Why is there still racism with black qbs? (1 Viewer)

[spider321]

Why do people still compare black athletic qbs to each other. You hardly ever hear white qbs compared to each other. I thought we would have moved past this by now.

I don't think "racism" means what you think it means.

 

[Sweet Love]

Still happens with white WRs too. Nothing to see here.

True, but there are more slow white WRs than fast ones, but plenty of black QBs that are just as good as their white counterparts in every facet of the position. There's not too many fast white wrs.

Hm. This is dangerous I know, but you showed intellectual honesty in raising the question so I will take a crack at answering it.I have yet to hear any black QB compared to Warren Moon. Now why is that? And I don't hear of any "white" QB's being compared to him either, and why is that?

I just posted and actually mentioned Moon without seeing your reference to him. If I had to take a stab at it, I would say it was because he is the forgotten man (kind of like a Ken Anderson...not in skills, but he just isn't at the tip of our tongues where oddly, guys like Doug Williams are, when you think of 80s black QBs. He had pretty light rushing numbers, with a highlight in '89 of 264 for 4 TDs in 1989, and really did not have a great year statistically until his 7th in the league. I am not trying to take anything away from him; he was great in Houston. If I had to make a comparison, I would go with an in-prime McNabb and Steve Young as likely counterparts...but if you put a gun to my head and ask me who TODAY I would compare him to, I really don't know. Passing-wise, maybe Eli (given today's rule changes and inflated passing stats), but he does not have the rushing ability of Moon.

 

[Sweet Love]

Still happens with white WRs too. Nothing to see here.

True, but there are more slow white WRs than fast ones, but plenty of black QBs that are just as good as their white counterparts in every facet of the position. There's not too many fast white wrs.

Wow, I didn't realize you were racist Johnny.

Dont you know that racism only applies to white on black and not the other way around, duh. Its America. I dont know how many times people have to say every white defensive lineman has a good motor. As if they just can't be athletic or skilled, they just try really hard.

...or that all good white QBs are smart.

Is it a false statement?

I don't think Dan Marino is particularly bright (just going off of Wonderlic). I just think he is polished, which is often mistaken for smarts.

 

[chiefs2929]

black QB's are built differently, that's why theres no comparison

 

[westlake]

Why do people still compare black athletic qbs to each other. You hardly ever hear white qbs compared to each other. I thought we would have moved past this by now.Edited to add: I don't recall ever hearing black qbs compared to white qbs. Maybe once in a blue moon, but not very often.Edited to add: Greg Russell made me realize that maybe racism is the wrong word to use in this context.

Will you race hustlers ever give it a rest? Let's enjoy football season for crying out loud. Take your crap to some political website.

 

[Reepicheep]

This thread inspired me to find out who the top QBs over the past 4 years were, in terms of rushing yards per game. No real point, just found it interesting.

Games	Games	Rushing	Rushing	Rushing	Rushing	Rushing	RushingRk  Player		Played	Started	Att	Yds	Y/A	TD	Y/G	Att/G1   Cam Newton		16	16	126	706	5.6	14	44.1	7.92   Michael Vick	37	25	200	1360	6.8	12	36.8	5.43   Tim Tebow		25	14	165	887	5.38	12	35.5	6.64   David Garrard	46	46	216	924	4.28	10	20.1	4.75   Tyler Thigpen	24	12	78	470	6.03	3	19.6	3.36   Josh Freeman	41	40	153	763	4.99	4	18.6	3.77   Aaron Rodgers	63	62	238	1136	4.77	16	18	3.88   Ryan Fitzpatrick	52	49	187	929	4.97	3	17.9	3.69   Colt McCoy		21	21	89	348	3.91	1	16.6	4.210  Vince Young		31	22	106	512	4.83	2	16.5	3.4

 

[Zeff]

It's years and years and years after professional sports integrated.

And the huge majority of great QB's are still white guys. And the huge majority of successful black QB's are still successful in large part because of their running ability.

And the huge majority of great RB's, WR's, and CB's are black guys.

And the huge majority of great track sprinters are black guys.

And the huge majority of great baseball pitchers are white guys.

All the political correctness in the world doesn't change the indisputable data. The white body is, in general, and on average, better designed to throw than the black body. The black build is, in general, and on average, better designed to run than the white body.

We can pretend it's not true all we want.

 

[Vector]

Still happens with white WRs too. Nothing to see here.

True, but there are more slow white WRs than fast ones, but plenty of black QBs that are just as good as their white counterparts in every facet of the position. There's not too many fast white wrs.

hypocrisy at its most subtle.

 

[Jewell]

It's years and years and years after professional sports integrated.And the huge majority of great QB's are still white guys. And the huge majority of successful black QB's are still successful in large part because of their running ability.And the huge majority of great RB's, WR's, and CB's are black guys.And the huge majority of great track sprinters are black guys.And the huge majority of great baseball pitchers are white guys.All the political correctness in the world doesn't change the indisputable data. The white body is, in general, and on average, better designed to throw than the black body. The black build is, in general, and on average, better designed to run than the white body.We can pretend it's not true all we want.

American sprinting legend, Michael Johnson, wholeheartedly agrees...http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-michael-johnson-slave-descendants-make-better-athletes-20120705,0,7290180.story

 

[CalBear]

Now height is being dispelled too. Not that long ago Ray Lewis was considered too short(Welker too), but Brees and maybe now Russell Wilson are having an easier time than Doug Flutie did. Flutie had a great year in Buffalo but was passed because of height prejudice(imo).

Doug Flutie was passed over because he wasn't a very good NFL QB. This is a guy with a career 54.7% completion percentage, 86 TDs and 68 INTs; mediocre at best. He had one year where he got up to 57.1%, 20 TDs and 11 INTs, which was above his career average then and now. He got to start the next year and dropped to 55.2% with 19 TDs and 16 INTs. Then when he got to start at San Diego he had 56.4% completions with 15 TDs and 18 INTs.He was a fine backup, and it's possible he was better than Rob Johnson, but the fact that he wasn't starter-quality had only a little bit to do with his height.

 

[VaTerp]

It's years and years and years after professional sports integrated.And the huge majority of great QB's are still white guys. And the huge majority of successful black QB's are still successful in large part because of their running ability.And the huge majority of great RB's, WR's, and CB's are black guys.And the huge majority of great track sprinters are black guys.And the huge majority of great baseball pitchers are white guys.All the political correctness in the world doesn't change the indisputable data. The white body is, in general, and on average, better designed to throw than the black body. The black build is, in general, and on average, better designed to run than the white body.We can pretend it's not true all we want.

American sprinting legend, Michael Johnson, wholeheartedly agrees...http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-michael-johnson-slave-descendants-make-better-athletes-20120705,0,7290180.story

Michael Johnson is a sprinter, not an anatomist or anthropologist.It has much more to do with social construct than perceived body type differences.

 

[Shawn]

nothing to see here folks

 

[Stealthycat]

why is there still racism in RB's?

if you want to quota QB's and say XX ammount should be drafted or rostered or starting then do the same at every positior

if not, shut up and put the race card away because it just shows your ignorance

 

[Borat]

Now height is being dispelled too. Not that long ago Ray Lewis was considered too short(Welker too), but Brees and maybe now Russell Wilson are having an easier time than Doug Flutie did. Flutie had a great year in Buffalo but was passed because of height prejudice(imo).

Doug Flutie was passed over because he wasn't a very good NFL QB. This is a guy with a career 54.7% completion percentage, 86 TDs and 68 INTs; mediocre at best. He had one year where he got up to 57.1%, 20 TDs and 11 INTs, which was above his career average then and now. He got to start the next year and dropped to 55.2% with 19 TDs and 16 INTs. Then when he got to start at San Diego he had 56.4% completions with 15 TDs and 18 INTs.He was a fine backup, and it's possible he was better than Rob Johnson, but the fact that he wasn't starter-quality had only a little bit to do with his height.

You can point to all of the statistics in the world, but at the end of the day, Rob Johnson started that playoff game over Doug Flutie primarily because Johnson was taller.And although I more or less agree with your assertion that Flutie just wasn't a great NFL quarterback, it's only fair to note that he spent his prime years in the CFL.

 

[Jewell]

It's years and years and years after professional sports integrated.

And the huge majority of great QB's are still white guys. And the huge majority of successful black QB's are still successful in large part because of their running ability.

And the huge majority of great RB's, WR's, and CB's are black guys.

And the huge majority of great track sprinters are black guys.

And the huge majority of great baseball pitchers are white guys.

All the political correctness in the world doesn't change the indisputable data. The white body is, in general, and on average, better designed to throw than the black body. The black build is, in general, and on average, better designed to run than the white body.

We can pretend it's not true all we want.

American sprinting legend, Michael Johnson, wholeheartedly agrees...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-michael-johnson-slave-descendants-make-better-athletes-20120705,0,7290180.story

Michael Johnson is a sprinter, not an anatomist or anthropologist.It has much more to do with social construct than perceived body type differences.

But it doesn't require you to be an anatomist or an anthropolgist. It just reqquires you to be honest which many people feel uncomfortable being regarding race in our PC age.The fact is that all sprinting champions can trace their ancestry back to West Africa. Nearly all Olympic medals in the throwing events (shot put, discus, javelin) have been won by by people of European origin.

Then when we apply those seemingly obvious base talents to team sports we see that they translate. Basebal pitchers are disproportionately white compared to black pitchers. Football QBs are disproportionately white compared to other positions where arm strength isn't an advantage, and black players dominate in positions where sprinting speed is an advantage.

But, if you don't trust your own eyes and deductive reasoning, here's a science based article on the topic that was out around the time of the Olympics.

The DNA Olympics -- Jamaicans Win Sprinting 'Genetic Lottery' -- and Why We Should All Care

Jon Entine, author of Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It,” takes stock of the DNA London Olympics–where, as usual, African-descended athletes swept the running events while whites and Asians dominated in the water sports, field competition and strength events. What’s going on here?

FORBES

Segregation was on display in London over the past two weeks–which, surprisingly, should spark no concerns and may even help educate us all about the wonders of human biodiversity. Let me explain.

Led by 100-meter world record holder Usain Bolt, Jamaican men swept the sprinting events at the London Olympics. It was a stunning feat for the small Caribbean nation. But as part of a broader trend, it’s hardly surprising. Runners of West African descent are the fastest humans on earth.

For decades, a bushel of developing countries—Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts, Barbados, Grenada, Netherlands Antilles and the Bahamas in the Caribbean and Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Namibia in western Africa, as single countries, have each produced more elite male sprinters than all of white Europe and Asia combined. Yet West African descended runners are laggards at the longer races.

Remarkably, the story of East African runners is the mirror image of the West African success story. While terrible at the sprints, runners from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Somalia, along with a sprinkling of North and Southern Africans, regularly dominate endurance running.

And if you are an Asian or white runner? Forgetaboutit.

Unlike the props and costumes required for, say, fencing, or the intense coaching demanded of gymnastics, running requires only that you lace ‘em up. Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila proved this quite memorably in the 1960 Rome Olympics, when—shoeless, coachless and inexperienced—he won the marathon.

Running is a natural laboratory for the science of sports. It’s empirically driven. There are winners and losers. No soft-headed sociological mumbo-jumbo allowed.

The fact is, over the past fifty years, as the barriers to competition, at least for men, have gradually eroded, and equality of opportunity has steadily spread to vast sections of once poverty-stricken Asia and Africa, one might have expected that running results would have become more democratic. The medal podium should look like a rainbow of racial equality, a United Nations of sports. But just the opposite has happened.

The trends are eye opening: Athletes of African ancestry hold every major male running record, from the 100 meters to the marathon. (Although these same trends hold for female runners, the pattern is more dominant among male runners. This analysis focuses on men because the playing field for them is far more level, as social taboos remain that restrict female access to sports in many parts of the world.) Over the last seven Olympic men’s 100-meter races, all 56 finalists have been of West African descent. Only two non-African runners, France’s Christophe Lemaire, who is white, and Australia’s Irish-aboriginal Patrick Johnson, have cracked the top 500 100-meter times. There are no elite Asian sprinters—or, intriguingly, any from East or North Africa.

Cultural myths

What’s going on here? The most frequently heard explanation is that African athletes just work harder at running. It’s one of their few outlets, the story goes, to escape the trap of limited opportunities. There’s a tradition of running that young athletes emulate; they’ve been running to school since kindergarten; they train harder for a chance at the golden ring that athletic success offers; or athletes from other parts of the world have developed a toxic inferiority complex, a fear of ‘black athletes’; blah, blah,blah.

National Public Radio recently carried just such a speculative piece on Kenya, and CNN had its own version on Jamaica. Never did the word “genetics” find its way into the story. It’s all nurture, they concluded—the long since scientifically discredited tabula rasa theory of human achievement that attributes all success to individual effort and societal “forces.”

No one outside of the most politically correct circles really believes that. Certainly scientists don’t. The director of the Copenhagen Muscle Research Institute, Bengt Saltin, the world’s premier expert in human performance and race, has concluded that an athlete’s “environment” accounts for no more than 20-25 percent of athletic ability. The rest comes down to the roll of the genetic dice—with each population group having distinct advantages. In other words, running success is “in the genes.”

Here are the facts. Athletic achievements, like success of all kind, is a bio-cultural phenomenon. Yes, Usain Bolt earned his victories. He may have been born gifted but he has worked his tail off to achieve greatness. He and he alone is responsible for his gold medal haul. But thumans are not blank slates. While culture, environment, individual initiative and just plain luck might influence which individuals succeed, nature—your DNA—circumscribes the possibility of even being in the game. This is population genetics 101. Bolt and his Jamaican teammates are members of a tiny slice of the world population—elite athletes who trace their ancestry to western and central Africa—whose body types and physiology have been uniquely shaped by thousands of years of evolution to run fast.

Genetically linked, highly heritable characteristics such as skeletal structure, the distribution of muscle fiber types (for example, sprinters have more natural fast twitch fibers, while distance runners are naturally endowed with more of the slow twitch variety), reflex capabilities, metabolic efficiency and lung capacity are not evenly distributed among populations. Do we yet know the specific genes that contribute to on the field success? No, but that’s not an argument against the powerful role of genetics in sports. We do not yet know all the factors that determine skin color, but we know that genetics determines it. Slowly, geneticists will link human performance, including sports skills, to our DNA and more specifically to our ancestral roots—populations.

This is uncontroversial and incontrovertible science even to anti-hereditarian ideologues. British biologist Steven Rose, one of the world’s most famous critics of biological determinism, recently wrote, “There are…probably genetic as well as environmental reasons why Ethiopians make good marathon runners whereas Nigerians on the whole do not.”

Yet the subject remains a prickly one to many journalists and the ‘liberal’ chattering classes. Michael Johnson stirred quite a controversy last month in London when the 400-meter world record holder postulated that black sprinters benefit from the outsized presence of ACTN3. The “speed gene” as it’s been dubbed, makes fast twitch muscles twitch fast. Lacking the ACTN3 protein does not seem to have any harmful health effects, but does affect running ability. Scientists conclude that it is almost impossible for someone who lacks the ACTN3 protein to become an elite sprinter. Those of African ancestry have the lowest incidence of the mutation that prevents the muscles from firing.

Is this running’s “smoking gun” gene? No. Sports ability, like IQ, is the product of many genes with environmental triggers influencing the “expression” of our base DNA. But its isolation does underscore that when it comes to performance, genes matter.

Why touch this third rail of race? After all, as UCLA’s Jared Diamond has noted, “Even today, few scientists dare to study racial origins, lest they be branded racists just for being interested in the subject.”

As I explained in Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It, athletic achievement has long been a Catch-22 for blacks in general and African Americans in particular. In the early part of the 20th century, when blacks first got a chance to compete in sports, every defeat encouraged simplistic, racist beliefs that blacks were an inferior “race,” too frail to handle extreme physical challenges and not smart enough to plan a race strategy.

Even winning didn’t shatter the stereotype; racist whites just created a new one. When Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, shocking the Nazi hosts, a diametrically opposed but equally noxious myth became cemented: black athletes succeed because of their “natural” athleticism. As for the potential for black coaches or managers to succeed? Well…ask Al Campanis about that.

Black success in sports in every aspect of sports, particularly as coaches, managers and executives, has shattered that stereotype. But the pendulum has swung to hard the other way, from pure determinism to pure sociological speculation. Success in sports is now primarily attributed almost solely to hard work and cultural factors. In the light of what we know about genetics, that very American, egalitarian belief meme is too glib, simplistic and maybe even dangerous.

The hard truth is that we cannot avoid confronting the fact of our patterned human biodiversity. Over the past decade, human genome research has moved from a study of human similarities to a focus on population-based differences. Such research offers clues to solving the mystery of disease, the Holy Grail of genetics. So why do we readily accept that evolution has turned out Jews with a genetic predisposition to Tay-Sachs, Southeast Asians with a higher proclivity for beta-thalassemia and blacks who are susceptible to colorectal cancer and sickle cell disease, yet find it racist to suggest that Usain Bolt can thank his West African ancestry for the most critical part of his success—his biological possibility?

“Differences among athletes of elite caliber are so small,” said Robert Malina, a retired Michigan State University anthropologist and former editor of the Journal of Human Genetics, “that if you have a physique or the ability to fire muscle fibers more efficiently that might be genetically based … it might be very, very significant. The fraction of a second is the difference between the gold medal and fourth place.”

Bio-cultural athletic hotspots

Indeed, the empirical evidence makes hash of the myth that culture is most responsible for making the athlete. Look at Kenya: with but 43 million people, this comparatively tiny country holds more than one third of top times in distance races. What explains this phenomenon? It’s in their culture, say many social scientists. Kenyans dominate distance races because they “naturally trained” as children—by running back and forth to school, for example.

“That’s just silly,” Kenyan-born Wilson Kipketer told me. Kipketer currently holds 8 of the 17 all-time fastest 800-meter times, a middle distance track event. “I lived right next door to school,” he laughed, dismissing cookie-cutter explanations. “I walked, nice and slow.” What motivated him to pursue running? Like most young Kenyans, while growing up Kipketer hoped that he migh catch the eye of a coach who combs the countryside to find the next generation of budding stars. He had dreams of being cheered as he entered the National Stadium in Nairobi.

Only one problem: the national sport, the hero worship, the adoring fans, the social channeling—that all speaks to Kenya’s enduring love affair with soccer, not running. But Kipketer, like most Kenyans, was not very good at soccer; Kenyans and East Africans in general tend to be short and slender with large natural lung capacity and a preponderance of slow twitch muscles. The body type of the classic East African distance runner—like marathon gold medal winner Stephen Kiprotich of Uganda and the Kenyans and Ethiopians who followed just behind—were forged by nature in the Rift Valley and highlands of eastern Africa. The result is a a perfect biomechanical package for endurance running but a disaster for sports that require anaerobic bursts, like sprinting or soccer. Indeed, Kenya’s fastest 100-meter time, 10.26, is well more than a half second slower than Bolt’s world record. There are more than 5,000 times ranked higher than Kenya’s best. East Africans—a different population group than central and West Africans—are relative slow pokes over short distances.

Although people in every population come in all shapes and sizes, body types and physiological characteristics follow a Gaussian distribution curve as a result of evolutionary adaptations by our ancestors to extremely varied environmental challenges. Elite sports showcase these differences. Asians, on average, tend to be smaller with shorter extremities and long torsos—evolutionary adaptations to harsh climes encountered by Homo sapiens who migrated to Northeast Asia 40,000 years ago. China, for example, excels in many Olympic sports, for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons, according to geneticists, is that they are more flexible on average—a potential advantage in diving, gymnastics (hence the term “Chinese splits”) and figure skating.

Whites of Eurasian ancestry are mesomorphic: they have larger and relatively more muscular bodies with comparatively short limbs and thick torsos. No prototypical sprinter or marathoner here. These proportions are advantageous in sports in which strength rather than speed is at a premium. Predictably, Eurasians dominate weightlifting, wrestling and most field events, such as the shot put and hammer. At the London Olympics, with the exception of North Korea, the top lifters come from a band of Eurasian countries: China, Kazakhstan, Iran, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine. Despite the image of the sculpted African body, no African nation won an Olympic lifting medal.

What about West Africans and North American, Caribbean and European blacks who trace their ancestry to the Middle Passage? They generally have: bigger, more developed overall musculature;narrower hips, lighter calves; higher levels of plasma testosterone; faster patellar tendon reflex in the knee; and a higher percentage of fast-twitch muscles and more anaerobic enzymes, which can translate into more explosive energy. Blacks in general have heavier skeletons and less body fat—key genetic hindrances when it comes to such sports as competitive swimming

“Evolution has shaped body types and in part athletic possibilities,” Joseph Graves, Jr. told me. Graves, who is African American, is an evolutionary biologist at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and UNC Greensboro. “Don’t expect an Eskimo to show up on an NBA court or a Watusi to win the world weight lifting championship. Differences don’t necessarily correlate with skin color, but rather with geography and climate. Endurance runners are more likely to come from East Africa and sprinters from West Africa. That’s a fact. Genes play a major role in this.”

Resurrecting racism?

Are we resurrecting racism by talking about sports in such stark black and white terms? Not at all. It’s the exaggeration, not the factual core of truth that human “populations” exist that stirs fear and ire. The difficulty, of course, is sorting out how much of a trait is genetically inbred, how much may be shaped by culture and opportunity and what is just plain poppycock.

Limiting the rhetorical use of folk categories such as race, an admirable goal, is not going to make the patterned biological variation on which they are based disappear. The question is no longer whether these inquiries will continue but in what manner and to what end. If we hope to conquer human disease and usher in a era of personalized medicine, we need to understand the way evolution has shaped disease. And that’s where sport comes into play.

Using sports to interrogate the complex story of human biodiversity offers some unique advantages to the fair minded amongst us. Despite considerable off-the-field disparities, professional athletics remains one of the most racially and ethnically diverse professions in the world. It is the ultimate level playing field, albeit with its share of bumps and gullies. Individual athletes earn respect on the field, not by the privilege of their birth. Sports offer a unique definitiveness: there is only one high scorer, one swimmer who touches first or one runner who breaks the tape.

There’s no need to make consideration of race in sports a taboo. In fact, sports provide the most rigid laboratory control possible—the level playing field—to guide us through the thicket of ideological correctness. Yes, celebrate the marvelous individual accomplishments we’ve witnessed in London…bask in the real story behind The DNA Olympics. At some point, your life might depend upon on it.

Jon Entine, author of Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It and Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People, is founding director of the Genetic Literacy Project at the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University.

 

[Neofight]

Still happens with white WRs too. Nothing to see here.

True, but there are more slow white WRs than fast ones, but plenty of black QBs that are just as good as their white counterparts in every facet of the position. There's not too many fast white wrs.

But there you go doing the exact same thing. You're telling me that Wes Welker, Ed MaCaffrey and Eric Decker all fit the same mold. Get over yourself. Racism isn't about perception like the media and people like you want it to be. It's about opportunity. Last I checked, everybody has the same opportunity to succede in the NFL or anywhere for that matter. MLK would be offended that you are offended by this.

I know thread like this make some people feel uncomfortable, I understand that, but the fact remains what I'm saying is true. I just thought we should be further past this by now, that is all.

I saw someone compare RGIII to Steve Young. I saw someone compare Russell Wilson to Drew Brees.

I can see both of these, though RGIII's throwing motion and escapability remind me more of Randall Cunningham than Young (closet racist). I'd add that after this year you will hear a lot more people comparing Matt Ryan to Tom Brady (hat tip to Pat Kirwan, who is the first national writer I can recall saying this [Kirwan is a closet reverse racist]).

 

[FreeBaGeL]

I saw someone compare RGIII to Steve Young. I saw someone compare Russell Wilson to Drew Brees.

I can see both of these, though RGIII's throwing motion and escapability remind me more of Randall Cunningham than Young (closet racist). I'd add that after this year you will hear a lot more people comparing Matt Ryan to Tom Brady (hat tip to Pat Kirwan, who is the first national writer I can recall saying this [Kirwan is a closet reverse racist]).

The Wilson to Brees comparison comes up because they're both on the short end for NFL QBs.It's very heightist. Why are short QBs always compared to one another? I'm going to start a thread on the matter.

 

[VaTerp]

It's years and years and years after professional sports integrated.

And the huge majority of great QB's are still white guys. And the huge majority of successful black QB's are still successful in large part because of their running ability.

And the huge majority of great RB's, WR's, and CB's are black guys.

And the huge majority of great track sprinters are black guys.

And the huge majority of great baseball pitchers are white guys.

All the political correctness in the world doesn't change the indisputable data. The white body is, in general, and on average, better designed to throw than the black body. The black build is, in general, and on average, better designed to run than the white body.

We can pretend it's not true all we want.

American sprinting legend, Michael Johnson, wholeheartedly agrees...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-michael-johnson-slave-descendants-make-better-athletes-20120705,0,7290180.story

Michael Johnson is a sprinter, not an anatomist or anthropologist.It has much more to do with social construct than perceived body type differences.

But it doesn't require you to be an anatomist or an anthropolgist. It just reqquires you to be honest which many people feel uncomfortable being regarding race in our PC age.The fact is that all sprinting champions can trace their ancestry back to West Africa. Nearly all Olympic medals in the throwing events (shot put, discus, javelin) have been won by by people of European origin.

Then when we apply those seemingly obvious base talents to team sports we see that they translate. Basebal pitchers are disproportionately white compared to black pitchers. Football QBs are disproportionately white compared to other positions where arm strength isn't an advantage, and black players dominate in positions where sprinting speed is an advantage.

But, if you don't trust your own eyes and deductive reasoning, here's a science based article on the topic that was out around the time of the Olympics.

The DNA Olympics -- Jamaicans Win Sprinting 'Genetic Lottery' -- and Why We Should All Care

Jon Entine, author of Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It,” takes stock of the DNA London Olympics–where, as usual, African-descended athletes swept the running events while whites and Asians dominated in the water sports, field competition and strength events. What’s going on here?

FORBES

Segregation was on display in London over the past two weeks–which, surprisingly, should spark no concerns and may even help educate us all about the wonders of human biodiversity. Let me explain.

Led by 100-meter world record holder Usain Bolt, Jamaican men swept the sprinting events at the London Olympics. It was a stunning feat for the small Caribbean nation. But as part of a broader trend, it’s hardly surprising. Runners of West African descent are the fastest humans on earth.

For decades, a bushel of developing countries—Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts, Barbados, Grenada, Netherlands Antilles and the Bahamas in the Caribbean and Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Namibia in western Africa, as single countries, have each produced more elite male sprinters than all of white Europe and Asia combined. Yet West African descended runners are laggards at the longer races.

Remarkably, the story of East African runners is the mirror image of the West African success story. While terrible at the sprints, runners from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Somalia, along with a sprinkling of North and Southern Africans, regularly dominate endurance running.

And if you are an Asian or white runner? Forgetaboutit.

Unlike the props and costumes required for, say, fencing, or the intense coaching demanded of gymnastics, running requires only that you lace ‘em up. Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila proved this quite memorably in the 1960 Rome Olympics, when—shoeless, coachless and inexperienced—he won the marathon.

Running is a natural laboratory for the science of sports. It’s empirically driven. There are winners and losers. No soft-headed sociological mumbo-jumbo allowed.

The fact is, over the past fifty years, as the barriers to competition, at least for men, have gradually eroded, and equality of opportunity has steadily spread to vast sections of once poverty-stricken Asia and Africa, one might have expected that running results would have become more democratic. The medal podium should look like a rainbow of racial equality, a United Nations of sports. But just the opposite has happened.

The trends are eye opening: Athletes of African ancestry hold every major male running record, from the 100 meters to the marathon. (Although these same trends hold for female runners, the pattern is more dominant among male runners. This analysis focuses on men because the playing field for them is far more level, as social taboos remain that restrict female access to sports in many parts of the world.) Over the last seven Olympic men’s 100-meter races, all 56 finalists have been of West African descent. Only two non-African runners, France’s Christophe Lemaire, who is white, and Australia’s Irish-aboriginal Patrick Johnson, have cracked the top 500 100-meter times. There are no elite Asian sprinters—or, intriguingly, any from East or North Africa.

Cultural myths

What’s going on here? The most frequently heard explanation is that African athletes just work harder at running. It’s one of their few outlets, the story goes, to escape the trap of limited opportunities. There’s a tradition of running that young athletes emulate; they’ve been running to school since kindergarten; they train harder for a chance at the golden ring that athletic success offers; or athletes from other parts of the world have developed a toxic inferiority complex, a fear of ‘black athletes’; blah, blah,blah.

National Public Radio recently carried just such a speculative piece on Kenya, and CNN had its own version on Jamaica. Never did the word “genetics” find its way into the story. It’s all nurture, they concluded—the long since scientifically discredited tabula rasa theory of human achievement that attributes all success to individual effort and societal “forces.”

No one outside of the most politically correct circles really believes that. Certainly scientists don’t. The director of the Copenhagen Muscle Research Institute, Bengt Saltin, the world’s premier expert in human performance and race, has concluded that an athlete’s “environment” accounts for no more than 20-25 percent of athletic ability. The rest comes down to the roll of the genetic dice—with each population group having distinct advantages. In other words, running success is “in the genes.”

Here are the facts. Athletic achievements, like success of all kind, is a bio-cultural phenomenon. Yes, Usain Bolt earned his victories. He may have been born gifted but he has worked his tail off to achieve greatness. He and he alone is responsible for his gold medal haul. But thumans are not blank slates. While culture, environment, individual initiative and just plain luck might influence which individuals succeed, nature—your DNA—circumscribes the possibility of even being in the game. This is population genetics 101. Bolt and his Jamaican teammates are members of a tiny slice of the world population—elite athletes who trace their ancestry to western and central Africa—whose body types and physiology have been uniquely shaped by thousands of years of evolution to run fast.

Genetically linked, highly heritable characteristics such as skeletal structure, the distribution of muscle fiber types (for example, sprinters have more natural fast twitch fibers, while distance runners are naturally endowed with more of the slow twitch variety), reflex capabilities, metabolic efficiency and lung capacity are not evenly distributed among populations. Do we yet know the specific genes that contribute to on the field success? No, but that’s not an argument against the powerful role of genetics in sports. We do not yet know all the factors that determine skin color, but we know that genetics determines it. Slowly, geneticists will link human performance, including sports skills, to our DNA and more specifically to our ancestral roots—populations.

This is uncontroversial and incontrovertible science even to anti-hereditarian ideologues. British biologist Steven Rose, one of the world’s most famous critics of biological determinism, recently wrote, “There are…probably genetic as well as environmental reasons why Ethiopians make good marathon runners whereas Nigerians on the whole do not.”

Yet the subject remains a prickly one to many journalists and the ‘liberal’ chattering classes. Michael Johnson stirred quite a controversy last month in London when the 400-meter world record holder postulated that black sprinters benefit from the outsized presence of ACTN3. The “speed gene” as it’s been dubbed, makes fast twitch muscles twitch fast. Lacking the ACTN3 protein does not seem to have any harmful health effects, but does affect running ability. Scientists conclude that it is almost impossible for someone who lacks the ACTN3 protein to become an elite sprinter. Those of African ancestry have the lowest incidence of the mutation that prevents the muscles from firing.

Is this running’s “smoking gun” gene? No. Sports ability, like IQ, is the product of many genes with environmental triggers influencing the “expression” of our base DNA. But its isolation does underscore that when it comes to performance, genes matter.

Why touch this third rail of race? After all, as UCLA’s Jared Diamond has noted, “Even today, few scientists dare to study racial origins, lest they be branded racists just for being interested in the subject.”

As I explained in Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It, athletic achievement has long been a Catch-22 for blacks in general and African Americans in particular. In the early part of the 20th century, when blacks first got a chance to compete in sports, every defeat encouraged simplistic, racist beliefs that blacks were an inferior “race,” too frail to handle extreme physical challenges and not smart enough to plan a race strategy.

Even winning didn’t shatter the stereotype; racist whites just created a new one. When Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, shocking the Nazi hosts, a diametrically opposed but equally noxious myth became cemented: black athletes succeed because of their “natural” athleticism. As for the potential for black coaches or managers to succeed? Well…ask Al Campanis about that.

Black success in sports in every aspect of sports, particularly as coaches, managers and executives, has shattered that stereotype. But the pendulum has swung to hard the other way, from pure determinism to pure sociological speculation. Success in sports is now primarily attributed almost solely to hard work and cultural factors. In the light of what we know about genetics, that very American, egalitarian belief meme is too glib, simplistic and maybe even dangerous.

The hard truth is that we cannot avoid confronting the fact of our patterned human biodiversity. Over the past decade, human genome research has moved from a study of human similarities to a focus on population-based differences. Such research offers clues to solving the mystery of disease, the Holy Grail of genetics. So why do we readily accept that evolution has turned out Jews with a genetic predisposition to Tay-Sachs, Southeast Asians with a higher proclivity for beta-thalassemia and blacks who are susceptible to colorectal cancer and sickle cell disease, yet find it racist to suggest that Usain Bolt can thank his West African ancestry for the most critical part of his success—his biological possibility?

“Differences among athletes of elite caliber are so small,” said Robert Malina, a retired Michigan State University anthropologist and former editor of the Journal of Human Genetics, “that if you have a physique or the ability to fire muscle fibers more efficiently that might be genetically based … it might be very, very significant. The fraction of a second is the difference between the gold medal and fourth place.”

Bio-cultural athletic hotspots

Indeed, the empirical evidence makes hash of the myth that culture is most responsible for making the athlete. Look at Kenya: with but 43 million people, this comparatively tiny country holds more than one third of top times in distance races. What explains this phenomenon? It’s in their culture, say many social scientists. Kenyans dominate distance races because they “naturally trained” as children—by running back and forth to school, for example.

“That’s just silly,” Kenyan-born Wilson Kipketer told me. Kipketer currently holds 8 of the 17 all-time fastest 800-meter times, a middle distance track event. “I lived right next door to school,” he laughed, dismissing cookie-cutter explanations. “I walked, nice and slow.” What motivated him to pursue running? Like most young Kenyans, while growing up Kipketer hoped that he migh catch the eye of a coach who combs the countryside to find the next generation of budding stars. He had dreams of being cheered as he entered the National Stadium in Nairobi.

Only one problem: the national sport, the hero worship, the adoring fans, the social channeling—that all speaks to Kenya’s enduring love affair with soccer, not running. But Kipketer, like most Kenyans, was not very good at soccer; Kenyans and East Africans in general tend to be short and slender with large natural lung capacity and a preponderance of slow twitch muscles. The body type of the classic East African distance runner—like marathon gold medal winner Stephen Kiprotich of Uganda and the Kenyans and Ethiopians who followed just behind—were forged by nature in the Rift Valley and highlands of eastern Africa. The result is a a perfect biomechanical package for endurance running but a disaster for sports that require anaerobic bursts, like sprinting or soccer. Indeed, Kenya’s fastest 100-meter time, 10.26, is well more than a half second slower than Bolt’s world record. There are more than 5,000 times ranked higher than Kenya’s best. East Africans—a different population group than central and West Africans—are relative slow pokes over short distances.

Although people in every population come in all shapes and sizes, body types and physiological characteristics follow a Gaussian distribution curve as a result of evolutionary adaptations by our ancestors to extremely varied environmental challenges. Elite sports showcase these differences. Asians, on average, tend to be smaller with shorter extremities and long torsos—evolutionary adaptations to harsh climes encountered by Homo sapiens who migrated to Northeast Asia 40,000 years ago. China, for example, excels in many Olympic sports, for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons, according to geneticists, is that they are more flexible on average—a potential advantage in diving, gymnastics (hence the term “Chinese splits”) and figure skating.

Whites of Eurasian ancestry are mesomorphic: they have larger and relatively more muscular bodies with comparatively short limbs and thick torsos. No prototypical sprinter or marathoner here. These proportions are advantageous in sports in which strength rather than speed is at a premium. Predictably, Eurasians dominate weightlifting, wrestling and most field events, such as the shot put and hammer. At the London Olympics, with the exception of North Korea, the top lifters come from a band of Eurasian countries: China, Kazakhstan, Iran, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine. Despite the image of the sculpted African body, no African nation won an Olympic lifting medal.

What about West Africans and North American, Caribbean and European blacks who trace their ancestry to the Middle Passage? They generally have: bigger, more developed overall musculature;narrower hips, lighter calves; higher levels of plasma testosterone; faster patellar tendon reflex in the knee; and a higher percentage of fast-twitch muscles and more anaerobic enzymes, which can translate into more explosive energy. Blacks in general have heavier skeletons and less body fat—key genetic hindrances when it comes to such sports as competitive swimming

“Evolution has shaped body types and in part athletic possibilities,” Joseph Graves, Jr. told me. Graves, who is African American, is an evolutionary biologist at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and UNC Greensboro. “Don’t expect an Eskimo to show up on an NBA court or a Watusi to win the world weight lifting championship. Differences don’t necessarily correlate with skin color, but rather with geography and climate. Endurance runners are more likely to come from East Africa and sprinters from West Africa. That’s a fact. Genes play a major role in this.”

Resurrecting racism?

Are we resurrecting racism by talking about sports in such stark black and white terms? Not at all. It’s the exaggeration, not the factual core of truth that human “populations” exist that stirs fear and ire. The difficulty, of course, is sorting out how much of a trait is genetically inbred, how much may be shaped by culture and opportunity and what is just plain poppycock.

Limiting the rhetorical use of folk categories such as race, an admirable goal, is not going to make the patterned biological variation on which they are based disappear. The question is no longer whether these inquiries will continue but in what manner and to what end. If we hope to conquer human disease and usher in a era of personalized medicine, we need to understand the way evolution has shaped disease. And that’s where sport comes into play.

Using sports to interrogate the complex story of human biodiversity offers some unique advantages to the fair minded amongst us. Despite considerable off-the-field disparities, professional athletics remains one of the most racially and ethnically diverse professions in the world. It is the ultimate level playing field, albeit with its share of bumps and gullies. Individual athletes earn respect on the field, not by the privilege of their birth. Sports offer a unique definitiveness: there is only one high scorer, one swimmer who touches first or one runner who breaks the tape.

There’s no need to make consideration of race in sports a taboo. In fact, sports provide the most rigid laboratory control possible—the level playing field—to guide us through the thicket of ideological correctness. Yes, celebrate the marvelous individual accomplishments we’ve witnessed in London…bask in the real story behind The DNA Olympics. At some point, your life might depend upon on it.

Jon Entine, author of Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It and Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People, is founding director of the Genetic Literacy Project at the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University.

I'm very familiar with Entine's work which is very loosely based on "science" and has been widely criticized and debunked by many. The fact is that there is more genetic variance within races than there is between them. I'm not going to claim to be an expert by any stretch but I've done a lot of research on this topic for a graduate paper I did many years ago and it's still a topic of great interest to me. In general, conversations on race go down hill quickly because people become defensive and accusatory. Personally, I have no problem discussing the issue and there are many, many angles and factors to discuss. Based on everything I've read it is my opinion, strong opinion that the racial disparities we see in sports are almost all social construct rather than any unproven genetic advantages/disadvantages.

 

[Neofight]

I saw someone compare RGIII to Steve Young. I saw someone compare Russell Wilson to Drew Brees.

I can see both of these, though RGIII's throwing motion and escapability remind me more of Randall Cunningham than Young (closet racist). I'd add that after this year you will hear a lot more people comparing Matt Ryan to Tom Brady (hat tip to Pat Kirwan, who is the first national writer I can recall saying this [Kirwan is a closet reverse racist]).

The Wilson to Brees comparison comes up because they're both on the short end for NFL QBs.It's very heightist. Why are short QBs always compared to one another? I'm going to start a thread on the matter.

Actually, the Wilson and Brees comparison is more about their competitive streak, discipline, leadership and preparation to me (and a lot of people whose opinions I respect). But yeah, they're short for QB's. Russell has freakishly large hands though; so at least he has that going for him...

 

[FreeBaGeL]

For fun, I went back and googled "xxxxx NFL Comparison" for all of the black QBs drafted since 2007 (after that it got hard to find results) and picked out the first article that came up comparing them to another NFL player. Here are the results:Cam Newton:

Think Big Ben when trying to project Newton's NFL impact

RG3:

Robert Griffin III: Comparing NFL Draft Pick to John Elway

Russell Wilson:

He stopped short of guaranteeing Wilson's success, but he saw parallels between Wilson and Drew Brees

Tyrod Taylor:

Is Tyrod Taylor the next Vick?

Josh Freeman:

Ryan Tannehill: Comparing NFL Draft Pick to Josh Freeman ...

Pat White:

Russell Wilson's NFL Draft Status Hurt by Pat White : The XLog

JaMarcus Russell:

The skill level that JaMarcus Russell has is certainly John Elway-like

 

[Reepicheep]

I still remember the time a good female friend of mine, after taking some loony toon liberal arts class in college, tried to explain to me that the reason men were better athletes than women, was social constructs.

 

[Csonka4life]

Younger posters might not remember this but around 90', the NFL had about 4 black qb's in the league. So who were they going to compare prospects like Mcnair or Cunningham a few years earlier to? I remember when Cunningham was rookie they said he would revolutionize the position and took a blend of various White qb's over the years ie Tarkenton, Bradshaw and others. So the Black qb vs Black qb comparison is fairly recent.

 

[Goldalene]

Why do people still compare black athletic qbs to each other. You hardly ever hear white qbs compared to each other. I thought we would have moved past this by now.

Their is a very interesting topic of discussion called 'shadow projecting'.Shadow projecting is when an individual or group of people project their own dark shadowns onto others.

Classic examples are Nazi Germany projecting evils that they had within their own phyche upon whom they considered outside groups of people, Gypsies, Jews, Slavs, any who they felt were, physically, mentally or socially, inferior.

The thing that is mentioned often but many do not grasp is that some of the top Nazi had Jewish blood and even insantity in their bloodlines that the sin of having mixed blood with undesireables may have been what motivated the greatest madmen in history including Hitler and his number two in charge Rienhard Heydrich who would have taken over if Hitler was killed. Heydrich was a quarter Jewish and he is the one who came up with the plan for the final solution. Hitler was part Jewish and had a historyy of insantity in his family and felt soo threatened by his Jewish past that he annialated his home town and put his mentally affected sister into hiding and eventually had her put to death.

Nazi Germany is at the extreme end of shadow projection. In lessor ways we all do the same thing on smaller levels individually and as groups. That person looks shady, or those darn___ plug in any group you think are infereor to the group that you identify with.

Their was a study done a few years ago with sports fanatics and the conclusions were interesting.

They found that the most ardent sports fanatics suffered from low self esteeem and when they shouted and yelled and cursed other sports teams or the groups that followed those other teams that by cursing and shouting at others that the sports fanatics who suffered from low self esteem thought by bullying others into submission that it somehow would boost their low self esteem.

Interesting eh?

Bringing this back to limiting this to a loaded race quuestion. It could be that we all project our own individual evils onto others in order to make us feel better. Or maybe their really are evil guys out there just itching to get us with with racist comparisons.

Probably not.

I think it's important to point out that the idea Hitler had Jewish ancestry is based on a tiny chance, with no hard evidence, not commonly accepted by historians.

 

[footballnerd]

I don't think this is as big a deal as you think it is.

Cam vs Vick and now RG3 vs Cam vs Vick. Just to name a few.

Who on earth could you compare Cam to athletically? Elway perhaps? Even then Cam has a size and speed that we haven't seen before.RG3 is in a class of his own as well. I compare him to Young, but he's got athleticism closer to Vick.

Fran Tarkenton was very athletic in his prime and Rodger Staubach was too early in his career. Bobby Douglas was very athletic and could run like crazy, but he was a pathetic passing QB.

now how about QBs that the rest of us have actually seen?I think its more about comparing QBs with similar styles than what you're suggesting

 

[Jewell]

I think it's important to point out that the idea Hitler had Jewish ancestry is based on a tiny chance, with no hard evidence, not commonly accepted by historians.

There's lots of unsubstantiated folklore regarding Hitler. I'm sure we've all heard the tale of how Hitler snubbed Jesse Owens, and the Germans treated Owens poorly. You can trust the folklore or you can trust Owens himself...Jesse Owens: “Hitler didn't snub me — it was FDR who snubbed me." - quoted in Triumph, a book about the 1936 Olympics by Jeremy Schaap

http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth10.htm

-- Jesse Owens' reception by the German public and the spectators in the Olympic stadium was warm. There were German cheers of “Yesseh Oh-vens” or just “Oh-vens” from the crowd. Owens was a true celebrity in Berlin, mobbed by autograph seekers to the point that he complained about all the attention. He later claimed that his reception in Berlin was greater than any other he had ever experienced, and he was quite popular even before the Olympics.

-- Prior to his departure, Hitler had received a number of winners, but Olympic officials informed the German leader that in the future he must receive all of the winners or none at all. After the first day, he opted to acknowledge none. Jesse Owens had his victories on the second day, when Hitler was no longer in attendance. Would Hitler have snubbed Owens if he had been in the stadium on day two? Perhaps. But since he wasn't there, he didn't.