Story on ESPN <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3025308">here</a>.
What do you think? The morning show that Daniel and I watch, "Mike & Mike in the Morning," had an interesting discussion about it. For those who haven't seen the show, Mike Golic is a former football player, and Mike Greenberg is a sports journalist. Both are white; Greenberg is Jewish. When they talked about this issue, Golic was very adamant that McNabb's claim wasn't based in reality, and seemed to think that McNabb was disrespecting other athletes by reducing the public perception of their performance to "black and white." I was surprised by Greenberg's answer to that -- he got very serious, and said that both hosts get a lot of mail both good and bad, and that "we both know that people say things to me that they don't say to you." Meaning openly racist comments. He said that for someone who hears as much criticism as an NFL quarterback, the number of both openly and subtly racist comments would get to feel overwhelming very fast, and that his own conversations with McNabb have shown that he is someone who takes criticism pretty hard.
I think that "who gets more criticism" is a pretty meaningless question, since every player is different. Does Rex Grossman hear less criticism than LaDainian Tomlinson? Um, no. :p And here in DC the Redskins fans have been far less critical of Jason Campbell than they were of Mark Brunell. Do we have different standards of good performance depending on race? I'm sure a lot of people do, but it's not something that can be proven.
The thing for me is that the discussion I've heard and seen about the interview has focused on that one "they don't get criticized as much" comment. The rest of McNabb's points, IMO, were more compelling -- that there's still a lot of pressure on black quarterbacks, as if they need to prove that they deserve to be playing that position. Reading that sort of made it click to me why so many people in the African-American community are so loyal to Michael Vick, because black quarterbacks are seen as making a kind of progress for their whole community. I can see how that would be a difficult emotional situation -- the kind of mistake people make every day, dropping a ball or tripping on your sneakers, turns into a betrayal.
Mostly I'm just very, very glad that I'll never be a professional athlete. Even making QB money would not be worth that kind of stress to me. From the sound of things, it might not be totally worth it to McNabb, either.
I'm curious to hear the thoughts of people who actually know about football, instead of just trying to fake it like me.
