Matt Wieters

by PhillyBirds

Baltimore Orioles catcher Matt Wieters was once regarded as one of the best prospects in all of baseball. A standout hitter at Georgia Tech, he collected accolades (and hits) seemingly every year. He ended his collegiate career with a .359 batting average to go along with 35 home runs and 169 consecutive games played for the Yellow Jackets. Matt also collected 16 saves serving as Tech’s on-again-off-again closer. His college exploits garnered him much deserved praise and he was selected by the Baltimore Orioles with the fifth overall pick in the 2007 draft, complete with a $6 million signing bonus.

Matt’s legend continued to grow, as some scouts went so far as to call him “Joe Mauer, with more power.” His bat was seemingly destined to make a huge impact at the major league level, and his defense was nothing to scoff at either. He did little in the minors to temper fans’ enthusiasm, as he played in 169 minor league games and absolutely smoked the ball at every stop. Matt hit a combined .343/.438/.576 (1.014 OPS) with 32 home runs and 121 RBI, earning the 2008 Minor League Player of the Year award.

Matt was called to the majors on May 29, 2009. He hit fairly well in 96 games and retained the starting spot for 2010, but 2010 didn’t go as planned for Wieters. Playing in 130 games, he hit only .249/.319/.377 with 11 homers, his prodigious power seemingly evaporated.

However, in 2011 he showed signs of life, both at the plate and behind it. Matt earned a Gold Glove and Fielding Bible award, while also appearing in his first-ever All-Star Game. His triple-slash rose to a more respectable .262/.328/.450, and his power returned, hitting 22 home runs in 139 games. His defense was regarded as some of the best in the Majors, as 2011 was a major success for him.

However, the bat has seemed to come alive in 2012. Through the first 15 games, Matt has hit a blistering .294/.379/.667 with already five home runs. He’s also walked seven times to eleven strikeouts, while playing his trademark fantastic defense behind the plate. Wieters accumulated 5.0 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) in his 2011 season, and is already up to 1.0 in 2012.

While the sample size is small, it looks as if Matt has emerged as a true superstar behind the plate, well-balanced on both sides of the plate. At a position that has become increasingly more Hispanic-oriented through the years, Wieters is showing that a superstar pedigree can take a year or two to iron out the issues. Like Alex Gordon last season, Wieters is another high-profile prospect to begin to figure things out and take the AL by storm.

While it’s unlikely the Orioles are in line for any major success this season, they look to have a true superstar on their hands in catcher Matt Wieters.

Everyone knows only blacks are fast enough to play cornerback. There is not a single White football player in the United States, year after year, decade after decade, who can play the position in the NFL, despite the NFL annually being afflicted by a slew of horrible defensive backs who lack coverage skills and who regard tackling as not part of their job description.

A brief look at the results in the 40 yard dash at the 2012 Combine by this year’s cornerback prospects — all black of course — yields a puzzling result. How is it that more of them ran a rumbling 4.66 or higher than ran under 4.50? Was there a racist conspiracy at the Combine by the White men timing the 40 — you know, cousins of George Zimmerman — to deny the loose-hipped blacks their speedy due?

No other answer is possible, because when a White football player is timed at 4.66 in the 40, not only is he not allowed to play cornerback — supposedly manned by the fastest of the fast — but he is also barred from playing safety, running back, wide receiver, and sometimes even linebacker. Doak Walker Award winner Toby Gerhart ran a 4.53 at the 2010 Combine and the consensus among the draft “experts” was that he would have to be relegated to fullback. Poor Toby just didn’t have those “loose hips” that blacks are gifted with, a magical quality that conveniently can never actually be measured, only drooled over by White analysts and scouts.

We demand that Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, ESPN, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Morris Dees, and the rest of the pillars of this country’s gigantic Race Hustler/Cultural Marxist Axis begin an investigation into why black cornerbacks are becoming slower than White fullbacks. Something must be done! Justice for Trayvon Martin!  No justice no peace!

The Combine results in the 40 for cornerbacks can be found in this thread on Caste Football’s discussion board: http://www.castefootball.us/forums/threads/14495-Super-affletic-black-corners

Chase Utley

by PhillyBirds

The Philadelphia Phillies are in the middle of a renaissance, an era of winning that is fueled, in part, by home-grown players on both sides of the ball.

However, of late the Phillies farm system has taken on an interesting look. The front office has adopted a philosophy of drafting position players with “tools” such as speed, size, and “athleticism.”  One look at Philadelphia’s top prospect list for 2012 shows that “tools” is simply a code word for black athletes at every opportunity and position.

http://www.minorleagueball.com/2011/…pects-for-2012

Out of the 21 prospects listed, there are only two white position players, curiously both shortstops (Mitchell Walding and Larry Greene). The author even notes that Walding most likely will not even stick at shortstop. The drafting of blacks to fill as many spots as possible has been Philadelphia’s m.o. for many years now, as the team has always featured numerous black American players, with some becoming high-profile celebrities.

However, it stands to reason that the Phillies have neglected the fact that their best player over the last decade or so was not one of these “tools” players. While Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins have both won MVP awards, they did so without even being the best player on their own team.

Second baseman Chase Utley out of UCLA is frequently described as “gritty,” a “hard-worker” or a “throwback,” terms used to deride white athletes across all sports, implying a lack of athleticism and a surplus of “hustle.” And yet Chase has consistently “out-hustled” the two MVPs he’s been playing with for so long.

Chase Utley has been worth 42.3 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) since his ML debut in 2003. In the same time frame, Rollins was worth 31 WAR, and Howard 23.1 since his ML debut a year later in 2004. Howard was worth 5.8 WAR in his MVP year of 2006, the highest total of his career. Utley has surpassed 5.8 WAR four times, yet never finished higher than seventh in MVP voting any of those years.

Jimmy Rollins won the MVP in 2007, accumulating an impressive 6.1 WAR. That same year, Utley amassed 6.6 WAR, and finished eighth in the MVP balloting.

Perhaps the Phillies should consider drafting more “gritty” ballplayers out of college in the future. Not to mention that the top two position prospects in baseball are athletic White outfielders in Bryce Harper and Mike Trout. However with constant overtures to the black community, the likelihood of such a trend picking up is likely slim in the City of Brotherly Love.

Brian Robison sacks Detroit QB Matt Stafford

by Don Wassall

As a March 28 article in The Norseman, a website that supports the Minnesota Vikings, accurately noted, “Going into the 2011 season, it was largely wondered whether or not Brian Robison would be able to step in and replace the departed Ray Edwards at defensive end opposite Jared Allen.”

That Robison was not as good a player as Edwards, and that he was only cut out to be a backup in the NFL, was the consensus of media and fan opinion from the day Robison was drafted by the Vikings in the 4th round out of Texas in 2007.

But why? Was it because Edwards was so good? In four seasons as a starting defensive end for the Vikings, Edwards, drafted one season before Robison, averaged 43 combined tackles and 6.5 sacks per season, decent but not great numbers, especially considering he was starting opposite of sackmaster Jared Allen, who was routinely double teamed.

Like Robison, Edwards was drafted in the fourth round, but unlike Robison he was always considered starting material. Was that because Robison was unproductive at Texas? No. Robison was a three-time honorable mention Big 12 defensive end who recorded 181 tackles, 42 tackles for loss, 50 quarterback pressures, 14 sacks, 4 forced fumbles, and he even blocked 6 kicks, a school record.

Well then, despite his impressive college career, Robison must somehow be “unathletic” then. No again. His senior season at Texas, Robison finished second in the country in the shot put, and was also among the elite in the nation in the discus.

And at the 2007 NFL Combine, Robison was the most athletic of all the defensive linemen invited that year. Of the six events participants were tested in, he finished first among all linemen in three of them — he had the highest vertical jump at 40.5 inches, the longest broad jump (10 feet 1 inch), and was timed at 6.89 in the three-cone drill. In the 40 yard dash, Robison was the second fastest defensive lineman, running a 4.67; in the 20-yard shuttle his 4.26 was not far behind the best time of 4.18, recorded by Adam Carriker; and he did 27 bench presses, with Carriker again leading the way with 33. (Robison and Carriker were among the very few White linemen invited to the Combine, as that event, as is the case with NFL scouting and organized football in general starting in high school and even before, is always heavily skewed in favor of black players.)

Despite his proven productivity at Texas and despite possessing a rare combination of speed and strength, Robison did not get an opportunity to start until 2011, his fifth season with the Vikings. Edwards meantime had signed a lucrative five-year contract with Atlanta after the 2010 season. As The Norseman reported, there was a lot of apprehension about Robison taking over for Edwards. But the media know-nothings and the bulk of the fans ended up being “surprised” yet again, as the stereotyped “overachiever” did very well in 2011, and dramatically outproduced Edwards:

Robison played 82.7 percent of the Vikings’ 2011 defensive snaps, racking up eight sacks, 13 quarterback hits, and 54 total pressures. By contrast, Edwards finished 2011 in Atlanta with 3.5 sacks, 8.5 QB hits, and 26 pressures. Robison had total 44 tackles and 10 tackles for loss (TFL). Edwards had 33 total tackles and 6.5 TFL.

Here is how Pro Football Focus summarized Robison’s play in ’11: “Last year, Robison ended up playing 936 snaps on defense as he started opposite Allen, more than all but eight other 4-3 defensive ends (Jared Allen, who had to be practically hog-tied and dragged off, led the league with 1044). He wasn’t just taking up space on those snaps either, bringing pressure consistently over the season and holding up against the run, something that had been a concern among his detractors before the season. In 385 snaps run defending, Robison missed just a pair of tackles, posted very similar numbers to Allen, and earned a positive PFF grade over the season, despite the Vikings’ defense feeling the loss of Pat Williams in the interior.

“As a pass rusher, he recorded nine sacks, but 54 total pressures, good for 11th among 4-3 defensive ends, and his 8.4 Pass Rushing Productivity score was good enough to rank 21st, one spot better than Jason Pierre-Paul, and comfortably ahead of the player he replaced.”

Despite how well Robison performed in his first season as a starter, various writers and a portion of the White fans were clamoring for Minnesota to replace Robison with young Everson Griffin, as blacks are routinely assumed to have great athleticism and more “upside” than White players. As was the case with Robison, White football players often languish on the bench for years before getting an opportunity to start. This is what’s become known as being forced to serve a “racial apprenticeship” as White football players are negatively stereotyped as less athletic than black football players, even though that lie has proven to be false time and again. This is especially true on defense, which has become a “black thang” even though Whites who are given opportunities on defense often end up “surprising” because the expectations for them are so low due to institutionalized bias against them in the media, and of course in recruiting and opportunity at the collegiate level, which then carries over into the NFL.

The undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins started only one black player on their famed “No Name Defense.” The NFL had been racially integrated for quite some time by 1972. The thought of an NFL team having an almost all-White defense today is regarded as ludicrous, as Americans have been thoroughly trained to consider blacks as faster and more athletic than Whites even though tens of millions of White kids play football and many are capable of playing every position at the highest level as pros, as they routinely did in an integrated NFL for a number of years until Whites were suddenly and permanently shut out at running back, wide receiver, and defense in general beginning in the mid-1980s.

If racial fairness ever comes to the NFL with its long-entrenched racial Caste System, it will be the current prolonged era of “Whites Need Not Apply” at so many positions that will be seen as ludicrous in retrospect, not the 1972 Dolphins’ almost all-White defense.

Vontaze Burfict lumbers to a 5.09 40 at the 2012 Combine, slowest among all invited linebackers. He did however manage to beat out Rich Eisen.

by Don Wassall

The number of black players selected in the early rounds of the NFL Draft who turn out to be busts has grown appreciably in recent years, but it’s a phenomenon that’s never remarked upon by the corporate media, which has just as much interest in perpetuating the league’s Caste System as does the NFL itself. In a society in which racial politics figures heavily into everything — including, yes, even the “purity” of the world of sports — blacks are generally found at the bottom of most criteria measuring financial status and quality of life and thus the Powers That Be deem it very important for a number of reasons to present a facade of unwavering black excellence in sports.

Thus we find ESPN and the NFL Network still annually showing a dated show around this time of year on all-time draft busts that focuses on White players from the 1980s and ’90s such as Tony Mandarich, Brian Bosworth, Mike Mamula, Heath Shuler, Ryan Leaf, etc, when there is an amazing abundance of black busts over the past decade that such a show should be focusing on. It doesn’t matter for example that Mamula actually had a decent career before injuries cut it short; by comparison the Cincinnati Bengals just signed two black defensive ends who were both the eighth overall pick in their respective drafts, Jamaal Anderson and Derrick Harvey. Both have been big-time busts whose careers put together aren’t half as good as was Mamula’s, but don’t expect to find either Anderson or Harvey on an updated version of ESPN’s biggest draft busts any time soon.

One reason there are so many black busts in the NFL is the over the top hype certain players receive beginning in high school. A great example this year is Vontaze Burfict of Arizona State, who has (finally) been falling down some teams’ draft boards. He was a player always referred to as “an elite athlete,” but his Combine numbers did anything but back that claim up. As CBS Sports wrote of Burfict’s performance at the 2012 Combine last month:

“Arizona State inside linebacker Vontaze Burfict entered the Combine needing to answer questions about his maturity and athleticism. He may have failed at both.

“Burfict raised more than a few eyebrows when he blamed the ASU coaching staff (which was led by former two-time NFL head coach Dennis Erickson) for his inconsistent play in 2011 during his interview with the media Sunday.

“He then proceeded to run slower than any other linebacker tested at the Combine in the 40-yard dash, registering a 5.09 second time that was beaten by 36 of the 48 defensive linemen including 346 pound Dontari Poe. A troubling lack of overall explosion was also shown with a 30″ vertical jump, a number beaten by all but two linebackers in Indianapolis. . .

“Characterized as an elite talent deserving of first round consideration by some in the media, Burfict is rated as the No. 88 prospect in the draft by NFLDraftScout.com and that may be generous.” http://www.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/13682485/35011522

Here are some samplings from scouting reports on Burfict, prior to his pathetic Combine and Pro Day numbers. Remember, these opinions are based on what these alleged “experts” saw from watching film, which leads one to believe even more fully that scouts have no eye for speed and just look at an athlete’s skin color. That would explain why Luke Kuechley of all people had his athleticism questioned.

Walter Football: 9/2/11: “Vontaze Burfict has ideal size with excellent speed and is an elite athlete.”

Optimum Scouting: “Burfict may be the best athlete at the Mike linebacker position coming out of college since Patrick Willis.”

NFL’s Future: “Burfict is an elite athlete for his size. He’s a quick twitch athlete with great short area quickness”.

ESPN’s Todd McShay: “Burfict is a physical freak with tremendous athleticism and explosive power.”

This gem from a featured columnist at BleacherReport is the best: “…there is not one athlete in this draft that can match the Arizona State linebacker’s raw athleticism.”

Burfict’s stats for 2011 were quite pedestrian: 69 total tackles, 5 sacks, 1 interception, and 3 pass breakups. In other words, the equivalent of about five games of work for Boston College’s tackling machine, Luke Kuechly, who was repeatedly questioned as “unathletic” before coming up with a sensational performance at the Combine that dwarfed Burfict’s in every way.

And it all traces back to. . . Rivals and Scout. Both had Burfict as a top recruit coming out of high school. Rivals had him number 1 for his position with a 6.1 rating which according to them is “Franchise Player; considered one of the elite prospects in the country, generally among the nation’s top 25 players overall; deemed to have excellent pro potential; high-major prospect.”

Amazing they can tell all of that just out of high school. And they don’t want to be wrong, so the hype continues way out of proportion to reality all through college, and then into the NFL.

It’s a much different story for White college stars. 6’6″ Matt Jones ran a blazing 4.37 40 at the Combine in 2005 yet many of the same “experts” who drool over Burfict’s non-athleticism still insisted on pegging Jones as a tight end rather than a wide receiver.

Toby Gerhart at 235 pounds ran an impressive 4.53 40 at the 2010 Combine, yet many “experts” said he was only capable of playing fullback in the NFL — and Gerhart had just won the 2009 Doak Walker Award as the best college running back in the United States!

Brian Leonard ran a 4.49 40 at the Combine but was also generally referred to as a fullback rather than a tailback. White wide recievers, no matter how fast they are and how many big plays they make, are almost always decreed to be “possession receivers” by the same “experts” who thought Vontaze Burfict was an elite athlete.

The only sure thing about the upcoming 2012 NFL Draft is that many deserving White players will be drafted later than they should be, or won’t be drafted at all, while the ranks of prematurely drafted black players who “surprisingly” turn out to be busts will once again swell.

Caste Football discussion board members Woody, Dwid and Thrashen contributed to this article.

Pele

by Rebajlo

Pele is the most overrated footballer in history. No other player has ever been surrounded by such an aura of myth and mystique. His legend is so puissant that his very name is a universal household metaphor for the apogee of soccer excellence. Every superstar player is compared against Pele – with such comparisons inevitablyresulting in the verdict that Pele remains “the greatest player ever”.

Pele, of course, just happens to be black – a fact which conveniently fits with the media’s unstinting propagation of the viciously anti-White meme of black physical superiority. For according to the Negro-enamoured Fourth Estate the “greatest ever boxer” is Cassius Clay (a.k.a Muhammad Ali), the “greatest ever basketball player” is Michael Jordan, the “greatest ever all round athletes” are Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis – for that matter, even the “greatest ever guitarist” is supposedly Jimi Hendrix. The Negro-Asian hybrid known as Tiger Woods (whose real given name, by the way, is the far less-heroic Eldrick) is touted as the“greatest ever golfer”, while Serena Williams has been increasingly dubbed the “greatest ever female tennis player”.

Therefore, a mildly suspicious fellow with even half a brain may pose the following question: is Pele really the“greatest ever football player” or is he simply yet another black sports person hyped to the heavens by the openly anti-White media? Such an intriguing question naturally prompts a bit of investigation…

Without doubt, Pele’s greatest fan is Pele himself. He is easily the most narcissistic sportsperson on the planet, working harder to cultivate and preserve his own myth than all of the world’s journalists combined – which is quite a remarkable feat in itself. Throughout endless displays of jaw-dropping hubris, Pele constantly refers to himself in the third person as if he was some sort of deity, relentlessly praising himself while at the same time dismissively belittling the achievements of every other major player, including – just for good measure– his old teammates. Humility is definitely not among his character traits but as he is black that is hardly a surprise – and therefore neither is the media’s willingness to indulge such a braggart without labelling him as such. Now, if a White sportsman engaged in such shameless self-aggrandisement the reaction, of course, would be quite different…

The public is led to believe that Pele’s status as ”the greatest ever player” can actually be quantified – and thus “proven” – because:

(a) he is the only player who has “won” three World Cups, and

(b) he possesses an unmatched, literally superhuman goal scoring record.

So, let’shave a closer look at this “empirical evidence” shall we?

For a start,the much-vaunted “statistic” of Pele’s three World Cup wins is a blatant sham. Why? Because he was awarded a winner’s medal for the 1962 tournament despite only playing in the first two group games, sustaining an injury in the second match against Czechoslovakia which put him out for the rest of the competition. That Brazil won the tournament without him proves just how “indispensable” the “world’s greatest ever player” was. One can also safely say that Brazil would have won the 1970 World Cup without the services of the so-called “King” as that particular Brazilian team is often lauded as being the finest in the history of the game.

On the other hand, it is generally openly acknowledged that had Diego Maradona not featured in Argentina’s World Cup team of 1986 there is absolutely no way that such an average side would have won the tournament. However,Maradona’s startlingly brilliant play in that World Cup shall forever be overshadowed by his calculated cheating in the quarter final against England: his infamous “Hand of God” goal, when he “opened the scoring” by deliberately punching the ball into the back of the net.

Speaking of World Cups, here is something else to ponder. What if Pele – like George Best(who happens to be your humble correspondent’s “pick” as the greatest player of all time) – had been born in Northern Ireland, a nation whose World Cup qualification path is far more difficult than that of Brazil as it involves matches against European opposition and whose population during the 1960s and early 1970s was about 1.5 million? How many World Cup finals tournaments would Pele have won or, more to the point, even participated in? The answer, of course, is “none”.

Another thing to question is Pele’s importance to Santos, the Brazilian club side with whom he played for his entire career before moving to New York Cosmos. He made his official debut in 1957, yet Santos had just won the Campeonato Paulista (Sao Paulo State Championship – Brazil lacked a true national championshiptournament until 1971) in 1955 and 1956. Pele therefore wasn’t necessarily some sort of miraculous individual catalyst for his club’s series of successes in the late 1950s and 1960s.

The heavily-reinforced foundation of the Pele myth is his apparently superhuman goal scoring prowess,with his total haul often magically calculated at 1280 goals. However, as with his three World Cup wins, this is a meticulously constructed mirage, for any version of the record popularly attributed to Pele includes goals in various exhibition matches, unofficial matches, practice matches and even in matches which he played during his national service!

Let’s separate the wheat of the facts from chaff of the propaganda. Pele scored 643goals in 656 official matches for Santos. This would be the standard total normally attributed to a player. Yet in Pele’s case, the “establishment” has engaged in some deft statistical legerdemain by choosing to include the 390 goals he scored in 464 of those sundry “unofficial matches”, which blows his total out to a far more Herculean 1033 goals in 1120 games.

In our examination of his scoring record we must also consider the calibre of the opposition Pele faced, as 470 of his 643 “official” goals were scored in the Campeonato Paulista – that is, against clubs from the state of Sao Paulo and not against the best teams from the whole of Brazil. That’s yet another not-so-little detail that the encomiasts omit from their glittering “statistics-laden” accounts. Pele also scored 37 official goals for New York Cosmos but the NASL was an exceedingly weak competition peppered with a few former superstar imports well past their prime enjoying a lucrative semi-retirement as “marquee”players.

The very fact that such deliberately misleading figures are eternally quoted as“quantitative” proof of his superiority over all other players provides laughably transparent evidence of the methodical elevation of the black Pele as the iconic “peerless” footballer whose “feats” shall forever remain unsurpassed.This virtual apotheosis ensures that in the minds of White fans yet another black sits atop the pinnacle of yet another sport, “confirming” the mantra of black physical superiority.

When inevitably comparing Pele favourably against the part-mestizo Diego Maradona and, latterly, the White Lionel Messi, (both of whom are vastly superior players) the average statistics obsessed pro-black commentator or pundit also conveniently omits to mention the great gulf in the philosophical approach to the game between the “Age of Pele” (the tail end of the 1950s through to the early 1970s) and later decades, with the important associated differences in tactics and formations.

Pele’scareer unfolded in an era when football was an open sport with an emphasis on attacking play and scoring goals (with the notable exception of Helenio Herrera’s ultra-defensive Catenaccio system famously employed at Internazionale). This was a time when the penalty shootout did not exist, and drawn matches in knockout tournaments were simply replayed, thus depriving weaker teams of the incentive to “play for a draw and the 50/50 chance shootout”.

By the time Maradona moved to Barcelona in 1982, the attacking philosophies of earlier decades were being replaced by increasingly defensive attitudes and tactics, which made scoring goals far more difficult than in the free-flowing matches of the 1950s and 1960s. When Messi made his senior debut for Barcelona in 2004, football had finally completed its gradual evolution into a gargantuan money-making business in which clubs are corporations listed on the stock exchange. In stark contrast to the once-prevalent desire to win by as many goals as possible, the “modern”approach to the game is now governed by a morbid fear of losing, for defeat on the field is generally equated with a loss of income.

Obviously, the safest way to avoid defeat is to prevent the opposition from scoring, so the world in which Messi plies his trade is one in which strong defence forms the central tactical tenet of the overwhelming majority of teams, not just a select few like Herrera’s “classic” Internazionale. It is therefore disingenuous for anyone to suggest that Pele could have replicated his scoring “feats” – no matter how “creative” their calculation – in the era of Maradona, let alone the current era of Messi. On the other hand, one can only imagine how much more impressive both Argentines’ goal tallies would be had they played in Pele’sdays of all-out attacking football…

As the media is so fond of pointing out everything Pele “achieved”, let’s mention something which he did not do. Unlike all of theother most famous names in the game – Alfredo Di Stefano, George Best, Johan Cruyff, Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi – Pele never played club football in Europe. Consequently, he did not face the quality of opposition, particularly defences, that the aforementioned players contended against.

Pele won two Copa Libertadores (the South American equivalent of the European Cup /Champions League) with Santos (1962, 1963). Domestically, he won ten Campeonato Paulistas (Sao Paulo state championships), five Taca Brasils and one Taca de Prata. The latter two competitions served as de facto Brazilian national championships, so Pele can be credited with winning six “Brazilian championships”. Let’s compare these honours with the records of the other big names.

Alfredo DiStefano moved to Real Madrid in 1953 at the age of 27 following a glittering career in Argentina and Colombia. He won five European Cups in succession and scored a hat-trick in the famous 7-3 win over Eintracht Frankfurt in the 1960 final which fell just before his thirty-fourth birthday. Di Stefano also won eight La Liga championships with Real Madrid in addition to one Copa Del Rey,scoring 307 goals in 396 official matches.

Di Stefano never appeared in a World Cup because he was the victim of a series of highly unfortunate circumstances. The Second World War meant that the first World Cup which took place during his senior career was held in 1950, but Argentina withdrew from the competition due to a dispute with the Brazilian Football Association and did not even enter the 1954 qualification tournament. By the time of the 1958 World Cup (Pele’s first), Di Stefano had acquired Spanish citizenship and scored two goals in four qualification matches for his adopted country – but Spain failed to progress to the finals.

Di Stefano was in the Spanish side which qualified for the 1962 finals but had to pull out just before the tournament due to injury and promptly retired from international football. It is important to note that he was thirty-six years old at the time and still a key superstar player.At the same age, Pele was in semi-retirement at New York Cosmos, having made his final appearance for Brazil when he was thirty.

“If I’d been born ugly, you would never have heard of Pele” These were the words of George Best referring to his playboy image and the consequent destructive lure of a lifestyle of alcohol-fuelled excesses which effectively ended his career by the age of 27. He was a testament to the fact that a player doesn’t have to win a truckload of honours or even appear in a World Cup to be an all-time great. In terms of ability, Best was astonishing – just as astonishing, however, was his fall from the top.

Best won two First Division (i.e. Premier League-equivalent) championships with Manchester United in 1965 and 1967, plus the European Cup in 1968, before gradually succumbing to the temptations which accompanied his then-unprecedented pop-culture fame.Drink, glamorous women, gambling and various nightclub ventures proved irresistible distractions which eventually dominated his life. He quit ManchesterUnited twice, finally retiring in 1974 before returning to football on and off to play for several clubs, trading on his crowd-pulling name.

Johan Cruyff won eight Eredivisie championships, five Dutch Cups and three successive European Cups (1971, 1972, 1973) with Ajax Amsterdam. With Barcelona, he claimed one La Liga championship and one Copa Del Rey. At the age of 37 Cruyff completed the Eredivisie and Dutch Cup double with Feyenoord.

Cruyff played in only one World Cup finals tournament, when the Netherlands finished as runners up to hosts West Germany in 1974. Having participated in the qualification matches for the 1978 World Cup, Cruyff retired from international football in 1977. At the time, he cited ideological opposition to Jorge Videla’s dictatorship as the reason for refusing to travel to Argentina. Thirty years later, however, Cruyff revealed that his family was involved in a kidnap attempt which prompted his decision, stating that he was not mentally focussed to play.

Diego Maradona won the Copa Del Rey with Barcelona in 1983. The following season, he moved to Napoli where he claimed two Series A titles (1987, 1990), one Coppa Italia (1987) and one UEFA Cup (1989). Maradona’s achievements in Italy are all the more remarkable as Napoli had never before won an Italian championship, their only previous honours being two Coppa Italias (1962, 1976). As with Argentina’s 1986 World Cup victory, it is usually acknowledged that Napoli would not have won these trophies without Maradona, who was the talismanic creative heart of both his national and club teams.

At the age of 24, Barcelona’s Lionel Messi has already won five La Liga championships, one Copa Del Rey, and three Champions League trophies. If we are to count the Champions League and Copa Libertadores as equivalent continental club championships (although the depth of competition has always made the European version more difficult to win), Messi has therefore already exceeded Pele’s total. If Barcelona wins the present edition – which is currently at the quarter finals stage – Messi shall double Pele’s career aggregate of two continental club championships. With five Spanish championships to his name, Messi is only one national championship behind Pele (that’s if we generously acknowledge the Taca Brasil and Taca dePrata as de facto Brazilian championships).

Messi has not yet won a World Cup – but he shall only turn 25 in June which means that barring injury he will play in at least two more finals tournaments and will also doubtlessly win several additional domestic trophies and Champions League titles.

Despite having examined plenty of statistics, we all know that statistics do not always tell the full tale of a player’s ability. But as Pele’s reputation has been singularly buttressed by such collections of carefully manipulated figures, it is vitally important to compare them with those pertaining to the other biggest names of the sport and to interpret them in their situational perspective. Once this is done, the Pele myth is exposed for exactly what it is – a myth.

Tiger Woods, always a model of decorum on and off the course

Tiger Woods shot a 65 Friday to move into a tie for the secound round lead at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando.

Woods hasn’t won a PGA-sanctioned tournament in over 2 1/2 years, so his surge caused titters of unrestrained joy among his worshippers in the corporate media.

At the headquarters of the Orlando-based Golf Channel, which for reasons unknown still hasn’t officially changed its name to the Tiger Channel, employees were sporting “We Believe in Tiger” lapel pins. Many openly wept when Woods birdied two of the final three holes to temporarily move into the lead, before eventually being tied by one of the non-Tiger players in the field. Some Golf Channel employees vowed to fast over the weekend to spiritually cleanse themselves in order to fully prepare for what they hope is their hero’s long-awaited victory on Sunday, while others sat in a hypnotic trance in front of two large screens, one showing Tiger’s swing over and over in ultra-super-slow motion, the other featuring a montage of Woods’ world-renowned room brightening smile.

Reporters from ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Fox Sports and other media outlets were spotted holding hands and running around the perimeter of the Bay Hill course while giddily singing We Are the World.

Woods’s mother is Thai and his late father was a mixture of Black, White and American Indian, but nonetheless Woods is regarded by the corporate media as a full-blooded Negro, part of an agenda of promoting blacks as the “world’s greatest athletes,” even though their presence varies from very few to non-existent in 99 percent of the world’s sports. In the United States, blacks are dominant only in short distance sprinting, football and basketball, and in the latter two sports only because of longstanding affirmation action policies.

Woods is known for cursing, throwing clubs, spitting on the course (including greens), and ignoring fans. In the current world golf rankings he is just 18th, and in addition to not winning a tournament in over 30 months, a recent poll found him tied with Michael Vick as the most unpopular athlete in the United States. As a result, the Golf Channel has dramatically dropped its coverage of Woods; from being the centerpiece of 98.75% of the network’s coverage from 1998 through 2011, down to just 97.25% so far in 2012.

The precipitous decrease in Golf Channel coverage of Woods has prompted several impartial observers with no agenda to claim that the Golf Channel is “racially insensitive” and “lacks a full commitment to diversity,” charges the network denies.

Woods is ten under par, tied with non-Tiger player Charlie Wi. Woods and 74 non-Tigers made the cut, which was +3.

Pearcy was also a high school football star in Phenix City, Alabama. Besides football, he also lettered in basketball, golf and soccer. But there was no interest in him from any major college football programs. There almost never is for a White kid who stars at wide receiver, running back or cornerback, among other positions. For some reason only blacks are considered capable of continuing their high school success in college. White high school stars are routinely downgraded or ignored altogether by the extremely important “scouting” services such as Rivals, or are considered only at positions they didn’t even play in high school, you know, more “racially appropriate” ones.

Take a look at Pearcy’s Pro Day workout at Alabama State the other day, the link for which is given at the end of this article. His phenomenal numbers included 4.31 seconds in the 40, 3.76 seconds in the short shuttle, 6.7 seconds in the three-cone, a vertical jump of 44 inches and 10-6 in the broad jump. Only his marks in the broad jump and three-cone were bettered by any of the receivers at the NFL Combine last month, the prestigious annual February event that most college players must attend in order to better their chances of being drafted into the NFL.  In other words, Cody Pearcy from little Huntingdon College is more “athletic” than all of the best and most-touted black receivers from the nation’s premier college football programs, as measured by the tests given at the Combine.

The NFL Combine is an invitation-only event and even many Whites who slip through the cracks of the Caste System and excel at “taboo” positions at major college football programs are ignored when Combine invites are given out. Certainly no White Division III players like Cody Pearcy stand a snowball’s chance in hell of being invited. But, unknown, small college, White receiver Cody Pearcy outperformed all receivers at the Combine at his Pro Day.

So why does such a gifted athlete languish at a small school? To those who understand the NFL’s Caste System the answer is obvious. Pearcy looked to be about the only White person at his Pro Day other than one of the coaches. It’s a reversal of how things were in football in the 1950s and early ’60s, when a black player was a rarity, and had to be very good to get a shot and was often a better athlete than the sea of White players around him. Now it’s the black players milling around watching someone more athletic than them excel at one event after another. The difference is that the NFL was interested in finding black players and playing them in the early days when the league was desegregating; but now we’ve had 30 years of the NFL resegregating around blacks and an ideology of black athletic supremacy and the league has zero interest in having a level playing field for Whites at most positions. Pearcy has but a very tiny chance of ever playing in the NFL.  Sadly, his story is little different than that of hundreds of White football players who have NFL talent but very rarely get a fair opportunity to show it.  The NFL’s long-standing extreme affirmative action policies make sure of that.

Here’s Pearcy’s Pro Day workout: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQIkjE3rAWI

The great Jim Taylor

by Dwid. Jim Brown is often referred to as the best running back of all time. There is no doubt that he is a top back. He had a great combination of speed and power, and the Cleveland Browns utilized his ability to the fullest. He led the league in rushing for most of his career.

The one year he didn’t guess who did? Jim Taylor of the Green Bay Packers. Taylor was second to Brown all of those years in terms of production. Yet when people speak of Brown, they act as if he would dominate any era; but when speaking of Taylor the talk is about how great Green Bay’s line was and the fact that he only went against “slow white guys.” He was going against the same competition as Brown. . . or was he?

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/?p=3306 lists the Simpson paradox, here is a little snippet:

“Here are the per game rushing yards for Jim Taylor and Jim Brown from the 1960-1965 regular seasons. We have rushing game logs back to the 1960 season, and Jim Brown retired after the 1965 season.

“Jim Brown: 103.8 rushing yards per game
“Jim Taylor: 83.0 rushing yards per game

“Jim Taylor has a pretty impressive rushing average (that would equate to averaging over 1,300 rushing yards over a modern 16 game season, for six seasons), but we see that Jim Brown’s numbers are other-worldly, and far in excess of Taylor’s numbers. So where does the Simpson’s reference come in? It is referring to Simpson’s paradox, first discussed by Doug back in this post.

“As some of you may know, I have been doing a lot of work on the early 1960s in regard to my AFL versus NFL series. I was generally aware of some imbalance between the NFL Western and Eastern Divisions from the decade of the 1960s. Then, Doug, Chase and I were having some recent discussions about schedule adjustments . . . and we noticed some pretty significant schedule adjustments for NFL quarterbacks in the 1960s.

“For those that don’t know, back then the NFL Western and Eastern Divisions were very much like we might think of the AFC versus NFC today in regard to scheduling. Teams played almost all of their schedule within their division (or conference today) with a small percentage of games against the other division (or conference). In 1960, NFL teams played 10 division games, 1 game against the other division, and 1 game against the Dallas Cowboys expansion team. From 1961-1965, NFL teams played 12 division and 2 out of division games.

“So, let’s turn back to Brown and Taylor. We saw that Brown averaged over 20 yards more per game. Now, let’s look at how each did against the respective divisions.

“vs. NFL East teams
Jim Brown: 109.6 (70 games)
Jim Taylor: 102.0 (12 games)

“vs. NFL West teams
Jim Brown: 74.2 (11 games)
Jim Taylor: 81.7 (68 games)

“Now, it’s not really a Simpson’s paradox, it’s more of a quasi-paradox. Jim Brown still had a higher average against the NFL East. Further, the NFL East for Taylor included games against Cleveland, while the NFL West for Brown included games against Green Bay. We do see, though, that Brown averaged 7.6 more yards per game against the East minus Cleveland, compared to Taylor against the East with Cleveland. Conversely, Taylor averaged 7.5 more yards per game against the West minus Green Bay, compared to Brown against the West with Green Bay. A large part of the difference between Brown and Taylor from 1960-1965, at least in terms of rushing yards, can be explained by the schedule each faced.

“Brown averaged 4.04 yards per carry against the West, and 5.47 ypc against the East from 1960-1965. The West schedule was pretty balanced for Cleveland during that time, as they played each team at least once over that span and nobody more than twice. Brown had only three 100 yard rushing games out of eleven, and three games with 150+ total yards against the West out of eleven. It’s a small sample size, but there is no reason to think it doesn’t at least represent playing a cross-section of the NFL West over that period.

“How bad was the NFL East versus the NFL West during Jim Brown’s career? Well, it ranged from being near equal in a couple of seasons, to being downright lopsided in a few others. Jim Brown entered the NFL in 1957 and played his whole career with the Cleveland Browns and in the NFL Eastern Division. During that time, the NFL West Champion won seven out of nine NFL Championship games. Cleveland was a pretty good team for that entire nine year run. Cleveland went 7-10 (with an average margin of -4.4 points) against the NFL Western Division during Brown’s career, compared to 71-24-5 against the other teams in the NFL Eastern Division.”

“. . . Taylor did play with a great offensive line, but as Chase showed yesterday, so did Brown. They ranked second and third among great running backs most helped by their offensive lines.

“I think what it does illustrate is the importance of schedule. Brown is almost universally considered the best running back of all-time. How strong would that hold be if he had instead played his entire career in the NFL Western Division? I have no doubt that most great running back seasons are aided to some extent by the schedule — they are probably not facing the Steel Curtain defense week in and week out. Still, I suspect that Brown’s schedule adjustment is going to be greater than other top running backs. I would guess that he will still rank #1 all-time when Chase prepares his next version of Greatest Running Back of All-Time, with schedule adjustments, but it will interesting to see who gains on him.”

Basically the article is saying had Brown played in the same division as Taylor, his production would look something like this for a 14 game season: 257 carries for 1038 yards. While that is great (his production would probably be a little higher given the small sample size over several years), it shows that the two players were not much different.

I am writing to make a similar point. That Jim Taylor and Jim Brown were 1a and 1b and not as much different as the media would have you believe. Besides the fact that they did not play the same competition (many old timers would say that the division Brown played in was more on the level of the AFL at the time), Brown got more carries every single year, except the year Taylor beat him in rushing.

Also I have talked to people who were around the Packers at that time and I had the privilege of meeting Jim Taylor. Apparently Brown got to run a variety of plays, to the inside and outside while Taylor mostly ran up the gut with Paul Hornung being the outside guy. Taylor did not struggle to run to the outside, its just that Hornung was more suited for that type of running and it also set up fakes where Hornug would throw the ball and Jim Taylor was a monster when it came to grinding it out for first downs. It was a different era, you could pretty much say that Brown was the first featured back. Taylor had the skillset to be one, but his coach was old school, and can anyone deny that this worked better for the Packers? They won more championships with their strategy. The Browns only won once with Jim Brown.

Many people will claim that Taylor did in fact run to the outside quite a bit because of the famous Packer Sweep bit, but that play was designed for Hornung with Taylor blocking. I have a copy of the Packers’ championship game against the Eagles and pretty much every single carry Taylor has is straight up the gut, and I am not sure where the talk of this second greatest line of all time comes from, because he was running into a wall on most of these plays.

It is pretty much common sense that by limiting Taylor to mostly rushing to the inside, grinding out first downs that it lessened his chances of breaking of a big play. Out of the few highlights I have seen of Taylor, most of the big plays shown came from running to the outside but this does not go against my point of Taylor being mostly an inside runner, the highlights are only about a dozen plays from his 9 year stint with the Packers. Despite being limited to mostly going up the gut, his average was still over 5 ypc for 3 out of the 5 years of his stretch of dominance, with one year being slightly below that with 4.8 and another with 4.1 and he still managed to break off big runs, just not as many as Brown. Running more to the inside probably wore him down more which led to him dominating 5 seasons rather than the 9 Brown had, which something Jim Brown fanboys will usually bring up.

However, one has to keep in mind that Taylor did not receive many carries his first two years and was 30 when his decline began (he entered the league at age 23 compared to Brown at 21). Jim Brown received 200+ carries from the beginning of his career and Jim Brown was 30 when he decided to hang his cleats up, both around the age where a runningback starts to decline, regardless of workload. During Taylor’s peak years he actually averaged 91.9 yards per game.

Also remember, there were no 4-man lines back during this era. Many will say that Hornung was the reason why Taylor was so successful but Hornung missed a season due to being suspended by the league and it did not affect Taylor’s play. In fact during Taylor’s best season, Hornung only had 57 attempts because he was dealing with injuries. Perhaps Taylor was given a more variety of plays to run in his absense, it is unknown because no footage is available to me of these games.

There were also rumors of Lombardi being a hard ass about running plays as far as exactly how they were drawn up on the board. It was said that Jim Brown was allowed to freelance more, bouncing things to different areas if the play didn’t go as planned as well as reversing field, multiple cuts, what some refer to as backyard football style of play. If Taylor freelanced and managed to gain a huge chunk, if it wasn’t the way Lombardi had drawn it up then Taylor would get an ear-full, especially if he tried something fancy in the open field like we often see in Jim Brown highlights. It didn’t stop him from doing it; it probably just stopped him from doing it as much and didn’t get a chance to live up to his potential as far as homeruns were concerned. (It has been mentioned that Lombardi eased up on the first issue over the years but it is unknown how much or if at all because Taylor’s style remained the same). 

Of course this style proved to be more effective when it came to reducing turnovers, Jim Brown averaged 7 fumbles per year from 60-65 while Taylor averaged 4, or to include the difference in carries, Brown fumbled every 37 carries while Taylor fumbled every 55. That does sound like a lot for either player but keep in mind this was a different era and conditions were different, I have footage of one game where the Packers are playing in thick, wet mud. This style of running also proved less effective for Jim Brown against the competition Taylor went against.

This style of coaching might be why Taylor had to resort to being so physical — when the play didn’t go as designed he would often just try to bulldoze his way through defenders, and usually had success.  This was also the case when he got the second level and he usually had success. From the very few highlights of games I have seen, it would often take a gang to take Taylor down. Of course when speaking of Taylor, sports shows on channels such as the NFL Network talk about how he was one of the first to lift weights, and acted like Jim Brown was just naturally chiseled and gifted without ever exercising except to put a football helmet on.

However, Lombardi heavily discouraged lifting weights and Taylor got plenty of exercise by just using body weight. He thought that it would decrease a player’s speed and make him stiff. Many people think that the players of that era were slow and stiff but from a copy of a 1966 Packers playbook, Lombardi cites the minimum speed desired for a fullback as 4.8, and halfback as 4.7. Not much different than the era we are in now when you keep in mind that players have the technique of running the 40 yard dash down to a science, and we still have tailbacks that test in the 4.6 to 4.7 range (LaGarrett Blount is just one example).

In a Sports Illustrated article about the championship game between the Packers and the Browns, this was said about Brown: “On a field less conducive to the sweep and cutback because it was soft and often slippery, he had some early success, but none at all in the crucial third and fourth quarters, when the Packers smothered Cleveland like the snow. The Green Bay defense, called from the sideline by Phil Bengtson, the defensive coach, and implemented by Middle Linebacker Ray Nitschke, read the Brown sweeps as though Nitschke were a party to their huddles.”

“We knew when they came out in the double-wing set, with only Brown back and John Brewer and Ernie Green to the strong side, they would sweep to the strong side,” End Willie Davis said. “So we flew out of there to turn Brown in. If we could turn him in, then he would run into Nitschke or the corner linebacker or the safety coming up.”

The defensive coach notes of Brown, “We knew from watching pictures of the game in Cleveland last year that Brown hurts you most on sweeps when he cuts in and takes an alley just inside your cornerback.” The idea was to take that away from him and force him to be a physical inside runner. I have the highlights from that game; he doesn’t look so great like the highlights would suggest he does on the highlights NFL Films show of his career.

Speaking of highlights, it’s amazing how NFL Films can find so much footage of Brown but so little of Taylor. . . It also shows that Brown was not as versatile as Taylor when it came to run plays; it seems his bread and butter was the sweep and relying on running to the outside, and without it he was not that effective. It wasn’t just the field because the same Sports Illustrated article had this to say: “At the same time, in spite of the sloppy going, Paul Hornung was able to cut and twist in his own distinctive fashion for 105 yards, and Taylor came up with about the best game of his career, running straight over the Browns, the goo and even his own mired-down blockers while gaining 96 yards.”

The fact that the media has hyped up Brown so much and mentioned so little of Taylor is sickening. Taylor isn’t even considered the number one powerback of all time coming in at number 4 on NFL Network, but Brown is!

Here is what Coach Lombardi said of the two: “Jim Brown will give you that leg and then take it away from you. Jim Taylor will give it to you and then ram it through your chest!”

Sam Huff once summarized, “Brown is strong, but he doesn’t sting you like Taylor does.” Bob Jeter, a backup cornerback, had this to say about Brown, “”Man, I was very nervous,” Jeter said. “My stomach was upset. . . had to think about Brown on sweeps. . . I had to come up against Brown,” he said. “You have to be brave to be the first man to hit Brown. But I had to do it, and the funny thing, it didn’t hurt so much.”

So a Hall of Fame linebacker saying that Taylor stings more than Brown, a coach talking about his physical style of play, (yes he was the coach but pretty much everyone agreed that Taylor sought out contact whenever possible), and a backup cornerback saying Brown didn’t hurt as bad as he thought it would, still leads Brown to be the number 1 powerback of all time? When you add in the amount of championships Taylor won and the fact that he was the first player to rush for 1,000 yards for 5 straight seasons, there is no doubt that he was on the same level as Brown and should be mentioned right along side of him when talking about the greatest instead of as an after thought.

Go ahead and cite every excuse in the book, it has been said about pretty much every white player, “better supporting cast,” “better system,” etc., but if you dig deep into the facts you will see that there wasn’t much difference. Brown had just as good of a line and the players who also rushed on those teams had a similar ypc, even better, such as Bobby Mitchell who averaged 6.1 in 1958 to Brown’s 5.9. Why were none of these guys given more carries? Paul Hornug was good but not great at running, and a little bit overrated coming out of Notre Dame being touted as the Golden Boy. It was also said that he was the one player that Coach Lombardi was very close to. His versatility (throwing, running, receiving, kicking) is more of the reason for him being in the HOF rather than pure running ability didn’t hurt either.

Perhaps splitting things up a little more evenly allowed the Packers to win more championships. This something common among White runningbacks. Larry Csonka was a member of the only undefeated team, the 1972 Dolphins, and certainly didn’t have problems sharing carries. It worked and they won. John Riggins had to share carries evenly most of his career with the Jets until going to the Redskins, getting most of the carries when he went to the Redskins and started receiving more carries, getting most of his carries with Washington. By this time the league was different and teams relied more on one back, still he didn’t complain about Joe Washington getting close to 150 carries the year he led the league in rushing touchdowns. It was more carries than any of Brown’s backup’s ever saw, with the most being 111, which seemed to be the cutoff with Mitchell receiving that many in 1960 and Ernie Green getting that many in 1965.

What Jim Brown set up would become the future, with O.J. Simpson getting tons of carries, guys like Eric Dickerson coming into the league and getting 400+ carries. These guys were all great, but represent what is wrong with football. It should be a team sport. There should be no ball hogs. It should be about winning. Take a look at the top backs recently. Adrian Peterson for example, what has his team accomplished with feeding him the ball? Even when they have a capable backup in Toby Gerhart? What has Maurice Jones-Drew’s team accomplished? Did any of Ladainian Tomlinson’s teams ever win a Superbowl?

It also is similar to the way “quotabacks” are used in college right now; they are basically stat accumulators receiving so many touches, a point made in the post written by Caste Football discussion board member Riddlewire called “Voodoo Mathematics.” Yes, some of these guys are very good but it is getting harder to judge with the emphasis on inflated stats rather than winning.

Is the NFL headed this way now with the quarterback position? Much has been made of Cam Newton’s 2011 season where he put up a bunch of yards, but did not win. Robert Griffin the III might have a similar rookie year.

Back to the original point and to conclude, the evidence is there that Jim Taylor and Jim Brown were equal. Jim Taylor played tougher competition. Taylor was being used more as an inside runner and his team’s short yardage/goal line specialist and had less chances to bounce things to the outside and was discouraged from being fancy in the open field to reduce turnovers shows that two were much closer than the stats would indicate.

References:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vau…69/1/index.htm
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/?p=3306

Running Backs
Peyton Hillis, Cleveland — Signed by Kansas City
Jacob Hester, San Diego
Spencer Larsen, Denver
Owen Schmitt, Philadelphia

Wide Receivers
David Anderson, Washington
Anthony Gonzalez, Indianapolis
Brett Swain, San Francisco
Jerheme Urban, Kansas City
Wes Welker, New England

Defensive Ends
Ryan Baker, Miami
Dave Ball, Tennessee
Kroy Biermann, Atlanta — Re-signed by Atlanta
Tyler Brayton, Indianapolis
Adam Carriker, Washington — Re-signed by Washington: 4yr, 20 mill (7 mill bonus)
Jeff Charleston, New Orleans
Trevor Scott, Oakland
Dave Tollefson, New York Giants

Defensive tackles
Tim Bulman, Houston
Gary Gibson, St. Louis
Kelly Gregg, Kansas City
Nick Hayden, Cincinnati
Chris Hoke, Pittsburgh (retired)
Derek Landri, Philadelphia
Brian Schaefering, Cleveland

Outside linebackers
Russell Allen, Jacksonville — Re-signed by Jacksonville
Patrick Bailey, Tennessee
Keith Brooking, Dallas
Bobby Carpenter, Detroit
Chris Chamberlain, St. Louis
Jarret Johnson, Baltimore — Signed by San Diego
Brady Poppinga, St. Louis
Matt Roth, Jacksonville
Jordan Senn, Carolina
Dan Skuta, Cincinnati

Inside linebackers
Chase Blackburn, New York Giants
Dan Connor, Carolina
Blake Costanzo, San Francisco — Signed by Chicago
Niko Koutouvides, New England — Re-signed by New England
Matt McCoy, Seattle
Barrett Ruud, Tennessee
Tim Shaw, Tennessee

Safeties
Sean Considine, Arizona
Craig Dahl, St. Louis
Matt Giordano Oakland
Steve Gregory, San Diego
Jim Leonhard, New York Jets
Corey Lynch, Tampa Bay
Kyle McCarthy, Denver
Jon McGraw, Kansas City
Sabby Piscitelli, Kansas City
Craig Steltz, Chicago
Tom Zbikowski, Baltimore

http://www.castefootball.us/forums/threads/14405-Notable-2012-NFL-Free-Agents

With the surprise re-signing by the Philadelphia Eagles of Primadonna Deluxe DeSean Jackson, Riley Cooper appears consigned to a long “racial apprenticeship” in the NFL before he gets a chance to become a starter, if ever.

Cooper is 6′ 3″ and 225 pounds, a big receiver with proven big play ability. His senior season at Florida in 2009, he had 51 receptions for 961 yards, a gaudy 18.8 yards per catch average, and 9 TDs, many of the long variety. Oh, and he did that while catching passes from his good friend Tim Tebow, who according to many can’t throw a football very well.

Cooper was also drafted by Major League Baseball, further indication of his superb hand-eye coordination, an area that blacks are often deficient in, including, amazingly enough, among quite a few “professional” receivers. But that’s a taboo subject that clashes with Caste System mythology, so for now let’s get back to Riley. With his size, speed — 4.5 in the 40 — and hands, Cooper would have been a cinch first round draft pick in the 2010 NFL Draft and been given every opportunity to be a starting outside receiver — if he was black. But of course he’s a Whitey, and so he lasted until the 5th round.

Even so, Cooper has continued to flash his potential in limited NFL action. He averaged 16.7 yards per reception in his rookie season in 2010, and last year upped that to 19.7. So counting his final season in the SEC — which allegedly has the best defensive players in the country — followed by two seasons in the NFL, Cooper has averaged 18.9 yards per catch, which places him among the very elite in that category.

But does anyone in the media, or in the Eagles organization, consider Cooper to be a potential starter? Clearly not, given that the much smaller, locker room cancer Jackson was re-signed after all the turmoil he’s caused the team. Well, then, could Cooper ever be considered a better potential starter than Jeremy Maclin? After all he’s just as fast and much bigger, but again the answer is no. Barring an injury to Jackson or Maclin, Cooper will remain at best Philadelphia’s fourth receiver. He can’t even get consideration to replace the mediocre Jason Avant as the team’s possession receiver, as Avant is much beloved by the team’s White fans, the same ones who have written off Riley Cooper.

While Caste Football deplores the ignorant and racist practice found in the media of only comparing White football players to other White football players no matter how ridiculous a stretch it is, in Cooper’s case it’s instructional to compare him to Jordy Nelson and Eric Decker.

Like Cooper, Nelson and Decker are both 6′ 3″ and roughly the same weight. Both, like Cooper, time right around 4.5 in the 40. Both were extremely productive in college. Despite the superstar ability he showed in the 2011 season, Nelson was forced to be a backup his first three seasons in Green Bay to an over the hill Donald Driver, and James Jones, a decent receiver but not nearly as good as Nelson. Almost all the media “experts” and White fans expected Jones to step up as Driver’s career wound down, not Nelson, and almost all were genuinely shocked at how good Nelson turned out to be. And remember this — even though Nelson was one of the five best wide receivers in the NFL in 2011, he did so as a non-starter — he only played in about 60 percent of Green Bay’s offensive snaps despite being unstoppable. By contrast, when healthy, Greg Jennings is on the field for every offensive play. Just think what Nelson could do if he was a full-time player like Jennings is.

Decker was among the NFL’s leaders in touchdown catches the first half of last season, before Tim Tebow zoomed in only on Demaryius Thomas in Denver’s very limited passing game. Decker routinely blew by defensive backfields; often he was overthrown or ignored or he would have scored even more often. But still Decker is considered by almost all media pundits and fans as a mere “possession receiver.” What does a White receiver have to do to make people see the obvious? The brainwashing of sports fans has been extremely successful in blinding them to clear-cut, high-level White athleticism.

So Riley Cooper, who would be salivated over if he had the proper skin color, will continue to toil as a backup. If he’s lucky, Jeremy Maclin will be injured again, or Bonehead Jackson will make his continued presence on the Eagles intolerable. Or maybe after his rookie contract runs out, another team will sign him to be a starter. But that’s highly unlikely given that every NFL team marches in goosestep to the league’s extremist affirmative action policies.

The life of a White football player, especially after he stars in high school and wants to be recruited and given the same opportunities that black high school stars get in college and the pros, is almost always one of overcoming one hurdle after another. Very few, no matter how determined, are able to perservere through all the barriers put in their way and, if they do make it to the NFL, get even a fraction of the opportunity that black players routinely do. That’s because the U.S. has a Caste System in sports that glorifies blacks at the expense of whites who are just as talented and capable, and often times more so.

Maybe the greatest QB in NFL history

by J. B. Cash. With the release of QB Peyton Manning by the Indianapolis Colts an era has ended in modern football. Depending on how he does with his new team the move of Manning from the Colts is as significant as the day the New York Yankees traded Babe Ruth at the end of his career to the Boston Braves.

Since Manning joined the Colts as the number one pick in the 1998 NFL Draft he has been on pace to rewrite the record books for the quarterback position, much as the Babe rewrote the record books for baseball.

In his 14 seasons with the Colts, they won seven AFC South Championships, two AFC Championships, and won Super Bowl XLI, in which Manning was the MVP of the game. His four league MVPs are a record, and he has been named to eleven Pro Bowls, passed for more then 4,000 yards in 11 seasons, including a record six straight. His 54,828 yards and 399 TD passes are the second highest in NFL history behind only Brett Favre, who played into his early 40s. Manning was named the player of the first decade of the 2000s by Sports Illustrated.

Perhaps Manning’s worth can best be summed up by the fact that with him the Indianapolis Colts were a annual challenger for the Super Bowl and without him they were the worst team in football.

Manning’s neck injury is considered serious enough that he is risking permanent damage by continuing to play, but for a man with his competitive drive, quitting while he can still play is out of the question.

Peyton’s story is all the more interesting because of his family heritage. Peyton’s father Archie Manning was a superstar college QB who never quite lived up to the hype during his pro career with some pretty bad New Orleans teams. However the elder Manning found his calling in siring QB sons like a stud racehorse. Peyton and brother Eli are among a small elite of NFL QBs that can throw for 4K yards annually and carry a team to a championship on their backs.

Manning is a great quarterback, arguably the best ever, but there is a well covered up secret why he has been able to amass such impressive numbers in his career. That well guarded secret: White receivers. The Colts — apart from every other team in the NFL — have sought out and played white players at the pass catching positions.

It should be commonly accepted knowledge that White players are better pass catchers than black players. The sports media constantly tries to denigrate White receivers by referring to them as “possession receivers.” However, in their attempt to insult and demean is the bare unvarnished truth. White players catch the ball or they don’t play.

The same cannot be said of black players. Black players are timed with a stop watch and then given chance after chance after chance to succeed. They can lead the league in drops. They can drop passes at the most inopportune times. They can miss their routes and rarely get open. But the racial politics of pro football and society in general does not allow for people to be honest about black shortcomings, especially when it comes to sports.

So mixed in among the league leaders in receptions, among the 99% of black players forced into those positions, are those few White players that are “allowed” to play at receiver and tight end.

The never ending artificial black dominance of the position that started over years ago continues in the face of horrible play by butter-fingered black receivers. Yes there are some black players that are great at catching passes, but does that mean that clumsy, inexplicably highly drafted black receivers with substandard hand-eye coordination deserve endless opportunities to play?

No sports figure or announcer or writer can ever refer to a black player as “dumb” or else they will lose their job — though White players are routinely negatively stereotyped, often inaccurately — so they have also had to bite their lip and gloss over the poor play of black receivers who are getting millions of dollars to do the simple thing they have trouble at — catch the ball.

It is so ingrained in the minds of football people that they may no longer realize it. The few outspoken ones that might let slip a comment that touches on the truth have probably been weeded out long ago. Just as accused murderers like Ray Lewis and sociopaths like Michael Vick somehow morph into “leaders” and “spokesmen,” so does the striking reality of many blacks’ virtual incompetence at the receiver position get black-washed down the memory hole.

No one asks the question: How can Peyton Manning have been so good if he had to throw passes to guys like Brandon Stokely, Austin Collie, Dallas Clark, and Blair White? Those are players that would have never even seen a roster spot on virtually any other team (with the possible exception of Clark — playing a White “acceptable” position of tight end).

What magic does Peyton Manning put on the ball that so many White hands can catch it? What brilliant strategy did the Colts employ to be able to get White receivers open when practically no other team in the NFL believes it is possible?

These are questions that should be burning in the great minds of NFL executives and commentators. No one of course asks it. They would probably punish themselves if they thought it. But it’s a legitimate question. And then consider that the other great passing QB of the 21st century, Tom Brady, has also completed a large share of his passes to White players. And with Jordy Nelson leading his team in receptions as a virtual 2nd stringer in Aaron Rodgers high octane passing attack (despite his brilliant statistics in 2011, he was only “allowed” on the field for roughly 60 percent of Green Bay’s offensive plays while Greg Jennings was on the field for every play when he was healthy) the REAL question is how do guys like Drew Brees manage to accumulate so much yardage while not having any of those types of players?

Peyton Manning is considered a big influence in his team’s offensive strategy. That no doubt included which guys to play. When Peyton was working out recently he was throwing passes to Brandon Stokely and Dallas Clark. It can be argued that Peyton Manning, with his performance, has been the most White friendly influence in professional football in perhaps decades.

Hopefully Peyton Manning chooses his next team wisely. With his obvious intelligence one feels that he will make the best decision possible. But no matter what happens in Peyton Manning’s future he is well deserving of all of the accolades that have come his way. It is not hyperbole to acclaim him the greatest player of the modern era of football.

Wes Welker

by Col. Reb

Question: How many times since the merger has the NFL had 3 Whites in the top 10 in receiving yardage?
Answer: Seven

Question: How many of these instances have happened since Whites were all but barred from starting as receivers when the Caste System was fully implemented in the mid-80s?
Answer: None, until this year that is.

This season, Wes Welker (2), Rob Gronkowski (6), and Jordy Nelson (9) hold 3 of the top 10 spots in receiving yardage in the NFL! Welker had the most receptions in the league with 122, and led the league for most of the season. Wes could threaten to take the top spot in yardage in 2012. Wes Welker’s teammate Rob Gronkowski’s record setting performance (1,327 yards and 17 TDs ) in 2011 will not be his last great season. This second year player will be a huge part of the New England offense for years to come. Green Bay WR Jordy Nelson is the most effective WR in the NFL today, catching almost 71% of the passes thrown in his area. Imagine what he could do if allowed to play every offensive down like Greg Jennings does?! Everyone knows that wouldn’t be acceptable though, as it is still near taboo for a White man, no matter how talented, to start as an outside receiver in the Caste System NFL.

WR Eric Decker of the Broncos has a ton of athleticism and upside, and could contend for a top 10 spot in 2012 if the Denver coaches will be smart enough to utilize him more. If Peyton Manning returns, WR Austin Collie and TE Dallas Clark could springboard back up in terms of their stats. Several talented White collegiate pass catchers will be drafted in the next couple of years and there will be more chances to break through these barriers.

Many people question the existence of the Caste System in sports. They say that anti-white discrimination is not real and that it has no basis in reality. I would ask you this question then. If the “best players are on the field” all the time, why was there a sudden disappearance of White receivers in the 1980s and why do the few White receivers who are allowed to start in the NFL today do so well, while hardly ever getting credit for being called athletic and better than their black counterparts? Any thinking person will come to one conclusion, that anti-white discrimination is real.

So, how long has it been since Whites occupied 3 of the top 10 spots in terms of receiving yardage at the end of the regular season?

The answer is 1983, when Todd Christensen (4), Tim Smith (7), and Steve Watson (10) were in the top 10.

The time before that was in ’81 with Steve Watson (4), Steve Largent (5), and Dwight Clark (9).

In ’78, the year of some rule changes that helped open up the passing game, there were Steve Largent (2), Pat Tilley (5), and Dave Casper (10).

You have to go all the way back to 1972 to find three or more Whites in the top 10 in receiving yardage again, and there were four, Fred Biletnikoff (6), Chip Myers (7), Bob Tucker (8), and Ted Kwalick (10). That is the next goal I want to see met when it comes to White receivers, whether at the WR or TE position!

We don’t find a half White top 10 until ’71, when Fred Biletnikoff (3), Gary Garrison (4), Randy Vataha (6), Bob Tucker (9), and Ken Burrow (10) were there. In a fair NFL (no Caste System), seasons like this would be the norm. Imagine that, football where the best players actually play, no matter their skin color!

1970, the first year of the NFL/AFL merger, saw 4 Whites in the top 10 in receiving yardage, Gary Garrison (4), Danny Abramowicz (7), Jack Snow (9), and Carroll Dale (10).

There have been many excuses/reasons given by White fans and media personalities for the dearth of White receivers since the early 1980s. Through their successes despite major obstacles, we see that it is not for a lack of skill or talent that these White athletes are overlooked, rather their low numbers are caused by an endemic belief in the myth of black athletic superiority on the part of front offices, coaches, scouts, and of course the media that cover the sport of football. Let other people know that, if given a fair opportunity, White athletes can not only compete with the best in the world, but they can win!

Ever seen the Mark Wahlberg film Invincible? I’ve always believed that this movie – the story of 30-year-old Vince Papale who became a receiver/special teams player for the Philadelphia Eagles after impressing coaches at an open tryout – and Miracle are Disney apologizing for the lies they promulgated in Remember the Titans.

Purchasing the book the film is based on led me to this passage that was left out of the script (Invincible, p. 84), where Papale talks about the open tryouts for the Eagles and the blistering 4.5 40 time he posted. One of the position coaches didn’t see him run the time, so he was on the verge of being left behind:
I was being shut for reasons I didn’t know. Unlike the decathlon, I couldn’t let this opportunity pass. For once I stood up from myself. I yelled out, “What is the criteria?”
The coach, who had begun to walk away, turned around and shot me a look. He couldn’t believe I was challenging him.
“We’re taking the fastest forty times,” he said.
“I ran a four five, that was the fastest forty time here,” I said.
“Yeah, but I’ve never seen a white guy run that fast. My assistant must have timed you wrong,” he said to me.
“Give me another chance,” I said, stepping forward.
Papale tells how four coaches timed his run this time. All the clocks read 4.5 when he finished. The motivational story of Invincible would never have been told, had Papale not said “give me another chance,” and he would have been denied the opportunity for success because of the conditioned belief that white guys can’t run.

It is indisputable that Black people – well, Black people of West African descent – hold the top 200 times in the 100 meter dash. But this does not necessarily mean that ALL Black people are fast, and that they alone hold a monopoly on ‘speed’; conversely, there are white athletes, like Papale, whose athleticism was questioned as a ‘mistake’ because of the widespread belief that a lack of melanin means some kind of ‘speed’ deficiency.

It all starts at the high school, when talent scouts – representing Rivals and Scout.com – evaluate potential blue-chip recruits and hand out ‘star’ ratings. Rarely does a white athlete at a ‘skilled position’ (running back, wide receiver, safety, or corner back) receive more than a 3 out of 5. Tom Lemming, the founding father of recruiting guides, told Michael Lewis in The Blind Side that white high school athletes were discriminated against by college scouts and coaches because they couldn’t possibly be as a fast as Black athletes. He told the same thing to The Chicago Sun Times; he told the same thing to the South Bend Tribune.

White guys can never be fast. It’s a conditioned stereotype. When fans of college football teams see white players at skill positions, they instinctively believe their team is at a disadvantage and that the white player is a liability. Back in 2002, the Kentucky Wildcat started three white wide receivers (who all stood out, as few of the 12-member Southeastern Conference – SEC – schools start one white wide receiver) including the super talented Derek Abney.

The Black players dubbed them “The Snow Storm”:
The Wildcats’ all-white starting receiving corps of Aaron Boone, Derek Abney and Tommy Cook has combined for 77 catches, 1,235 yards, 13 touchdowns and one catchy nickname. Seems some of the black players on the team have jokingly referred to the trio as “The Snow Storm.” Lead storm trooper Abney, generously listed at 5-10 and 172 pounds, now has returned five kicks for touchdowns this year, after taking back two punts last week against Mississippi State. White Lightning is averaging 19.2 yards every time he touches the ball and is the only Division I-A player with at least 450 yards in receptions, punt returns and kickoff returns. His six career kick-return TDs ties the SEC record set by Vanderbilt’s Lee “Long Gone” Nalley in the 1940s. “At one particular point it amazed me how tough this kid is,” coach Guy Morriss said. “He’s taken some shots, and he’ll bounce back up like he’s made out of Flubber, almost. It’s almost like he’s sending back a message to the guy that hit him, ‘That didn’t hurt me.’ ”

Abney, like so many white receivers before and after him, never got a real shot at the National Football League (NFL), where receivers like Terrell Owens – who recently had an arrest warrant out for failure to pay child support – are lauded by fans, coaches, and analysts for their “speed” and antics on the field that draw attention to themselves.

Drawing attention to themselves is something that that the white receiver (only 15 percent of the receivers in the NFL are white) has a tendency to do, as primarily Black defensive backs laugh when they line up to guard a “white boy.” This article from Sports Illustrated back in 1991 illustrates the problem perfectly:

The Taunts start early for Phoenix Cardinal wide receiver Ricky Proehl on most fall Sundays. “Hey, slow white boy!” opposing cornerbacks scream at him. “You ain’t going anywhere today. You ain’t catching nothing!”
Proehl thinks the Philadelphia Eagle defensive backs are the loudest, but they aren’t alone in singling him out—Proehl’s one of only five white wide receivers who were starters for most or all of last season. “Most cornerbacks take it personally when they get beat by a white guy,” Proehl says. “Even in practice, when I beat a corner deep, I get compliments. It’s like I’m not supposed to do it.”
The preference for blacks is not restricted to the NFL. “When I was in high school trying to get a college scholarship, most of the college coaches would shy away when they found out I was white,” says Proehl. And according to New York Jet assistant coach Kippy Brown, when he was a Tennessee assistant in 1990, the other Volunteer coaches “looked at me like I was nuts” when they found out he was recruiting a white receiver. That player, Craig Faulkner, is a starter for Tennessee this fall.
Nineteen years ago Brown became the first black quarterback in Memphis State history, and he equates the blacks-can’t-play-quarterback controversy of years past to the white receivers’ situation of today. “The myth about black quarterbacks has been exploded, and it’s been proven you have to make decisions based on ability, not skin color,” Brown says. “But the mentality of a lot of people in this business is that the white kids can’t play certain positions.”
The overwhelming need for speed at receiver and cornerback can be traced to NFL rule changes enacted in 1978. Offensive linemen were allowed to use their hands to thwart onrushing defenders, and defensive backs were restricted to bumping wideouts in an area within five yards of the line of scrimmage. All of a sudden, the quick, small black wideout became a huge factor, and an adjustment had to be made on the other side of the ball. At the end of last season the NFL had only six whites who were starting at defensive back—and none of them were cornerbacks.
Rare is the high school white receiver who gets a scholarship or an offer. Fitting that 1991 was also the year that Ben Brown decided to write a book called Saint Bobby and the Barbarians that documented the Florida State football team under Bobby Bowden, one of the coaches who was influenced by the belief that there were few, if any, white athletes worthy of being recruited to play at FSU. On page 75 of that book, we learn about Mat Frier, the last white starting receiver for FSU; he’s from a proud family, and would eventually graduate with a degree in advertising and seamlessly move into the world of regional commerce.

But at FSU, he would have to outwork the other receivers (all Black) for a spot in the playing rotation:
(John) Eason – the FSU receivers coach – noted sarcastically that Frier may have been the victim of a racist stereotype. Because he was white in a position dominated by black athletes, he was assumed to be slow and awkward. But Frier’s straight-ahead speed probably put him in the middle of the pack among receivers and running backs. And his desire and toughness were unrivaled.
Rarer is the white starting wide receiver who earns a scholarship to an SEC or Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) school.

It is the flashy Black receiver ready to dance after every reception and perform some gratuitous touchdown celebration that fans and coaches have been conditioned to believe can only excel in the either college or the NFL.

Stanford University held a conference on racial stereotyping in sports back in 1995, and a white receiver from that school described his experiences from NFL draft evaluations:

(Justin) Armour, a public policy major, told of his experience in February at a National Football League training camp where he was the only white among 44 wide receivers who were being looked over for the draft. In informal conversations with the mostly white physicians, coaches and trainers, he said, he was frequently asked about his academic work and non-athletics-related plans for the future. The same people, when talking to black players, he said, were not only less talkative but brought up “nothing to do with scholarship.”
During a pencil-and-paper problem-solving test, he said, some of the black athletes pretended to be sneaking a peek at his paper. This joking behavior, he said, was encouraged by league representatives in the room. On the field, he said, coaches made comments when seeing him about having a “smart guy” in the group. Only after the camp was over, Armour said, did it strike him how pervasive the stereotyping had been. “It is perpetuated over and over,” he said, by well-educated people. “What scares me about racism is that the majority of it is pretty subtle.”

This is not an example of racism, but merely of conditioning. College recruiters will not sign a white receiver (or running back) for fear of being called a ‘racist’ by other coaches who will tell Black athletes that a rival school favors white players. For other reason but “racism” would a major university disadvantage their offense by signing a slow white athlete to catch passes?

Enter the very white Wes Welker, one of the leading receivers in the NFL. He stars for the New England Patriots, though no team dared draft the former high school Gatorade Player of the Year in Oklahoma. In fact, only one school – Texas Tech – gave him a scholarship, as he had planned to walk-on at Oklahoma State.

Only because former Texas Tech coach Mike Leech saw something he liked in the “frat boy” looking Welker’s film, did he offer him a scholarship. For four years, he would be the top receiver for the Red Raiders. Now, he is one of the top receivers in the NFL, though like so many other white high school stars, he almost never got the chance to even play college football.

The same goes for Indianapolis Colts receiver Blair White, who had to walk-on at Michigan State (‘walking-on’ means that the player didn’t receive an academic scholarship and must pay their own way into school, and that they start very low on the totem pole when it comes to the depth chart). The same goes for former walk-on Oregon white wide receiver Jeff Maehl, who despite putting up insane numbers at the 2011 NFL combine, wasn’t drafted. Here’s what was said of him before the BCS championship game in 2011:
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The question seemed innocent enough, but Oregon receivers coach Scott Frost didn’t view it that way.
When a reporter noted that wide receiver Jeff Maehl has deceptive speed, often turning short passes into long gains, Frost took exception to the perceived implication.
“Unfortunately, he’s a white receiver so you give him that stereo type,” Frost said. “I don’t know why you give him that stereotype, but he’s gonna run a better 40 time than three fourths of the receiving coming out in the draft.”
Fair enough. Maehl is more than a possession receiver who runs precise routes. His leaping 45-yard touchdown catch in the USC game was highlight-reel material.
Maehl is aware of the stereotype surrounding “white receivers” and if anything it has worked to his ad vantage.
“I guess that’s just kind of my advantage if teams think I might be slow or something,” said Maehl, a 6-foot-1, 184-pound senior from Paradise, Calif. “I’m guessing it’s out there in the media and in the back of some guys’ heads, that’s probably what they’re thinking.”
Another white walk-on receiver, Mike Hass of Oregon State, would go to win the Biletnikoff Award, annually given to the top receiver in college football. Drafted by the New Orleans Saints, he never got a chance to play in the NFL. Bouncing around between a few teams, he languished on practice squads. But no college team offered him a free-ride; he had to walk-on and fight for everything at Oregon State.

Though one college football site joked about discrimination toward white receivers, the reality of white high school players getting passed over is real.

Tim Dwight, who was nicknamed “white lightning” was once one of the fastest players in the NFL. Sadly, he was used primarily as a special teams player instead of a receiver. The Green Bay Press Gazette wrote an article about the problems facing white receivers in the league, which inadvertently shed light onto one of the reasons there are so few lining up for NFL teams:

“We’re a minority,” (Brett) Schroeder said. “In many ways being a white receiver is kind of like being an African-American golfer. I don’t know why it’s like that, but that’s just the way it is.”
Part of the reason is the NFL has fewer white players than ever. Just 25 years ago, 70 percent of the NFL was white. Now, it’s 30 percent.
“The league has changed,” NFL analyst and former Cincinnati Bengals receiver Cris Collinsworth said on NFL.com. “It’s difficult to compare anything now in the NFL to what it was like 25 years ago.”
In 1981, Collinsworth was one of four white receivers to play in the Pro Bowl. He joined San Francisco’s Dwight Clark, Denver’s Steve Watson and Seattle’s Steve Largent.
In the past decade, Denver’s Ed McCaffrey is the only white receiver to be selected to the Pro Bowl. McCaffrey made it in 1998 and 1999, but in the last six seasons, no white receiver has been selected.
Tennessee Titans receiver Drew Bennett had a Pro Bowl-type season in 2004 when he had 1,247 yards and 11 touchdowns, but he didn’t receive an invitation. After that season, he was referred to as “The Best White Receiver in the NFL.” It’s a tag Bennett doesn’t like.
“I guess you always want to be the best at something,” Bennett said sarcastically. “I don’t control what people say.”
In the last five seasons, there have been 105 1,000-yard seasons, but only two of them — Bennett and Indianapolis’ Brandon Stokley in 2004 — have come from white receivers.
“There are plenty of good, white receivers in the NFL,” Bennett said. “I’m not going to get obsessed over stats.”
But the statistics can be very telling. Last season, only six white receivers — Bennett, Stokley, St. Louis’ Kevin Curtis, Atlanta’s Brian Finneran, Carolina’s Ricky Proehl and Seattle’s Joe Jurevicius — finished among their teams’ top three receivers. Curtis led all white receivers with 801 yards and Bennett was the only one to lead his team in receiving.
Packers receivers coach Jimmy Robinson has been coaching receivers for 21 years, including 17 in the NFL. Robinson said there’s one simple reason why there are fewer white receivers in the NFL than ever before.
“Obviously, it comes down to talent,” Robinson said. “Teams are committed to keeping the guys who are the best ones, regardless of color.”
During the 2005 draft one of the players who was causing the most commotion was Matt Jones, a 6-foot-6, 230-pounder who played quarterback at Arkansas.
The Jacksonville Jaguars were so enamored with Jones that they took him with the 21st pick.
When the Jaguars drafted Jones, it was the first time in over a decade a white receiver was taken in the first round.
Packers cornerback Ahmad Carroll remembers when he got burnt by a white receiver during his rookie season in 2004 when the Packers were hosting the Titans on “Monday Night Football.” The Packers were torched for three passing touchdowns in the 48-27 loss, but the one play Carroll remembers the most was the 11-yard touchdown pass from Steve McNair to Eddie Berlin.
Berlin is white.
“If I get burned by a white receiver, I’m going to hear about it more than if that’s not the case,” Carroll said. “Anybody who says otherwise is tripping.”
Bennett said he has gotten the sense defenders may actually try harder to make sure they don’t get beaten by a white player.
“I think they take me seriously. If you’re in this league, you can obviously play,” Bennett said. “Now, does it bother them a little more if I burn them for a touchdown? Well, you’d have to ask them that.”White guys can’t be fast, which means that if a Black defensive player gets beat by one of the “speed” deficient white men in the NFL, they’ll take a lot of criticism from other players and coaches. Which brings us to Jordy Nelson of the Green Bay Packers. A former walk-on at Kansas State, Nelson was a rarely used receiver until the 2010 season.

He helped lead the Packers to a Super Bowl title; this season, he has become one of the top receivers in the league (and, along with fellow white receiver Eric Decker of the Broncos, is near the top of league in touchdown receptions). And certainly one of the most talked about, after letting slip the reason for his success. Here’s the Washington Post on a “controversy” that would garner opinions and bloviating from ESPN, Rush Limbaugh, and, well, the entire sports world:
“I was talking to ‘Wood’ in the fourth quarter and he said, ‘When you see Jordy out there, you think, “Oh well, he’s a white wide receiver. He won’t be very athletic.” But Jordy sort of breaks all those stereotypes,’” (Aaron) Rodgers recounted during his weekly radio show on WAUK-AM, an ESPN Radio affiliate. “I am not sure why he keeps sneaking up on guys.”
Jennings, Nelson’s fellow wide receiver and friend, knows exactly why Nelson keeps sneaking up on opponents: He’s white.
“They underestimate him. And honestly, he uses that to his advantage,” said Jennings, who like Woodson is black. “Seriously . a lot of it has to do with the fact that guys look at him and say, ‘OK, he’s the white guy, he can’t be that good.’ Well, he is that good, he’s proven to be that good and it’s because of the work and the time that he’s put in — not only on the field but in his preparation off the field.”
Like Dwight, Nelson is nicknamed “white lightning”; unlike Dwight, Nelson was given the opportunity to succeed in the NFL (largely due to injury attrition) and made the most of it. Though his success has been questioned, just like Papale’s speed:

When asked by the Green Bay Press Gazette if racial bias is a factor in Nelson’s on-field success, he replied: “Honestly, I think it is.”
Nelson and his teammates believe that, with so few elite white receivers in the league, opposing players are likely to dismiss Nelson’s abilities on the field.
“As receivers, we’ve talked about it.” Nelson told the Press Gazette. “I know [cornerbacks coach] Joe Whitt tells me all the time, when all the rookies come in, he gives them the heads up, ‘Don’t let him fool ya.’ That’s fine with me.”
Nelson had to prove his worth to Kansas State coaches as a walk-on, because no college would give him a scholarship. Welker was basically in those shoes, especially as an undrafted receiver. How many talented white high school receivers never get the chance to even lace up their boots in the college ranks, because of the institutionalized bias that only Black people have “speed?”

Steve Sailer pointed out that Matt Jones (whose cocaine addiction ended what should have been a stellar NFL career), the first white receiver drafted in the first round in years, was asked to gain weight to play tight end:
Of course, wide receiver is mostly a black position, so lots of NFL guys tried to talk Jones into playing tight end, a position where whites are more common. Chris Mortensen of ESPN wrote:
“You know, it’s funny,” one AFC head coach told me last week. “We asked [Jones] about putting on some weight and playing tight end, and he made it clear that he thought it was foolish. He said, ‘So you want me to put on 20 pounds and be a 4.57 guy instead of a 4.37 guy?’ When you put that into context, you have to admit he makes sense.
So there is something to what Jordy Nelson intimated. White guys aren’t supposed to be ‘fast’ or play wide receiver. Not at the collegiate level; not at the professional level.

To excel means that they are outliers, freakish white athletes that stand out from the sloth-like masses of white people. In reality, to excel at receiver you must be able to run precise routes (because quarterbacks have timed drop backs that require concise route running from the receiver to operate properly); good spatial recognition (to determine where to make cuts for optimal positioning against a zone defense to get open; and enough speed to get separation from the defensive back.

Plenty of white receivers can and do excel at this; sadly, coaches don’t believe white guys have the intangibles and necessary metrics (fast 40 time) to compete at the college level. This is a burden of entry for many talented white high school athletes who are then forced to walk-on if they want to play college football.

And because fans and coaches (and players) have been conditioned to believe only Black people possess “speed,” any white athlete who excels at receiver in the NFL will be instantly singled-out by the media and opposing defenses – led by entirely Black corners and safeties – for ridicule. Just ask Brian Hartline of the Miami Dolphins.

Or Mike Furrey, a white receiver who caught 98 passes a few years ago for the Lions in one season, and quickly found himself unemployed the next.

Ask Austin Collie of the Indianapolis Colts, who excelled at Brigham Young University as a receiver. BYU is known for having great quarterbacks who throw to primarily white Mormon receivers, and Collie is easily the best receiver the school has ever produced.

Perhaps his success is fueled partly because he had a good support system at BYU, instead of being constantly ridiculed by his teammates for being a “slow, white receiver.” Because BYU actually recruits student-athletes instead of any Black kid who can run a fast 40 time, white athletes aren’t unfairly criticized and made fun of; with most of the team being white guys, there a sense of camaraderie that talented white players don’t feel elsewhere.

That’s the point of sports; to develop sound work ethics and pride in yourself, because you are part of a team. Recently retired NFL fullback Heath Evans once alluded to the fact that many NFL teams have racial animosity (imagine being one of the few white guys on a team of predominately Black players), and you can understand how white receivers might have difficulty adjusting to a culture dominated by Black morals and social customs.

The same can be said of the college level.

At the high school, it’s not a liability to have a white receiver; coaches can’t recruit (save at private schools) and can only play those athletes who live in their school district. White receivers excel and develop chemistry with their teammates, but rarely have the opportunity to advance to the next level, because college recruiters have prejudicial opinions of their innate abilities.

In spite of this, talented players like Wes Welker and Jordy Nelson found a way to excel. If that meant walking-on and having Black defensive backs (we won’t even discuss the kind of hate Jason Sehorn faced) be dismissive of their talents because they were white, so be it.

It’s this simple: sports provide the primary medium where Black people can provide positive contributions to American life. Though trivial, many people derive their entire identity from their alma mater or professional football team they follow (because there is no such thing as an “American Identity” anymore).

Because the concept of Black Supremacy in sports is so ingrained, predominately white sports fans believe that having a white athlete at a position dominated by Blacks (especially wide receiver) that their team is at a distinct disadvantage.

How can they compete against such fast Black players?

Just ask Vince Papale how you compete against coaches and talent scouts who believe white men can’t run fast.

Just ask Jordy Nelson and Wes Welker, who never had Rival or Scout salivating over their abilities, and were forced to fight for everything they earned as either a walk-on or as a player given the last scholarship.

How many talented white high school receivers could have developed were they given that opportunity?

White Men Can Run (with apologies to Amby Burfoot), its just a system has been erected that denies the lot of them an opportunity to prove it at the collegiate level. Those that break free then face an even greater burden of proof at the NFL level to showcase their talents, because white guys aren’t supposed to be fast.

White Men Can Run… it’s just universally accepted and constantly stipulated that they can’t. Just ask Jordy Nelson, who is having a tremendous season in spite of his debilitating whiteness.

Link to original article: http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.com/2011/11/white-men-can-run.html

by Paul Kersey

Ann Coulter recently found herself in hot water by asserting that the Republicans’ blacks are better than the Democrats’ blacks. NBA Commissioner David Stern is probably sighing to himself about how basketball’s 80s and mid-90s blacks were better than today’s blacks.

Stern canceled all NBA games through November, a move that means the entire 2011-2012 season is almost sure to be called off due to contractual disputes between the owners and players. Pity, too: The 2010-2011 season’s cable ratings were producing record numbers. (Few games are broadcast on network TV anymore; the demand isn’t there.) Last season’s NBA Finals, featuring the Dirk Nowitzki-led Dallas Mavericks v. the Miami Heat’s three-headed monster, reminded some longtime fans of the titanic battles between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson from the 1980s.

Stern will fondly recall those Boston teams—the whitest in a league that has been consistently 70% or more black since 1980—that had Bird, Danny Ainge, and Kevin McHale taking the NBA to unprecedented business heights with their classic struggles against Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Los Angeles Lakers.

It could be argued that the NBA’s run of success was fueled not by Michael Jordan, but by a reigniting of interest in basketball among white fans that began to taper off when the length of the player’s shorts began to increase. (The 2003 retirement of Utah Jazz white point guard John Stockton signified the official end of that era.)

The 1992 book The Selling of the Green: The Financial Rise and Moral Decline of the Boston Celtics argues that the Celtics’ cultivation of a majority-white roster in a league dominated by black players was a disgusting and amoral move. Two decades later, it’s obvious that a league that has now dropped to fourth in per-game attendance among professional sports (NFL, MLB, then…Major League Soccer) is in serious trouble.

Even into the Jordan-led Chicago Bulls dynasty of the 90s that produced six NBA championships, Chicago implemented the Celtics’ strategy by sporting a roster much whiter than the overall league percentage.

Complaining about this is similar to arguing that America was founded by racist Indian-killers. So what? For 20 years running, the league’s black players have had the opportunity to earn unprecedentedly lavish contracts that have made them fabulously wealthy (for a few years, that is), yet one is hard-pressed to identify other forms of labor they could perform that would pad their bank accounts like shooting a ball through a hoop does.

In 2008, ESPN’s Michael Wilbon wrote a Washington Post column noting that the Celtics were no longer the majority-white team of the past; they were now a team that reflected the league’s racial makeup.

Perhaps it was when Allen Iverson entered the league in 1996 that the unofficial shift to the hip-hop, tattoo, gangsta-rap generation began, one that slowly drove away casual fans.

An 2004 ESPN article bragged about how hip-hop had transformed the game and the NBA’s culture but failed to consider the long-term problems of going all-in on this version of the game and how it would turn off fans.

Corporate America was already weary of the NBA’s shift into the hip-hop mentality as early as 2001 (save Nike, McDonald’s, Gatorade, and Sprite, which have gone 365Black in their corporate strategies) with concerns of how middle America would embrace the league’s new tattooed-and-braided thuggish hoopsters. Writing last year around the time of the All Star break, Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger started a mini-controversy by asserting that white people no longer cared about the game. Judging by poor attendance numbers (NBA teams have long relied on the white middle class to purchase tickets), Bissinger isn’t far from the truth.

The bulk of NBA revenue is derived from an outlandish and completely unjustifiable television contract the league has with ESPN and TNT. Seventeen of the league’s 30 teams are losing serious money.

In 2009, as the league was hemorrhaging sponsors and posting poor attendance numbers, an emergency $200-million loan was distributed to 15 teams, with Stern admitting the league’s balance sheet wasn’t healthy. Though some dispute the owners’ claims of financial problems, one thing is certain: The NBA’s teams are overvalued, and the silence surrounding the lockout only confirms this.

Another deadline passed Wednesday, as the owners and players were unable to come to terms on revenue-sharing and the initiation of a salary ceiling. Sources cannot confirm that the removal of the Jerry West silhouette from the NBA logo is part of the deal, since he represents an NBA that is long extinct.

As Stern continues to lock horns with the NBA Players Association Union Director Billy Hunter over the revenue split, you know that he longs for the days of Bird v. Magic. But the league hedged its investment by going full hip-hop, a move that turned away fans who also longed for those days.

It turned away fans to the point that most people don’t care about the NBA at all. They’d rather watch soccer.

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