A great letter regarding race and sports. [View All]

[devilgrrl]

Howdy DUer's, I just wanted to pass along this great letter to today's Buffalo News Sports page. This guy rocks and I wrote to him to let him know.

False conclusion

A recent letter writer drew the false conclusion that blacks are more talented as players in the NFL while whites make better coaches. Sadly, his false extrapolation of data merely parrots the long standing prejudice in sport that assumes that there are differences between the races on the field and on the sidelines based on biological factors. It reduces itself to the racist assumption that while blacks are superior physically in sports such as professional football, whites are more gifted intellectually.

Black players make up approximately 65 percent of the NFL, not because of any superior physical prowess, but owing to a complex nexus of historical, psychological, and sociological forces surrounding the false belief of young black men, fed by an unreflective media, that sports provides the best hope for success in American society. And white head coaches make up over 90 percent of coaches in the NFL, not because of any superior intellectual cupidity, but because the owners of NFL teams have systematically passed over qualified minority candidates. It is because of this sad record that the commissioner of the NFL polices the interviewing process, such as when Detroit Lions President Matt Millen was fined $200,000 for not interviewing black candidates.

Most disquietingly, the writer draws all his conclusions regarding black players and coaches based on the single factor logical fallacy that Jon Gruden, a white coach, had a better record when he took over for Tony Dungy, a black coach.

The hard statistical data from 1986 to 2002, found in the 2002 report, "Black Coaches in the NFL: Superior Performance, Inferior Opportunities," supports the proposition that blacks in fact, are better coaches than whites since black coaches in the NFL averaged 1.1 more wins per season than white coaches.

Teams coached by blacks went to the playoffs 67 percent of the time; teams coached by whites went a paltry 39 percent of the time; and, to show that mediocrity is a white luxury in NFL coaching.

In the season prior to being terminated, black coaches won an average of 1.3 more games than their white counterparts won in the season prior to their termination.

In the NFL, like the rest of American society, there is still not a level playing field for people of color.

DR. ROSS T. RUNFOLA
Professor of Sports Sociology
Medaille College

http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20030824/1004253.asp