Black QBs, QED: The end of an NFL myth.(African American quarterbacks)

Michael vick is an extraordinary success story. During two seasons as quarterback for Virginia Tech, he completed only 177 passes-a puny number next to Florida State star and Heisman Trophy winner Chris Weinke, who connected 650 times during his time in Tallahassee. But Vick's youth and modest experience didn't matter-his multifaceted talent was enough to make pro football scouts salivate. When the NFL draft began on April 21, Vick was the first pick. A couple of weeks later, still too young to buy a beer, he signed a six-year deal with the Atlanta Falcons paying him $62 million-the richest rookie contract in the history of the league.

So what did New York Times football writer Mike Freeman have to say about this? He reached the same conclusion he always reaches when the subject of black NFL quarterbacks comes up: They never get a truly fair shake. "No matter how big a star you become," he informed Vick, "some people will always view you as a black man first and a quarterback second." In this he is in perfect accord with another Times football writer, Thomas George. Last season, after the Philadelphia Eagles' Donovan McNabb ran for more yards in a game than any other quarterback in 28 years, George worried that he would be dismissed as just another brother who can't pass-"because of pro football's meager history of blacks playing the position and because of the penchant of so many people to pigeonhole them."

If anyone still doubts the ability of black athletes to handle football's most glamorous and pressure-packed job, it's not NFL coaches. In the 1999 draft, the first eleven picks included three black quarterbacks. Last year, eight blacks started at least one game for the league's 31 teams. Some are standouts, including McNabb, Minnesota's Daunte Culpepper, and Tennessee's Steve McNair, who in 2000 became only the second black QB to start in a Super Bowl. But blacks don't have to excel to keep drawing a paycheck. Among those who took snaps last year were over-the-hill stars like Warren Moon and Randall Cunningham, run- of-the-mill veterans like Jeff Blake, and unproven youngsters like Michael Bishop and Jarious Jackson. This is the golden age of the black quarterback, a category that barely existed in the NFL a few decades ago. But the myth endures that white owners, coaches, and fans still harbor a prejudice against any black who presumes to play the position. Black players, we are told, still suffer from the hoary stereotype that they lack what it takes to do the job.

The numbers suggest that such attitudes are dead, and so does all the other evidence. Sentiment, after all, doesn't count for much in the NFL. Trent Dilfer, a white QB, guided the Baltimore Ravens to a lopsided Super Bowl triumph last season, but the Ravens dumped him as soon as the champagne bottles were empty. Not until August did he manage to land a roster spot-in Seattle, backing up a guy who has never started a game. (Imagine what the New York Times would make of that if Dilfer were black.) Troy Aikman turned the Dallas Cowboys into one of the most successful teams of the last 20 years, but when the concussion-prone 34-year-old asked to suit up for one more season, the team showed him the door. Ryan Leaf, picked second in the 1998 draft by San Diego, was discarded as a hopeless brat after just three seasons. While Vick was going first in the draft, Weinke, who delivered one national championship to Florida State and just missed getting a ...