bobbyw24
10-08-2009, 10:43 AM
Blackballed?
by Steve Sailer on October 07, 2009
Let’s celebrate diversity! In Division 1-A college football, 19 of the top 20 players in rushing yards are—as sports fans expect—black. Yet, the #1 rusher is a white guy.
Toby Gerhart, Stanford’s 235-pound tailback, has piled up 650 yards on the ground to power lowly Stanford to a 4-1 overall record and a Pac-10 leading 3-0 conference mark. He had 134 yards on the ground in Stanford’s victory Saturday over 4-0 UCLA, which had been ranked 9th in the country in defense against the run. The previous week Gerhart had rushed for 200 yards in beating Washington, conqueror of USC.
Gerhart has been the most valuable running back in college football so far this season because Stanford doesn’t have much else going for it. Every defense knows Gerhart will be coming at them, but they haven’t stopped him yet.
Still, while surprising as Gerhart’s success may seem to casual sports fans (in the NFL, for example, whites have started only a handful of games at tailback all decade), it can’t be shocking to the young man himself. Gerhart set Stanford’s rushing record last with 1,136 yards and 15 touchdowns. He had played big school prep football in Southern California’s Inland Empire, where he passed Dallas Cowboy Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith for 3rd place on the all-time national high school rushing rankings with 9,662 career yards.
Of course, there are many white running backs who shine in high school. At the high school level, the game remains much less racially stratified by position. State champions tend to be Catholic schools or exurban public schools with mostly white players, some with star black running backs, some even without. (Football is an expensive and complicated business, and inner city public schools tend to be longer on talent than on resources and organization.)
At the college level, however, white players in nontraditional positions are found mostly at either remote colleges, such as Wyoming, or at academically elite schools that take their admissions requirements fairly seriously, such as the service academies. Stanford and Northwestern both start 15 whites out of 22. Gerhart, for example, scored 1810 out of 2400 on the three-part SAT—not enough to get him into Stanford as a non-athlete but a lot higher than most college tailbacks.
Caste Football has the numbers of white starters for each Division 1-A team for 2009. Some of the blackest teams tend to be private colleges willing to walk close to the edge of NCAA recruiting trouble, such asUSC and Miami.
Why are white starting tailbacks so rare in college football (at least, outside of the Mountain Time Zone)? (Football position terminology is fluid, so I’ll use “tailback” to designate the featured ball carrier in contrast to “fullback,” whose primary duty is blocking.)
It’s not because the few whites always fail. LSU won the national championship in 2007, for example, with Jacob Hester as their primary running back.
This is not a question that gets asked much in print. Yet, thinking about it helps shine a light on much beyond the football field.
To help you understand where I’m coming from in thinking about race and running backs, allow me to indulge in a little nostalgia concerning the first college football game I ever saw. It was November 16, 1968, and I was nine. My dad had taken me to the museums in Exposition Park next to the University of Southern California. When we came out, a few minutes after one in the afternoon, the parking lot was full and the Coliseum next door roaring over the rematch between defending national champion USC and the only team to beat them the year before, Oregon State.
With the game already underway, a desperate scalper offered to sell us two tickets for whatever my father had in his pockets, which turned out to be $1.10.
As my dad and I trudged ever upward to our 55-cent seats in what turned out to be the 89th (and top) row in the end zone, I started to wonder if the scalper hadn’t gotten the best of the deal. Standing on my seat, I could peer over the back wall of the Coliseum and see our 1963 Pontiac down in the parking lot. Still, our Goodyear Blimpish view through the goal posts was ideal for watching the encounter of two All-American running backs.
The #13-ranked Oregon State Beavers from Corvallis, OR, were known as
http://www.takimag.com/site/article/blackballed/
by Steve Sailer on October 07, 2009
Let’s celebrate diversity! In Division 1-A college football, 19 of the top 20 players in rushing yards are—as sports fans expect—black. Yet, the #1 rusher is a white guy.
Toby Gerhart, Stanford’s 235-pound tailback, has piled up 650 yards on the ground to power lowly Stanford to a 4-1 overall record and a Pac-10 leading 3-0 conference mark. He had 134 yards on the ground in Stanford’s victory Saturday over 4-0 UCLA, which had been ranked 9th in the country in defense against the run. The previous week Gerhart had rushed for 200 yards in beating Washington, conqueror of USC.
Gerhart has been the most valuable running back in college football so far this season because Stanford doesn’t have much else going for it. Every defense knows Gerhart will be coming at them, but they haven’t stopped him yet.
Still, while surprising as Gerhart’s success may seem to casual sports fans (in the NFL, for example, whites have started only a handful of games at tailback all decade), it can’t be shocking to the young man himself. Gerhart set Stanford’s rushing record last with 1,136 yards and 15 touchdowns. He had played big school prep football in Southern California’s Inland Empire, where he passed Dallas Cowboy Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith for 3rd place on the all-time national high school rushing rankings with 9,662 career yards.
Of course, there are many white running backs who shine in high school. At the high school level, the game remains much less racially stratified by position. State champions tend to be Catholic schools or exurban public schools with mostly white players, some with star black running backs, some even without. (Football is an expensive and complicated business, and inner city public schools tend to be longer on talent than on resources and organization.)
At the college level, however, white players in nontraditional positions are found mostly at either remote colleges, such as Wyoming, or at academically elite schools that take their admissions requirements fairly seriously, such as the service academies. Stanford and Northwestern both start 15 whites out of 22. Gerhart, for example, scored 1810 out of 2400 on the three-part SAT—not enough to get him into Stanford as a non-athlete but a lot higher than most college tailbacks.
Caste Football has the numbers of white starters for each Division 1-A team for 2009. Some of the blackest teams tend to be private colleges willing to walk close to the edge of NCAA recruiting trouble, such asUSC and Miami.
Why are white starting tailbacks so rare in college football (at least, outside of the Mountain Time Zone)? (Football position terminology is fluid, so I’ll use “tailback” to designate the featured ball carrier in contrast to “fullback,” whose primary duty is blocking.)
It’s not because the few whites always fail. LSU won the national championship in 2007, for example, with Jacob Hester as their primary running back.
This is not a question that gets asked much in print. Yet, thinking about it helps shine a light on much beyond the football field.
To help you understand where I’m coming from in thinking about race and running backs, allow me to indulge in a little nostalgia concerning the first college football game I ever saw. It was November 16, 1968, and I was nine. My dad had taken me to the museums in Exposition Park next to the University of Southern California. When we came out, a few minutes after one in the afternoon, the parking lot was full and the Coliseum next door roaring over the rematch between defending national champion USC and the only team to beat them the year before, Oregon State.
With the game already underway, a desperate scalper offered to sell us two tickets for whatever my father had in his pockets, which turned out to be $1.10.
As my dad and I trudged ever upward to our 55-cent seats in what turned out to be the 89th (and top) row in the end zone, I started to wonder if the scalper hadn’t gotten the best of the deal. Standing on my seat, I could peer over the back wall of the Coliseum and see our 1963 Pontiac down in the parking lot. Still, our Goodyear Blimpish view through the goal posts was ideal for watching the encounter of two All-American running backs.
The #13-ranked Oregon State Beavers from Corvallis, OR, were known as
http://www.takimag.com/site/article/blackballed/