African American Football Stereotypes

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starter 8-9 when counting playoffs and a 38-42-1 record as a regular season starter, Williams also finished 100 passing touchdowns, and 15 rushing touchdowns, in 88 NFL games. No African American quarterbacks entered the league for five years After Williams.
During Williams Super Bowl run there weren’t many African American Quarterbacks to pick from the litter but after 1984, the landscape of what a black quarterback could do in the NFL changed forever after a quarterback of the name of Warren Moon joined the Canadian Football League in 1978, and instantly led his Edmonton Eskimos to the Grey Cup title in each of his first five seasons. He set the single season passing record and won the Most Outstanding Player award In 1983 and had not set …show more content…
One of the most prevalent stereotypes in sports is that of the Black quarterback. Both Rush Limbaugh and even former sports commentator Jimmy the Greek, have caught backlash for their philosophies on African-American quarterbacks. Jimmy’s explanation of how African Americans were bred for physical skill but whites were bred for intelligence was blatant racist and a hint at the past slavery institution, but there have been many more subtle ways at implying the same point. Limbaugh was quoted as saying “Sorry to say this, I don’t think he’s been that good from the get-go . . .. What we have here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a Black quarterback can do well—Black coaches and Black quarterbacks doing well . . .. There’s a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got credit for the performance of his team that he didn’t deserve. The defense [has] carried this team”(Hartmann, D. 2007). There were even racial implications heading into the most recent Super Bowl. Panthers’ Cam Newton had been criticized for dancing, and even wearing a towel over his head he was a magnet for criticism. The media criticized Newton for always …show more content…
The majority of the NFL media is made up of White men, reporting on a sport that is majority Black. Some of the concerns of the African American NFL players on that scale are described in a sense when most people think about the media they think about white male, probably 35-45 years old when you think about people who portray the media, so that’s about 90% of the people who are covering the NFL (Lapchick, 2014), a league that is majority African American is covered by media personnel that is majority white male although the landscape is slowly changing. Pertaining to the people who are reporting the news, if you can’t identify with the players in some light, which most of the media are white males writing on a sport that is predominately African American their opinions may be somewhat skewed and
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