A couple of weeks ago, sportswriter Jason Whitlock pointed out:
African-American football players caught up in the rebellion and buffoonery of hip hop culture have given NFL owners and coaches a justifiable reason to whiten their rosters. That will be the legacy left by Chad, Larry and Tank Johnson, Pacman Jones, Terrell Owens, Michael Vick and all the other football bojanglers.In terms of opportunity for American-born black athletes, they're going to leave the game in far worse shape than they found it.
It's already starting to happen. A little-publicized fact is that the Colts and the Patriots — the league's model franchises — are two of the whitest teams in the NFL. If you count rookie receiver Anthony Gonzalez, the Colts opened the season with an NFL-high 24 white players on their 53-man roster. Toss in linebacker Naivote Taulawakeiaho "Freddie" Keiaho and 47 percent of Tony Dungy's defending Super Bowl-champion roster is non-African-American. Bill Belichick's Patriots are nearly as white, boasting a 23-man non-African-American roster, counting linebacker Tiaina "Junior" Seau and backup quarterback Matt Gutierrez.
For some reason, these facts are being ignored by the mainstream media. Could you imagine what would be written and discussed by the media if the Yankees and the Red Sox were chasing World Series titles with 11 African-Americans on their 25-man rosters (45 percent)?
We would be inundated with information and analysis on the social significance. Well, trust me, what is happening with the roster of the Patriots and the Colts and with Roger Goodell's disciplinary crackdown are all socially significant.
Hip hop athletes are being rejected because they're not good for business and, most important, because they don't contribute to a consistent winning environment. Herm Edwards said it best: You play to win the game.
I'm sure when we look up 10 years from now and 50 percent — rather than 70 percent — of NFL rosters are African-American, some Al Sharpton wannabe is going to blame the decline on a white-racist plot.
Back in October 2005, Inductivist did a statistical analysis for my VDARE.com article showing that in the 2.3 seasons he looked at -- 2003, 2004, and early 2005 -- that NFL teams with more white second stringers won more games. The correlation between the racial makeup of the starters and percentage of games won was close to zero, suggesting that teams rationally evaluated their starting line-ups. But, it appeared that, at least in 2003-early2005, teams with whiter benches did better, suggesting there had been an under-exploited opportunity to win more games:
Why would having more white nonstarters help a team? Caste Football’s J.D. Cash has suggested that perhaps white utility players are more likely to master the playbooks for multiple positions (as suggested by their higher average IQ scores on the Wonderlic test mandated by the NFL).
Or, possibly, the reason that teams with a higher number of white reserves have been winning more games is because whites are better team players about sitting on the bench without complaining about not starting. Perhaps white back-ups are less likely than black back-ups to poison the atmosphere and ruin the team spirit.
After all, our society for the last 40 years has lavishly encouraged blacks to claim to be victims of injustice, so it would hardly be surprising if, among pampered egotistical athletes, whites might tend to be more likely than blacks to keep quiet for the good of the team when they feel they are being treated unfairly.
Whatever the reason for this pattern, this quick study, while not definitive, is important news—both to team officials in charge of player personnel choices and also to anyone who likes to bet on football games.
It would pay to extend the study over more years to see if it represents a long-term pattern, and to go into more depth to find the reasons for this apparent market failure.
Anyway, there's now a couple of years more data, so somebody might want to check and see if this pattern persisted.
Posts
14 comments:
This Slate essay, comparing Michael Vick with Peyton Manning, looks even stupider with the passage of time.
If someone decides to take up what Steve suggests in looking at player rosters and success in subsequent seasons from what the Inductivist did, please make it known here in the next couple of days. I will crunch the numbers if other readers do not plan on doing so.
The distribution of assets -- athletic, characterological, and team play -- doesn't appear to be conclusive in any way, until it's applied to specific sports.
Team play is probably more important in football than in any other sport. That would be consistent with football's slow turning away from primadonnas who can't be bothered with such things. In other sports, however, we see a different result. Consider basketball, which has grown to be a largely non-team game in recent years: that is, it's dominated by individual performers. Statistically, black basketball players behave at least as badly as black football players, but they're allowed more latitude.
When commercial incentives are posed against characterological ones, it's never certain which ones will triumph. When they synergize, the outcome can hardly be in doubt. But determining which paradigm a particular case occupies is the first necessity -- and often the one most difficult to meet.
It seems that as NBA basketball gets "blacker" and more international, the game has moved away from plays such as the pick-and-roll to a more polished version of "Street Ball".
Conversely, as the NFL playbook has gotten more and more complex, we see more cream being added to the coffee.
Steve,
I did an analysis of last year's season and found the same pattern of results.
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2007/02/more-evidence-that-white-nfl-players.html
I keep wondering if the reason for the rising number of whites in the NFL isn't increased steroid use. I'm not a biologist, I may be way off, but wouldn't steroids go some way to negating the advantages in explosive speed that come from West African musculature?
The late Bill Walsh talked about how hard it was to convince people in football to play the West Coast Offense even after a couple of superbowl wins. Football tends to be very conservative, unfriendly to innovators even if they win. Likely it's the uncertainty in coaching. More secure coaches are likelier to innovate.
Nevertheless, changing the roster up a bit might make the difference between winning and losing a few games and making the playoffs, which could keep a coach/GM his job.
Basketball is different -- no one really cares about winning, all that's important is winning scoring titles and making ESPN highlights.
This Slate essay, comparing Michael Vick with Peyton Manning, looks even stupider with the passage of time.
Perhaps the article is not designed to be factually precise, but meant to generate momentum towards a certain social goal. In other words, the article is another example of "we create our own reality".
The drive to convert the NFL quarterback position from white-dominated to black-dominated is deliberate social engineering. The goal of the neo-Marxists is to remove heterosexual Christian white men from positions of authority and influence in this country. Knocking whitey out of the quarterback position would be a major coup that should not be underestimated. The white quarterback is a gigantic hero figure for white boys and girls.
The massive program to recruit Caribbean, and South American MLB players is another front of this attack. And, yes, the rules of NBA basketball have been non-enforced as policy to accommodate the black game. And, yes, there is a U.S. media blackout on the white boxing champions who have emerged from Russia and Eastern Europe post Berlin Wall.
All of this social engineering prepares white children psychologically for their marginalized existence in the New America.
If this past spring's immigration fiasco didn't wake you up, nothing will. Our government and media elites are electing a new people. To the extent that they can get away with it, they are marginalizing the ostensibly Christian white U.S.A. in the past, present and future.
I've always found it interesting that at the high school level in Texas, all-black schools -- ones that typically place quite a few players in Division I college football programs -- never seem to win state championships.
My own kid's school is undefeated this year with a lineup that is about 95 percent white. I doubt any of those players will win Division I scholarships. Yet among the teams they've beaten are several majority-black or all-black squads that feature very high-profile college prospects, some the sons of former NFLers.
And I'm not talking inner-city here ... these are suburban blacks.
On a related note, one of our local all-black middle school teams is infamous for showing up late for games or going to the wrong stadium and having to forfeit.
I keep wondering if the reason for the rising number of whites in the NFL isn't increased steroid use. I'm not a biologist, I may be way off, but wouldn't steroids go some way to negating the advantages in explosive speed that come from West African musculature?
No, not if they're all using gear. The difference goes beyond just musculature: it's in the morphometrics of the black athletes also.
Steve covered this before, but black athletes tend to have broader shoulders, narrower hips, and shorter torsos, which allows them to turn more quickly and also increases how mesomorphic they are. Mesomorphs can put on muscle much more easily without compound lifts and massive calorie consumption.
Anonymous said:
"I'll admit to black dominance in sprinting, but only up to the 400. The best in that event is Jeremy Warriner, a white American."
There are 11 individual running events contested in the Olympics (100, 200, 400, 800, 1500, 5000, 10,000, 3000 steeplechase, 110 high hurdles, 400 hurdles, and the marathon.) If you take the top 10 individuals all-time in each event, people of sub Saharan ancestry total 89 out of 110. Almost 81 percent.
Jeremy Wariner is the only white in the top 10 all time in the 400.
"The massive program to recruit Caribbean, and South American MLB players is another front of this attack.... And, yes, there is a U.S. media blackout on the white boxing champions who have emerged from Russia and Eastern Europe post Berlin Wall."
Good grief. First, the Caribbean players generally are among the best players. Are you really denying that Albert Pujols and David Ortiz, for example, are great players? Second, people lost interest in boxing a long time ago (when it was still black-dominated, if that makes you feel better); I don't think the media are obligated to artificially try to revive interest in a forgotten sport now that some non-American whites have turned out to be good at it.
Majority white Ohio State sure displayed their athletic dominance in last year's BCS championship game. Hey at least Tim Teabow was one of that game's stars.
"And, yes, there is a U.S. media blackout on the white boxing champions who have emerged from Russia and Eastern Europe post Berlin Wall."
Boxing's problems are self-inflicted. Too many belt-awarding associations, too long between championship fights, etc. It's tough to stay interested in fighters like Wladimir Klitschko when they are only fighting once a year. Every fight seems to be preceded by an epic legal struggle. I don't think race is really a factor here. Arguably the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport is black (Floyd Mayweather, Jr.), and he's only able to sell pay-per-views when fighting boxers with bigger followings (e.g., Oscar de la Hoya and Ricky Hatton).
Mixed Martial Arts has stolen a lot of boxing's thunder, partly by the tight ship the UFC runs. They run their championship fights every month or two; there's a billboard by where I live, and two days after a UFC pay-per-view, the billboard's back up with the date of the next one and the names and pics of the main event fighters. The UFC also has the reality show on Spike, and does other stuff to build a fan base, like taking the UFC shows on the road across the country, instead of having nearly every big bout in Las Vegas. And for what it's worth, MMA is whiter than boxing is.
Post a Comment