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Paul Kersey on the Penn State scandal and the role of race in college football
Paul Kersey writes:
This Penn State scandal is so gross and so horrible I had to write this for Vdare.
LA replies:
This is amazing. How did you know all this about Penn State?
Paul Kersey replies:
I’ve been convinced for about four years that college football is evil, so I’ve read everything imaginable and have a huge file of stories. This Penn State story is just so gross. But Paterno has recruited thugs for about 10 years that have brought crime to Happy Valley.
LA writes:
It’s a good article. I’m not sure I understand your overall point though. Let me try to piece together what I think is your argument, step by step (starting from the end of your article rather than the beginning), and you can tell me if I’ve got it right:
1. Americans (white Americans) have been deprived by liberalism of their national, historical, cultural, racial identity—of their identity as a people.
2. However, liberal society still allows them to find an identity in such things as college football teams, because identifying with a football team does not threaten liberal rule. Accordingly, white American men have inordinately invested their passions, energy, time, in their favorite college football team. The excessive identification with football is a compensation for the loss of true cultural/national identity.
3. However, instead of these teams having anything to do with traditional America, they are increasingly manned by black thugs and criminals. The reason for this is that the management of these teams, needing to win at all costs, began to recruit black players who were good on the field but were often criminals.
4. We thus have the irony of white fans of teams at overwhelmingly white colleges passionately identifying with teams consisting largely of black thugs.
5. The above applies in particular to Penn State. Starting around 2002 Joe Paterno, coming off an unprecedented string of four losing seasons in five years, and having been criticized for not recruiting speedy blacks, changed his policy and began recruiting blacks, an extraordinary number of whom were criminals.
6. According to the 2008 ESPN article by Paula Lavigne that you quote, “Since 2002, 46 Penn State football players have faced 163 criminal charges, according to an ESPN analysis of Pennsylvania court records and reports. Twenty-seven players have been convicted of or have pleaded guilty to a combined 45 counts.” Almost all of the players charged with or convicted of crimes have been black.
7. However, no one at Penn State was bothered by this, since the infusion of black criminal types who had good football skills led Penn State back to being a winning team again.
8. This same over the top identification with football explains the Penn students’ riot against the firing of Paterno this past week. They were more disturbed by the loss of a famous winning coach than by the fact that the coach and the entire football establishment at Penn State had been turning a blind eye to a child molester in their ranks.
So, there’s your argument as I see it. Your main beef in this article is that football has become an opiate for white America, brutalizing them so that they no longer care about more important things. They don’t care that their school has elicited the service of criminals in order to have winning football teams, and they don’t care if their football coaches facilitate (or commit) the molestation of children.
Where, then, does the racial issue fit into your argument? It seems to me that the main problem you are pointing to is not the black criminals on the teams, but rather the worship of football teams even if they have black criminals.
Thus the recruitment of black criminals as players, and the tolerance of such black criminals on teams, are not the main problem, according to your argument as I understand it. Rather, they are effects of the main problem, which is the worship of football and the desire to win at any cost. And the worship of football stems in turn from the destruction of America’s national identity by liberalism.
What do you think of what I’ve said?
Paul Kersey replies:
What you just said, so succinctly, is basically it. The racial part of the equation is that most whites have no positive examples of black people to pull from in their normal lives, but sports—especially college sports—offers that opportunity. Most whites have NO interaction with blacks, but when it comes to college football, where whites derive their identity, coaches recruit black players non-stop, even though most of the players have no business being at the school for academic reasons.
I can see where you are coming from in that respect. For further background, you’d have to read this article that I wrote last year where I coined the term Opiate of America for college football.
But most of what you just said is right. The racial part of the equation is very important though.
LA replies:
Ok, there’s an additional element to your thesis: whites are so needy of having black figures to relate to, that the ones they end up relating to are thugs and criminals.
Paul Kersey replies: You are not only getting this idea, but exploring different avenues.
- end of initial entry -
Mark Jaws writes:
Guys—go easy on this young white generation and its embrace of college football. Unlike the generations which preceded them, today’s young whites have been ENDLESSLY bombarded with an array of movies, books, and politics proclaiming the joys and benefits of diversity. Today, it seems that in just about every movie (at least the ones I have seen) the white male lead must have a black friend who can offer wisdom, advice, and clear, level-headed thinking to get the befuddled white male lead back on track. Of course, this is liberal hypo-reality, but it also reflects the fact that blacks are likely to avoid movies in which the cast is all white or suffering from unacceptably high levels of pallor. Thus, a black character must be concocted—and, of course, he must not exhibit character weaknesses or flaws.
November 15
Jerry Z. writes:
It’s useful that you’ve taken the time to critique Paul Kersey’s article at Vdare. The one point you failed to address in your analytical summary of his piece—likely purposely to draw him out—was the one very important matter that he, himself, missed, since he said, “What you said, succinctly, is basically it.”
For several months now Mr. Kersey has been asserting that white football players, although equally capable, have been systematically excluded from college teams because of the multicultural imperative to overcome white “racism.” This has resulted in 80 percent of most top college teams becoming black. He then adds the complaint that blacks came to be identified as superior athletes and whites were seen as less effective at most positions in football. Finally, he notes that the traditional white quarterback is being replaced under the same racial narrative, that blacks are superior at this position as well. This racial transformation saw overwhelmingly black athletes—most with no academic qualifications and far too many with criminal or thuggish backgrounds—represent overwhelmingly white campuses across America and capable white athletes systematically excluded. [LA replies: I was unaware of both the phenomenon and of Mr. Kersey’s argument about it. I’ve never heard before that college teams were deliberately rejecting more capable white athletes for the purpose of admitting less capable blacks. Of course that is the case with admissions generally in selective schools, where blacks and Hispanics are admitted with grades and scores for which white applicants are automatically rejected. but the idea that a similar racial preference was going on with the admission of athletes is new to me.]
In distinction to this dominant theme in Mr. Kersey’s writings, his piece on Penn State and Paterno undermines everything he has written previously. When he asserts that white football spectators are only interested in the sport as compensation for the loss of a truer cultural identity, he is undercutting his case for promoting white athletes in the face of racial animosity. [LA replies: I don’t believe he said that that they are interested in the sport only as compensation for cultural loss, but that such compensation is a major factor.]
That is, what can be the importance of having white or black athletes playing for a school, when the entire interest is an escape from reality anyways? Why not just say that we are saving white athletes from an unsavory fate when they could do something more useful with their time? Why not let blacks then continue in their role as entertainers, whatever the false ideology and racial stereotypes that may have excluded white athletes? One could even say that if black superiority is to be accepted on the football field, then white intellectual superiority must be accepted in the classroom. Of course, this would be a stepping stone to recognizing black intellectual deficits and undermining the rationale for affirmative action itself. blacks—and their leftist enablers—want it both ways: just keep whacking away at the impossible task of academic achievement under AA, while insisting on a racist notion of athletic superiority.
This is clearly not what Kersey meant, but unfortunately his thinking is confused—and certainly inconsistent—on this whole matter.
Paul Kersey replies:
I appreciate this in-depth analysis of my piece on Penn State and the breakdown of my writings on college football and race from your reader Jerry Z. He has definitely read the bulk of my writings on the subject and is well-versed on the topic. But he misinterprets the Penn State article.
The primary reason black athletes are found on many of the top college football programs, and in numbers that are grossly disproportionate to their percentage of the overall student body, is that years of recruiting primarily black athletes have created a problem that parallels the racial problem of many government agencies. Once an organization has a certain percentage of black employees or black participants, to reverse that number and decrease the percentage of black employees or black participants can only be described as racist.
The leading college football conference is the Southeastern Conference (SEC), which was also the last to integrate (LSU and UGA didn’t have a black player until 1972). Imagine if these schools today suddenly started recruiting more white players; automatically leftists would cry foul at the college coach who dared play a white tailback or cornerback in the SEC and opposing recruiters would paint Auburn or Alabama as racist for doing this.
Slowly the idea of black supremacy seeped into sports back in the 1970s when integration began (the infamous 1970 all-white Alabama vs. the integrated Southern California team being the catalyst for sweeping changes in the racial formation of SEC teams because of the way Bear Bryant’s team lost) and coaches decided to start recruiting black players.
Never mind the discipline problems this brought to white institutions across the country. Joe Paterno himself wrote about this in his 1979 book “Football My Way,” where he brags about not being an authoritarian coach like Lloyd Eaton at Wyoming—who kicked all the blacks off his team in 1969—or Jim Lewis of Washington, where coaches had to adjust their dealings with the players for fear of alienating blacks and triggering a white liberal boycott of their school. This is discussed is Michael Oriard’s 2009 article at Slate, “College Football’s Season of Discontent: How today’s game was shaped by the racial strife of 1969.”
Of course, the large-scale recruiting of blacks led to a lowering of academic standards for black students (which in turn helped lower academic standards for all black non-athlete students), so that black athletes could stay eligible. This in turn led to a black exodus from historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) schools to Predominately White Institutions (PWI), and forced colleges to tailor their curriculum so blacks could graduate, or else risk having federal funds cut for being racist.
That most historically black colleges and universities are now closed is entirely due to the integration of college football. The fact that black students hold most predominately white colleges and universities in a vice—with standards forever lowered to allow higher black enrollment—is also due to this development.
As for my assertion that white athletes are discriminated against, which Jerry Z. questions, I could provide enough evidence to demonstrate this point unequivocally. But for the present the following should suffice. Once college coaches such as Joe Paterno in the 1970s abandoned their authoritarian manner and stopped building student-athletes into productive members of society, but instead fully accommodated black players and the morals of black players, the entire character of college football teams shifted.
It would be impossible for an SEC team to start recruiting predominantly white players again, because they would automatically be called racist and risk losing federal funding for reverting back to the times of an all-white SEC. As a result, many talented white players get overlooked, as recruiting guru Tom Lemming routinely states.
Look, current students and alumni of PWI (think of Florida State, the Big Ten, etc.) worship football and basketball players because they derive so much of their identity from their school’s teams. Support for their school’s football and basketball teams is also their only positive interaction with black people.
Joe Paterno was coaching back in the 1970s. He was there when the change hit and he decided to go for broke and allow black culture completely to wash over his team as it eventually did most of college football (though to be fair, Penn State does recruit a larger percentage of whites than other schools).
Because the concept of black athletic superiority is so ingrained in our culture, many alumni or fans will feel their team is disadvantaged when they play a white receiver, a white safety, or, especially, a white running back. Some sports fans make fun of a team like Boise State fun of its lack of speed (“speed” being a euphemism for black players, since only they possess this attribute) because it is too white.
Personally, I believe that college football players should be academically qualified to be college students. Lowering admissions standards in order to admit academically unqualified blacks has resulted in the lowering of standards at the Naval Academy, in Brigham Young University having its honor code attacked, and, ultimately, in the complete destruction of the higher learning system.
Prop 48 isn’t hard to explain. In the book “No Ordinary Joe” (p. 126) we learn that “fewer than 50 percent of black high school students scored a 700 or higher on the SAT, compared to 75 percent of white students, leading critics to charge that test had a built-in bias. Joe realized that Prop 48 might have some initial negative consequences, but in the long run he thought it would be benefit blacks. If the NCAA raised standards, blacks eventually would work harder and meet the standards.”
That was Joe Paterno’s view on Prop 48, as he thought that having “minimal academic standards” would force high school black athletes to work harder. Interestingly, it was HBCU coaches and administrations that went nuts over Prop 48, because they were worried they couldn’t find athletes who met those guidelines because PWIs would have the pick of the litter.
The collapse of the HBCUs parallels the integration of athletics at PWIs and the lowering of standards to enlarge black enrollment at these schools (one of the goals of increasing diversity requires this act of academic sacrifice).
The point being: there is so much to write about this subject, and, strangely, Joe Paterno is always at the center of it.
Patrick H. writes:
As for white colleges and black football players, there’s no psychological compensation going on. Fans want to win, administrations want alumni to keep endowments growing, and black athletes are a useful means of achieving those objectives. Whites care about blacks for two reasons only: as entertainers and as criminals. White admiration of black entertainers (like college football players) is no more irrational than white fear of black criminals (like college football players). Both are realistic responses to the realities of white contact with blacks: the benefits (entertainment being the only one) and the costs (crime mostly, but many other costs too).
The problem for whites has been: how do we maximize black entertainment value while minimizing risks from black criminality? Both require some degree of contact with blacks. If whites cannot eliminate the risks associated with the amount and kind of contact with blacks necessary for them to entertain us (and we don’t seem to be able to) then the problem becomes a question: Does the value to whites of black entertainment outweigh the costs to whites of black criminality? Are the benefits of contact with blacks worth the price?
P.S. And I don’t mean the price of the ticket to this week’s football game.
November 16
James R. writes:
Something must be wrong with me because I still do not understand how a story describing the misbehavior of white coaches, who are supposed to be leaders, is the fault of black atheletes.
The argument might be better made if it centered around how these very same supposed leaders are what led to a general acceptance of crudity, thugishness, and criminality. But the point seems to be the opposite.
In other contexts the points may or may not be worthy ones, but attaching it to this scandal, I think illustrates precisely the opposite of the point being made about “thuggish black athletes,” and who is responsible for what sorts of societal decay.
James P. writes:
I don’t understand how to reconcile the claim that college sports teams recruit blacks because they want to win games with the claim that college sports teams discriminate against white players. Athletic performance is something that can be, and is, measured down to the last percentage point of speed, strength, and skill. If there is truly an athletically superior white player who is “left behind” in favor of inferior black players, is there really no team in America that would recruit that white player in order to win?
Sage McLaughlin writes:
College football is a subject I know something about, since I’ve done a little reporting for a college football website and have followed the sport most of my life. I’ll register this comment and leave it at that, because too much time is spent on that elaborate scam as it is.
I disagree heartily with Paul Kersey’s arrangement of causes, and especially his assertion that the black athlete has become so popular for political reasons. It is much simpler than that. Big time college football coaches are paid millions of dollars, and the franchises they run are gigantic money-makers for their universities. Their bottom line is winning, period. If they do not revert to mainly white athletic rosters, it’s because there are practically no white athletes capable of being high-end South Eastern Conference cornerbacks and running backs.
This drive for winning is the same reason college football is constantly roiling in controversy over the paucity of black coaches. Very, very few of the best coaches are black. And yet, although college sports is utterly dominated by liberal media outlets like ESPN, who put relentless pressure on the relevant institutions to promote blacks in coaching, it remains the case that white men like Nick Saban not only dominate the top tier of the sport’s coaching ranks, but every other tier as well. Why, if it was a matter of pure politics, would that be?
Also, Mr. Kersey mentions the decline of authoritarianism in college coaches as some sort of uncaused cause. In truth, the coaching profession has become entirely about salesmanship and “relating to the players” because of the massive influx of black athletes, which in turn is a result of the desire to win. It was most noticeable in the 1980s at Miami, where the presence on the team of thuggish blacks like Michael Irvin and the encouragement of them in their antics became a big selling point in recruiting, even an ethos. (The latest University of Miami scandal involves a booster who not only provided strippers for the players, but secured abortions for them after the fact.) After that model became the standard, it became nearly impossible to maintain the kind of fatherly stringency that had always characterized a successful head coach. Instead, we are treated to scenes like this one from Oklahoma State’s Coach Mike Gundy.
Now, as I said, the institutions that make up the whole college football enterprise are extremely liberal, and it is obviously the case that white running backs like Stanford’s Toby Gerhardt regularly get passed over for awards that wind up going to black players who are not as good. But that’s a different issue altogether, really. The notion that good running backs must be black is something that’s been beaten into us by experience, and you can’t expect liberal-minded Heisman voters to acknowledge the exceptions to that general rule. Nonetheless, Tim Tebow, a white quarterback, had no problems whatsoever finding a home at Florida and even winning the Heisman Trophy, even though both his color and his professed Christianity run counter to the preferred template. That’s because he won two national titles while setting all sorts of conference records, even if he doesn’t scratch the media where they itch by being both black and a successful quarterback.
The point is that your typical 85-man roster in college football is largely black because the talent pool from which coaches are drawing is also largely black, particularly in the Southeast. It is no accident the Southeastern Conference is so dominant, with a sixth consecutive national title likely this year, while storied programs like Notre Dame have fallen very far behind—their proportion of white players is larger than in the South, and as a consequence they struggle even to beat the military academies. Now, maybe it does stoke a college administrators’ pride that he gets to boast of “giving young black men a chance,” but this is just a rationalization. The desire for on-field success is the one thing that consistently explains their behavior.
After all, Penn State’s administration was willing to cover up sexual predation of young boys for the sake of maintaining a successful program—are we to believe they’re letting more talented athletes go elsewhere just so they can sign more black players, wins and losses be damned? No sale.
Jerry Z. writes:
Both Sage McLaughlin and Paul Kersey appear well versed in the culture and mechanics of college football, yet have opposing views as to the causes behind the almost total reversal from white player domination to black player domination on the top college teams. Mr. McLaughlin falls in line with the dominant view today of black athletic superiority as causative.
Mr. Kersey has written extensively on the topic at his blog and provides good documentation to back up his assertion that it’s not ability alone that’s reversed the color composition of football, but naked discrimination against talented white players. He describes the cause as a tipping-balance phenomenon. Once black players were brought in to integrate the sport, somehow it became impossible to stop further black recruitment without appearing to be racist. He said:
Once an organization has a certain percentage of black employees or black participants, to reverse that number and decrease the percentage of black employees or black participants can only be described as racist.
This suggests that despite the best will to recruit the best athletes, the anti-“racist” atmosphere post 1965 created a political steamroller to replace white athletes and there was little resistance from the liberal administrations of these schools. The issue, then, was never really whether black athleticism was superior to that of white players, but only the need to pacify the liberal dominated faculties, administrations and media—and avoid the charge of racism. Mr. Kersey’s evidence is pretty solid in this regard.
Mr. McLaughlin thinks that the only motivation by coaches and recruiters to find black players was simply the drive for winning, and he suggests that white coaching is superior to black for the same reason: winning effectiveness. Mr. McLaughlin says:
And yet, although college sports is utterly dominated by liberal media outlets like ESPN, who put relentless pressure on the relevant institutions to promote blacks in coaching, it remains the case that white men like Nick Saban not only dominate the top tier of the sport’s coaching ranks, but every other tier as well. Why, if it was a matter of pure politics, would that be?
This raps Kersey’s argument of racial discrimination in college football, but the story is not yet complete. Just look at professional football—and even baseball—and you will see the gradual but relentless replacement of white coaches with black. If white coaches had been so effective for so many years, why would they have to be replaced? Because, as Mr. Kersey suggests, black coaches were better at accommodating the black thugs now dominating the league and would overlook behavior otherwise unwanted in white players. Another kind of tipping-balance phenomenon.
Once you’ve replaced the white players, the management of the black players requires a gentle warden to oversee the prison farm. Only black coaches are seen as adept at “handling” black teams, and the only reason all coaches are not as black now as the players is that all universities are overwhelmingly white. This is an old argument: only blacks can manage themselves. Whites can’t do it or it it’s “racist.” Bring in black coaches and all players would soon become black: the team culture would be inhospitable to white players and fans alike. Would the student and alumni base continue to be docile in cheering an all-black team? Would the white fans tolerate the loss of their presence in a white American national sport? Or would they assert the “irrational” desire to have sports teams represent their culture, ambitions, and aspirations—and begin removing athletes without academic qualifications, athletes lacking in Western (white) moral standards? That is, would they nakedly and with determination—ignoring all charges of racism—remove black thugs and criminals from their football teams? If so ,then the entire question of race in recruiting would be moot. Coaches would only choose from the academically eligible.
Since professional football fans are also predominantly white, the same limitations on black dominance would occur.
I would make the aside comment that Paul Kersey should review and edit his postings. Too often words are missing, grammar is savaged, and curious words appear that have no relation to the contextual meaning.
I would guess that he is using a computer to translate his voice into written type, but failing to check the output.
Alan M. writes:
This is not an argument pro- or anti- Kersey’s hypothesis but merely a related observation …
I’m sure it has been mentioned more than once on your site, but accepting racial differences as the cause for different representation of races in certain pursuits seems to be quite acceptable in our society as long as it is a so-called “disadvantaged” group that shows as being better than Caucasians. However, the opposite does not hold true when whites are seen as being more “fit” for certain pursuits (e.g. managerial roles) or the disadvantaged groups being more prone to behaviors which hurt society.
Gintas writes:
I have family who went to SEC schools, and it’s an altered state of consciousness. Football is huge in the South—and that includes high school football. Football is bred in the bone, and I believe people wouldn’t care if they emptied out the Big House to man the teams. Just bring on the games! And going to the home college game is a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. As long as that gameday experience is intact, nothing else matters.
LA replies: This sounds like evidence for Paul Kersey’s thesis. Southerners put all this energy and collective passion into a school sport, while passively allowing the Hispanicization, Islamization, and de-Europeanization of their country. Either their football mania is a compensation for no longer being allowed to defend their culture, or it’s a huge distraction from defending their culture. Either way it seems the height of decadence: all these white people madly cheering on their football teams (whether the players are white or black, it doesn’t matter), all these whites being transported by the passions of “football patriotism,” even as whites are being steadily degraded into a minority in their own country. These whites don’t put one billionth of the energy into defending their threatened culture and civilization that they put into cheering their football teams. That these teams consist largely of black thugs only intensifies the tragedy.
John W. writes:
Allow me to make a controversial statement. The same attributes that make a black anti-social also go to make him a surpassing athlete. Therefore supporting professional sports inundated with blacks is supporting the very same attributes that make the black anti-social (and frequently criminal) by nature.
Observe how the black running backs in the NFL run to maim anyone in their way. Observe how the defensive backs and the linebackers viciously tackle pass receivers. Observe how a defensive tackle like the Detroit Lions Suh tries to decapitate a white quarterback; he has never been observed to do the same to a black quarterback. Observe how the Baltimore Ravens Ray Lewis comes out of the locker room onto the field doing his gorilla dance.
The NFL by becoming predominantly black has changed the psychology and culture of football. It has become a hoodlum culture—see how the black players retain a hoodlum-like appearance. Their celebration dances are Zulu-like.
This is not your father’s NFL …
John W. continues:
White fans are not seeing black players when they cheer on a team\institution at a sport. They are seeing uniforms that mask race to a certain degree. Blacks have become better athletes than whites because they are able to function through muscle and speed in degrees of violence that surpass previous white athletes.
Josh F. writes:
At the upper echelon of athletic ability, raw athleticism largely cancels itself out. The deciding factor largely becomes the investment of time and money to refine skills and gain edge (cut a tenth here, add an inch there). Tiger Woods is a fine example of my point. In addition, raw athleticism (if we can agree on what that means as there are almost no top black triathletes, perhaps the truest test of raw athleticism) DOESN’T WIN games alone, especially in the team sport area. If it did, who would need a white coach? The Miami Heat basketball team is a prime example of superior athleticism not being enough to win it all.
Mr. Kersey’s assertion is that skilled white athletes have been shunted aside at the skilled positions (RB, WR, DB) under the stereotyping of blacks at superior athletes in those positions. This may be generally true. But when we talk of white athletes in these areas, we are talking of athletic outliers. We are talking of white athletes that run 4.5 forties with 34 inch vertical leaps. Some readers assert the coaches simply want to win and will pick and put the best on the field. This is largely true, but we have corporate America to suggest that it is not entirely true. Paterno and Penn State are prime examples of the “win at all cost” strategy being a LOSING strategy. Black athletes at the upper echelon of college football athletics are, by and large, NOT REQUIRED to invest time, money or effort into their academics. Therefore, when it comes to the competition between two extraordinary athletes, one black and one white, the deciding factor on who wins out becomes the required investment of the white athlete in his academics. He has divided loyalty that “compromise” his pursuit of athletic superiority that is not found in your typical black player.
I know this … I played Division I football. In a liberal society, winning IS NOT the highest calling and putting the BEST athletes in the field is not paramount.
LA replies:
This has been a very full and interesting discussion, but it’s becoming too specialized for the average reader (or at least me) to follow, and I’m ready to let it end, unless Paul Kersey has anything more to say in response to his critics.
Jerry Z. writes:
Yes, it’s been a very interesting discussion.
On re-reading my last long paragraph, I realized it was a little confusing as I arranged the sentence sequences badly. Sorry.
Paul Kersey has posted some very provocative pieces at his blog. New perspectives on a pervasive problem with a restive jihadi-like black population.
November 17
Robert B. writes:
I would like to add a bit of personal experience to this topic. When I was in high school and they began the forced integration of public schools in Minnesota, I had freinds who played football on teams that were newly integrated. The black players would not block for the white running backs, they would not even block for the white quarterback unless he was the only choice and only if he didn’t hand off to the white running backs. The same was true where the wide receivers and tight ends were concerned. Make of it what you will, but I was there as a sophomore when the team split up for an inter-squad scrimmage—black against white. The white team may not have been as fast, but it played as a team and easily out-scored the black team. None the less, half the starters were black. Today, Minnesota has plenty of predominantly black inner city high schools—not a one has ever won the state championship. And yet boys from those losing teams will get D1 births and the white boys from the championship teams do not.
Lastly, the only sport which is pure merit anymore (other than track) is wrestling. My son, a two time state champion out of a high school which is ranked 6th in the nation, wrestled everywhere from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania to Greeley, Colorado and from the Twin Cities to Memphis, Tennessee. I only saw one black wrestler make it to the top—and he was an outlier in D1 college wrestling as well. They simply did not have the muscular strength/endurance nor the speed of thought to compete at the higher levels in the sport. White boys rule it, period. Which is why, despite its growing popularity, the colleges are trying to kill it.
Paul Kersey writes:
The gentleman who invented the concept of rating the top high school talents (on a star system, with 5 being the best), Tom Lemming, has repeatedly stated that there are hundreds of talented white high school players who are discriminated against. He likens what white running backs, receivers, and defensive backs face from college recruiters and evaluators to what black quarterbacks once faced.
Black quarterbacks had their intelligence questioned once, whereas because of the conditioning of fans and coaches to believe in black athletic superiority, white high school running backs are routinely passed over by major schools (again, the coach that dares recruit white tail backs will have other coaches whisper about him on the recruiting and lucrative lecture circuit).
Two white former SEC running backs, Jacob Hester of LSU and Heath Evans of Auburn, were both moved to fullback to play in the NFL (both were drafted in the first three rounds and both had were excellent running backs at the college level). One of the people commenting here mentioned the racial bias that former Heisman runner-up Toby Gerhart (another white running back, this time from Stanford) faced, who before the 2010 NFL draft said he was losing draft stock for being a white guy.
Heath Evans mentioned this back in a 1999 Birmingham News article that perhaps coaches don’t want a “big, powerful white running back running the ball” and Jacob Hester faced discrimination on the SEC playing fields in 2007 when a black player from Tennessee asked, “shouldn’t you be playing at Air Force?” (The Air Force Academy has a lot of white players, because few blacks can muster the academic record and SAT necessary for entrance, and most leave after two years before they are vested in the school, though they have started to lower standards like the Naval Academy in a bid for greater Black enrollment.)
Heath Evans recently retired from the NFL and Jacob Hester currently plays for San Diego. It should also be noted that Heath and Jacob were fan favorites while in college.
Peyton Hillis was an outstanding running back at Arkansas (played fullback as well) and recently was the first NFL white running back to run for more than 1000 in more than 20 seasons. He admitted to hearing predominately black defenses make fun of him for being a white guy.
The point is simply this: these white running backs might seem like outliers because of the paucity of running backs in the college ranks and in the NFL, but the founding father of recruiting services (Lemming) has repeatedly stated that white skilled players in high school face the same situation that black quarterbacks once faced.
This article on SMU white running back Zach Line (who only had one scholarship offer out of high school) might help.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 14, 2011 09:57 AM | Send
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