploring whether the so-called liberal media coddle Black quarterbacks because they want to see them do well. One of the most interesting studies was conducted by Andrew C. Billings (2004) who analyzed 162 hours of transcripts of televised college and NFL football games during the fall of 2002. Billings found that sports commentators often subscribed to stereotypes associated with white and Black athletes. Blacks were often characterized as being exceptionally athletic, which perpetuates the “natural born athlete” myth. Surprisingly, Billings reported that while the athleticism stereotype persisted, stereotypes related to low levels of poise and cognitive ability for Black athletes had diminished to an insignificant level.

Using the Sporting News magazine J. R. Woodward (2004) examined a sample of 152 players that included quarterbacks, middle linebackers and centers over a 5-year period (1999–2003) and found that with the exception of those who played middle linebacker, African American players were more likely to be described in terms of their physical/athletic attributes, and white players in terms of their mental/intelligence abilities. David Niven (2005) tested what he called the “Rush Limbaugh Hypothesis,” that the liberal media are less critical of black quarterbacks because they want to see them succeed. An impressive content analysis of 10,000 articles from 25 major newspapers found that there was almost no discernible difference in the amount of praise/criticism that quarterbacks received, regardless of race. His results imply that not only do the media have no pro-black bias; they have no pro-white bias. Although there are differences between Niven’s and Billing’s work (praise/criticism vs. description of talent, collegiate vs. NFL), their results are in agreement insomuch as there is a shrinking gap between how black and white quarterbacks are portrayed in the media.

Significance of Research

Within the literature, there is no consensus on whether racial stereotyping of African American athletes is promulgated by professionals in the media as well as those associated with collegiate and professional athletics. There clearly needs to be more research that assesses whether or not the sports media consistently mark athletes by race. Even if much of this bias surfaces in the form of subtle language or implicit inferences, it marks the race of athletes in a way that is detrimental to the goal of judging a person on his own merit; or, in the case of sports, by evaluating an athlete according to his talent level. Our intended contribution to this conversation about race, media, and sports is to see if people who are supposed to be experts in the evaluation of players exhibit a bias. This is fundamentally different than works that study transcripts of sports broadcasters to examine the broadcasters’ use of language in the context of race. We examine the talent evaluations of NFLFootnote 4 draft experts to test whether a racial bias exists and/or to what extent racial marking exists at any significant level. The purpose of examining the work of draft experts is twofold. First, their work cannot be written off as off-the-cuff remarks in the way that a live broadcast can because of the amount of time spent writing and editing these reports, the absence of on-the-air time pressures, and the fast-paced world of television to which sports broadcasters are subjected. Second, the people that write these evaluations are ostensibly fairly well-educated objective judges of talent, and evidence of a bias would not only call their credibility into question, but also speak to the degree to which racism is deeply imbedded in the American psyche.

Draft experts’ evaluations can affect a player’s draft status. This can play out in several ways. Since quarterbacks have historically been the highest paid players in the NFL an evaluation that plays into stereotypes such as the one that Blacks are less intelligent than whites and Blacks are better runners than they are passers can cause a player’s stock to drop; costing him millions of dollars. The monetary difference between a first round draft pick and a second round draft pick is substantial. More often than not though, Black College quarterbacks are forced to abandon plans to enter the NFL as a quarterback. Instead they opt to switch to wide receiver or defensive back positions. The choice to switch positions is not entirely voluntary as it is often done out of self preservation. Simply put, they must switch positions or risk not having the opportunity to play professionally.

The final aspect of this issue that merits further research is the effect that racial stereotyping can have on the public. The effect of a bias on a particular race can be looked at in several ways. For instance, some black children may grow up with the impression that certain positions in certain sports are unavailable to them. Writing about the progress made by Black quarterbacks, newspaperman Charles Farmer says that growing up as a black child in the 1970s, ambitions of becoming a NFL quarterback were often quashed by others. He reminisced, “They [the NFL] don’t let us [black men] play quarterback on that level” (Farmer 2006, 11a). Stereotypes can dictate which sports are played and which positions are sought and by whom (Kahn 1991). There is also a possible effect on the perceptions of whites. WWW.CASTEFOOTBALL.US can, at best, be described as pro-white and at worst a white supremacist website. Its writers submit that stereotypes of black and white athletes exist and that those in the media who perpetuate these stereotypes seek to hold down white athletes in favor of black athletes (castefootball.us 2006). It is no leap of faith to say that this particular group is not in the political mainstream, but it is important to see how racial stereotyping by draft experts can provide a fringe group with the ammunition to allege reverse discrimination.

Method

Unlike most previous works which tend to have considerably shorter periods of investigation we studied a combined total of 22 years of NFL draft coverage—9 years of NFL draft coverage from sportsillustrated.com (1998–2007) and 13 years of The Sporting News (1990–2007)Footnote 5. We chose these publishing outlets because of their reputations and wide readership. We coded five measures of ability by accessing as much information as was available via back issues and hoped it would help shed new light on the prevalence of racial stereotyping in sports and football specifically. Using the rankings provided from each source, we coded the top 5–7 quarterbacks for each year, omitting a few quarterbacks for various reasons.Footnote 6 Our analysis included 146 college quarterbacks.

We begin by categorizing each athlete by race. Then, we measured each player’s ratings in the areas of overall athleticism, arm strength, accuracy, intelligence/decision-making, and leadership. These evaluations were coded on a five-point Likert scale where:

  1. 1

    = A positive evaluation with little to no doubt expressed. Example—A high-character prospect well liked and respected, Roethlisberger is gifted both physically and intellectually.”

  2. .5

    = A somewhat positive evaluation; mostly good comments with some negative qualifying statement. For example, “Seemingly has a good head for the position.”

  3. 0

    = No mention of a particular trait. We feel this is indicative of the player being completely average with regard to the trait at hand with nothing particularly positive or negative to say about him.

  4. −0.5

    = A somewhat negative evaluation; mostly negative with positive qualifying terms; such as saying someone needs to be “more consistent” as opposed to saying they are poor at something. For example, “Pocket passer with average quickness. Can slide from pressure, but is not very elusive.”

  5. −1

    = an overall negative evaluation of a particular trait with little to no upside expressed. For example, “Not mobile, elusive, and cannot escape the rush.”

Woodward (2004) uses a five-point scale as well, but unlike Woodward who attempts to fit every evaluative comment into a rather limited mental/physical dichotomy our approach allows for more specificity and diversity. While this article is different from other works on this subject in several ways, the one thing we do share with Woodward (2004) is our coding scheme. We believe that lumping perhaps related but not interchangeable variables into a rather broad, yet at the same time limited mental/physical dichotomy, will skew the findings. Our model; encompasses Athleticism, Arm Strength, Accuracy, Intelligence/Decision-Making and Leadership which enables us to code evaluative reports (that may be racially stereotypical) with more precision. Equally important, we are able to avoid the pitfalls of perhaps forcing an evaluative comment into a category that may not be the most appropriate. Our approach significantly reduces this likelihood.

Many believe that the quarterback position is the most difficult position to play in football as it demands a variety of skills. Using mental skills as an example, one would have to combine leadership abilities and decision-making ability. It is not uncommon for a quarterback to be possessed with the mental tools necessary to operate an NFL offense efficiently and effectively, but lack the much-needed leadership skills that are the hallmarks of a great quarterback. In a coding scheme that combines these two attributes, the player with great mechanics and decision-making ability but poor leadership qualities would be rated as average. We believe this to be too imprecise; the stereotypical language that may be discovered should be coded as precisely as possible. Woodward conducted a bivariate regression with the results from his content analysis, using race as the independent variable and the mental/physical ratings as the dependent variables. He found statistically significant differences between athletes on the basis of race across all but the inside linebacker position. We question whether the findings would still have been significant if the general mental/physical categories were fleshed out in more detailed categories.

In an effort to guard against our own biased evaluation of the player analyses, we tested inter-coder reliability with the help of an impartial observer. We chose this person for two reasons: (1) she is not an avid sports or football fan and is unfamiliar with most of the players and their races (2) because she recently moved to the USA her familiarity with American football players is minimal. Moreover, she had moved to the USA from Canada where the CFL has long been a haven for Black quarterbacks and where racial stereotypes about Black athletes are not as entrenched as in the USA. After explaining our coding method, she coded 25 of our 146 cases and we arrived at an inter-coder reliability of 78%. Most of the discrepancies were whether a rating was “positive” or “somewhat positive.” This is preferred to disagreement over whether the comments were “somewhat negative” or “somewhat positive” or “negative” versus “positive” because they still point in the same direction on the scale.

Again, our primary hypotheses coming into this project is that draft experts and scouts perpetuate racial stereotypes of Black college quarterbacks in a manner that has far-reaching consequences. In particular, we expected to see African-American quarterbacks rated higher than whites in the areas of athleticism and perhaps arm strength while rated lower than whites in the areas of accuracy, intelligence/decision-making, and leadership ability. We test these hypotheses in two ways, first by using a chi-squareFootnote 7 analysis of the distribution of ratings and second by employing a t test for significant difference in the average ratings for each racial group.

Results

Before delving into the statistical analysis, we begin with a rather basic approach. Tables 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 are frequency tables highlighting how often quarterbacks are mentioned in each of our ratings categories according to race. A graphical representation of each frequency table is also presented in Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, each corresponding with its respective table. The visual images along with the frequency tables allow us to convey to the reader in the strongest possible terms what numbers alone may not. The athleticism (Table 1), arm strength (Table 2), and intelligence/decision-making (Table 4) results are particularly interesting. In each category, there are clear differences in the dispersion of the rankings. For instance, on the matter of athleticism only half of white quarterbacks were described positively compared to over 75% of black quarterbacks. Even more fascinating is how black quarterbacks were rated in the areas of arm strength and leadership. As a quarterback, having a strong arm is a highly prized asset in the NFL; it is not surprising then that many highly regarded prospects have strong arms. Among whites, though, just fewer than 50% had their arm strength rated positively. This stands in contrast to the nearly 80% of black quarterbacks who were rated positively. In regards to leadership abilities, only 15.2% of black quarterbacks were rated positively compared to 26% for whites. The disparity between Blacks and whites in the area of intelligence speaks volumes (see Table 4). As we alluded to earlier, Black quarterbacks are not unaware that some whites believe them to be cerebrally underdeveloped. Case in point: before the 1999 NFL draft former University of Oregon quarterback Akili Smith commented to a reporter, “I’ve already had a few teams ask my agent if I’m smart enough to pick up their (offensive) system” (Thomas 1999, p. 7). In the 2006 draft much was made of Vince Young’s horribly low score on the NFL’s Wonderlic test. Young reportedly scored a six out of a possible 50; supposedly one of the lowest scores ever recorded, causing some to question his intelligenceFootnote 8.

Table 1 Athleticism
Table 2 Arm strength
Table 3 Accuracy
Table 4 Intelligence/decision-making
Table 5 Leadership
Fig. 1
figure 1

Athleticism

Fig. 2
figure 2

Arm strength

Fig. 3
figure 3

Accuracy

Fig. 4
figure 4

Intelligence/decision-making

Fig. 5
figure 5

Leadership

These frequency tables in conjunction with the graphical representations are striking in many ways and appear to show a disturbing trend in several of the measured areas. We used a chi-square analysis to test whether the dispersion of these scores differ enough to be statistically significant and those results are presented in Tables 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Of the five categories measured, the differences in the distribution of scores proved to be significant only in the areas of athleticism (at the 0.006 level) and arm strength (at the 0.036 level). The results for accuracy, intelligence, and leadership are not significant. Of the three insignificant categories, accuracy most closely approaches significance at the 0.198 level.

Table 6 Chi-square results for athleticism
Table 7 Chi-square results for arm strength
Table 8 Chi-square results for accuracy
Table 9 Chi-square results for intelligence/decision making
Table 10 Chi-square results for leadership

These findings do not invalidate what is obvious in the frequency tables, namely that the ratings for white and Black quarterbacks do not generally follow the same curve. For example, Table 4 shows that 38.1% of Whites are portrayed positively while 36.3% of blacks are portrayed relatively favorably, but only when the somewhat positive and positive categories are combined. The chi-square results only show that for the purposes of statistical significance, the distributions are not so disparate as to allow us to demonstrate a statistically significant bias. In the case of Table 4, even though there is a 14% gap between Blacks and Whites in the positive rating, there is virtually no difference in the “somewhat positive” area. Even though a 14% differential is by no means inconsequential, statistically significant findings are more difficult to reach with such a relatively small number of cases (of Black quarterbacks).

The frequencies and chi-square results are intriguing, thus prompt us to explore further. While the above analyses may show biases in certain areas, we suspect that a t test of the mean scores in each of the five categories will enable us to scrutinize our hypothesis in a different manner. The t tests compare the average overall rating for Black and White players in each category, and test whether the differences between the racial groups are significantly related.

In Table 11 we present the averages for each race in the five categories along with a t test to determine whether these discrepancies are statistically significant. These simple measures show similar findings as the chi-square test of the association, insomuch as it provides evidence for only part of our hypothesis. Specifically, there are significant differences in the same two areas as the chi-square results, athleticism and arm strength. In addition, the value for accuracy very closely approaches significance. Those findings support portions of our hypotheses—that black athletes are still stereotypically portrayed as “physical” beings. There is also a disparity in the “mental” skills categories, though not quite strong enough to be statistically significant. Examples of how Black quarterbacks are described relative to White quarterbacks are as follows: Heading into the 2000 NFL draft, Chad Pennington, currently the starting quarterback for the New York Jets received this evaluation,

An intelligent 4-year starter. Very productive.

Natural leader with good size. (sportsillustrated.com 2000).

Table 11 T test for significance of differences

That same year, Todd Husak, of Stanford University was evaluated just as favorably:

Heady quarterback who sees the field and reads defenses well. Works hard (The Sporting News 2000, 54).

Four years later, on Ben Roethlisberger, the starting quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers the same publication reported:

A high-character prospect, well liked and respected, he is both gifted physically and intellectually (sportsillustrated.com 2004).

Somewhat different language surfaced in the evaluation of Black quarterbacks. One publication had this to say about Vince Young, the young phenom, for the University of Texas:

A freakish athlete who is more dangerous as a runner than a thrower (The Sporting News 2006, 26).

On Donovan McNabb years earlier:

A Big, strong kid who can run (The Sporting News 1999, 64, emphasis added).

Evaluations such as these could be dismissed as simply anecdotal, but we believe they are a reflection of the attitudes within the larger society. Indeed such musings have been postulated for years and unwittingly accepted as truth by many. For example, in early 1988 Jimmy the Greek, a CBS football analyst, commented that Blacks exhibited more athletic prowess than whites because “the Black athlete is bred to be the better athlete” (quoted in Rhoden 2006). He was fired within hours. During an interview with Ted Koppel 1 year earlier, Al Campanis, a front-office executive for the Los Angeles Dodgers made what many consider to be a racially insensitive remark; he suggested that the reason there were no Black general managers and the like is because they lacked the necessary acumen to be successful in those positions. He too was fired. That our findings revealed that Blacks are still portrayed as physically superior to whites but inferior intelligently is disconcerting, but not shocking.

Much to our surprise, the results also suggest, however, that at least in the areas of intelligence and leadership, stereotypes are not as prevalent or as strong as we initially thought. Tests for significance bear out most of our suppositions regarding evaluations of quarterback prospects. African American quarterbacks, rate significantly higher in the areas of athleticism and arm strength; in other words, “brute strength” categories. Also indicating racial bias in language, the accuracy of Black quarterbacks is consistently lower than whites, at the 0.10 level of significance. Conversely, in the areas of intelligence/decision making and leadership, the results are not statistically significant. Although white quarterbacks were consistently rated higher than Black quarterbacks in these “mental skills” categories, the differences are not strong enough to offer as support for our hypotheses. Nevertheless, the significance levels of the “mental skills” categories merit future monitoring because a larger number of cases will alleviate problems of error associated with a relatively small sample size. In any event, the positive finding of a departure from traditional portrayals of African Americans as mentally inferior to their white counterparts is diminished by the continuation of the “physical specimen” paradigm. Overall, these findings show that stereotypes of black quarterbacks as players defined by their athletic abilities are still pervasive within sectors of the sports community. This is consistent with Billings’ (2004) conclusion that the principal stereotype perpetuated about Black quarterbacks is the notion of athletic superiority or that they are naturally athletic. This is not an indictment of the draft experts or the media; it is simply an observation that the language used by these people contains stereotypical characterizations, some more overt than others.

Conclusion

This article confirms what many African American athletes have known for years. What is not commonly acknowledged is that over the years unflattering and stereotypical evaluations of Black college quarterbacks have had far-reaching consequences for both the NFL and society in general. Evaluations that have promoted the school of thought that Black quarterbacks possess poor mental skills, have caused many potential NFL Black quarterbacks to drop past the first round, go un-drafted, switch positions, opt for the CFL, or fall by the wayside altogether, all of which have presumably cost some Black athletes millions in dollars.

The results of this study give reason to be both hopeful and concerned. Even though blacks are consistently rated more negatively in the areas of leadership and intelligence/decision making, the statistical insignificance of these findings in these areas suggests that perhaps draft experts do not exhibit an overt or deliberate racial bias across all areas. It is a little disconcerting however; that supposedly well-educated and ostensibly worldly draft personnel, some of whom have played collegiately or professionally in the post segregation era, buy into certain stereotypes about African Americans that are often purportedly held by poorly educated whites whose interaction with Blacks has been minimal. One group of researchers (Rasmussen et al. 2005) has pointed out the tendency for novice coaches to succumb to racial stereotypes; however, given the tremendous financial considerations involved, it is hard to imagine that NFL owners would employ inexperienced coaches, let alone entrust them with the responsibility of evaluating talent. Therefore, racial stereotyping of Black athletes cannot be solely left at the doorstep of novice coaches. This finding also tells us that the widely held conventional wisdom that promulgates the idea that formally educated whites are less bigoted than poorly educated whites needs reexamining. Of course, the operative word here is less.

The long-term ramification of racial stereotyping in sports is how it impacts the way young people make decisions about their careers. The notion that the quarterback position is for all intents and purposes reserved for whites and that the best opportunities for a black athlete require that he pursue positions that will enable him to use his so-called athleticism while white players face no such constraint could potentially be very damaging. Children have always looked up to athletes and they have a tendency to look up to those who play positions to which they aspire (Hoberman 1997). If Black youth see few Black quarterbacks at the professional level they may be uninspired to learn to play the position themselves, which will impact the pool of potential Black quarterbacks at the Pop Warner, high school and collegiate level.

It should be noted that even the most subtle forms of racist or stereotypical language can have lasting effects, perpetuating the myth that Blacks aren’t smart enough to play quarterback or that they do not possess the leadership qualities necessary to excel at the position can instill in white athletes a false sense of superiority that can manifest itself in ways that could have enormous consequences for race relations.

These issues are seemingly not going away; they are a part of America’s landscape, the consequences of which are most evident. The best we can hope for is that some sectors within the sports community become disabused of certain ways of thinking and that they become mindful of the power they wield and the damage they have caused and how that injury is likely to persist if they continue to hold fast to erroneous ideas about race.