Enough with 'the 'Black Quaterback' stuff.
How about this for earth shatering NFL 'news'
All Starting Cornerbacks are WHITE!
(Has Diversity Gone Too Far?)
/s
Posted on 01/22/2005 6:07:42 AM PST by randita
Saturday, January 22, 2005, 12:00 A.M. Pacific
NFL Blacks at QB? No big deal
By Greg Bishop Seattle Times staff reporter
Wherever Warren Moon went, death threats and hate mail and racism were never far behind. The reasons for it were at once simple and complex, ignorant and prevalent, a dark side of American sports culture that somehow missed the civil rights movement.
Warren Moon is black. He played quarterback. And two decades ago, when Moon was starting his legendary NFL career, that was a big, big deal.
Something about a black man lining up under center made people uncomfortable, made them pour their hate onto paper stuffed into envelopes addressed to the University of Washington and the Houston Oilers, attention: Warren Moon. Made them boo and scream and threaten to take a man's life away for playing the wrong position on a football field.
Moon remembers walking off the field after games surrounded by guards with loaded weapons, even after games he won with that golden arm that threw for nearly 50,000 yards in the league that didn't want him coming out of college.
"Oh my God," he said yesterday in a phone interview. "I dealt with everything — death threats, hate mail, guards with guns. I dealt with a lot of things that people weren't aware of. I didn't talk about it because I didn't want to bring any more attention to it."
Atlanta's Michael Vick and Philadelphia's Donovan McNabb will face each other in the NFL Championship Game tomorrow.
But Moon wants to bring attention to black quarterbacks this weekend. Especially tomorrow, when Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick play against each other in the NFC Championship Game, the first time in NFL history that black quarterbacks have faced each other in a conference championship.
Moon wants you to know this: The big deal is that it isn't a big deal anymore.
He has always said that it would remain a big deal until the system changed. Until black quarterbacks were accepted in the league even if they weren't stars, until they could hold clipboards, get released and latch onto other teams as backups. Until they were booed for reasons other than their skin color.
"When I played, any team would want a black quarterback if he could be a star," Moon said. "My problem wasn't about that guy, but all the others. If you weren't a star, they didn't want anything to do with you.
"When I came out of college, there were few black quarterbacks in the league. I was overlooked. They tried to say I didn't have the arm strength or didn't have the size or all those other excuses. I knew that was a bunch of crap. They were just convenient excuses."
So Moon went to Canada to prove himself again. Eventually, he made the NFL — playing for the Oilers, the Vikings, the Seahawks and the Chiefs — and still made people uncomfortable simply because his skin color and position didn't match the ideal.
When Moon won the NFL's Man of the Year Award in 1989, the idea of black men playing quarterback was still a big deal, a relatively new concept. Only a year earlier, Doug Williams had become the first black quarterback to play in a Super Bowl, and Moon nearly teared up watching him.
Fifteen years later, Moon wants you to know it isn't a big deal anymore. Look around the league. McNabb, Vick and Daunte Culpepper are superstars. Byron Leftwich, Aaron Brooks and Steve McNair are starters. David Garrard, Kordell Stewart and Quincy Carter are backups.
It's different now, Moon says, pointing to Seneca Wallace, who runs the scout team for the Seahawks. A black quarterback being groomed for the future, instead of discarded in the present. But that doesn't mean that everything has changed.
"Look at a guy like Daunte Culpepper," Moon said. "He was still getting hate mail up in Minnesota because they lost a couple games early this season. Those are things these guys still have to deal with, even though the opportunities are better. They're still dealing with some of the same racial problems some of us had to deal with in the early days."
To that end, Moon and a group of black quarterbacks have formed a nonprofit organization called "The Field Generals." Guys like Williams and Randall Cunningham, Marlin Briscoe, James Harris and Vince Evans. Their goal is to mentor young black quarterbacks in the NFL. To become their voice. To show them how to lead and help them deal with what they're going through.
Moon talks about the black quarterbacks who came before him like a man with a sense of history. Much in the same way that McNabb and Vick have thanked him for blazing the trail they walk this very weekend.
And that's why, even though their matchup isn't as big a deal as it would have been five or 10 years ago, Moon will still beam with pride tomorrow afternoon.
"To me, that's the big significance — when two black quarterbacks play each other in the Super Bowl," Moon said. "There's no question that what's happening this weekend is big also. It lends more credence to the fact that black quarterbacks can lead their teams to championships. It's why I went through what I went through."
He paused.
"I can tell you this," he said. "It will happen soon."
Greg Bishop: 206-464-3191 or gbishop@seattletimes.com
I thought (black QB) Doug Williams put all this nonsense to rest when he led the '87 Redskins to a Super Bowl title? Have we forgotten? Going even further back, (black QB) Jame Harris was highly successsful with the L.A. Rams in the mid 70s, and his problems with racism were extremely rare.
The only people who make a big deal out of blacks playing QB are black racists themselves trying to make it look like there is big opposition to the black QB.
What do you want to bet that none of the gentlemen who have been threatened this way support concealed carry, as any sane person would do under the circumstances? Knowing that the object of your hatred was carrying a cocked and locked .45 might make you notice his skin color a little less.
Go back further. Remember Marlin Brisco as the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos?
I was talking successsful black QBs.
Enough with 'the 'Black Quaterback' stuff.
How about this for earth shatering NFL 'news'
/s
Wait, on 2nd thought.. Super "Bowel" works just fine
Wow Doug Williams. There's a blast from the past. He was on Disney World commercials, Super Bowl champ, etc.. The last time I saw him he cried on national TV because he was released by the Redskins
He was known to hang out at The Men's Club--with blonds-- and he had a problem with the law after beating up on and chasing his wife through their neighborhood at a high rate of speed. She filed charges against him but later dropped them.
I paid my money to watch Moon for years down here in Houston. He was totally overrated. The vast majority of those yards were rolled up many times when there was no pressure on. He was also no leader, and it’s one of the reasons the Oilers chocked in big games. He panicked when the chips were down.
Houston is not much of a racist city. He was welcomed with open arms. Oh sure I’m sure a few idiots might have hurled slurs, but the heat he caught was because of his play. The media adored him. He had the skids greased. He just was not a winner.
If memory serves when he won all those five Grey Cups he was the starter in only a couple of seasons. The bloom finally fell all the way of when he was arrested for beating up his wife.
The biggest Moon choke-job of all (and perhaps the biggest in the history of the NFL) was in the '93 AFC wildcard game against the Bills, when the Oilers blew a 35 - 3 halftime lead to wind up on the losing end of a 41 - 38 score.
""Look at a guy like Daunte Culpepper," Moon said. "He was still getting hate mail up in Minnesota because they lost a couple games early this season."
Moon is a racist. This statement proves it! They are getting "hate mail" for making lousy plays, not because they are black! He is a race baiting SOB just like J. Jackson!
Wow, Black men are NFL quarterbacks? I never knew.
The next thing you know a Black man will be a Supreme Court Justice or Secretrary of State.
I even saw blacks people sitting in the front of the bus yesterday.
Boy, society sure is changing.
About the only racists left are those who profit from it politically and financially. Without them racism would have ended a lot sooner.
Mr. Briscoe became the first black starting quarterback in the NFL, at the time when it was believed that African-Americans couldn't lead a team on the field. Mr. Briscoe did what no one had done before. His performance on and off the field paved the way for future minority quarterbacks. As a rookie quarterback with the Denver Broncos, Mr. Briscoe set a NFL record by throwing 14 touchdown passes in 11 games. However, he never played quarterback again. After a visit to Canada, Marlin returned to the NFL where he was named All-Pro with the Buffalo Bills and won two Superbowl rings with the 1973-74 Miami Dolphins.
From the Marlin Briscoe football camp site.
Sounds successful to me.
But I sit corrected about him not ever being a starting QB, which he was (for one year).
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