Air Force Academy football coach Fisher DeBerry merely stated a fact, but his comments about black athletes were nonetheless controversial. Sometimes the truth hurts.
While discussing his team’s 48-10 loss to Texas Christian University last weekend, he said: “It’s very obvious that they had a lot more Afro-American players than we did and they ran a lot faster than we did. It just seems to me to be that way, that Afro-American players can run very, very well. That doesn’t mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can’t run, but it’s very obvious to me that they run extremely well.”
Anyone who watches Division I or NFL football knows that this is true. The fastest players on the field are almost always black. On the defense, which requires more athletic ability than offense, NFL rosters are almost entirely black. For example, John Lynch is the only white starter on the Denver defense, which means the Broncos have one more white defensive starter than most NFL franchises.
So if DeBerry’s statement is true to any casual observer, why is it also controversial?
There are a couple of reasons. First, although it seems clear that DeBerry was not trying to insult the TCU players, making a comment about their natural athletic ability tends to discount their work ethic, discipline, teamwork, intellect and other characteristics.
I see this play out from the opposite perspective when a minority says, “Well, of course he succeeded in business. He’s a white male working in a system designed to reward white men.” A statement like that might accurately describe the system, but it completely discounts the work ethic, sacrifice and intellect that that particular individual possessed, which allowed him to succeed.
If the question is, “Coach, why did your team lose 48-10?” and the response is, “Well, they had a lot more Afro-American players than we did, and they ran a lot faster than we did,” then that implies that the TCU players didn’t work harder than the Air Force players. They didn’t practice harder, or get into better shape or execute better. They were just naturally faster.
We can also infer from this statement that the TCU coaches weren’t smarter than the Air Force coaches. The presumption is that if Air Force had more black players, it would have beaten TCU. The truth is that anytime you credit someone else’s success or blame your own failure on some inherent advantage your opponent had, you’re indirectly making an unflattering statement about their other attributes.
Second, even though everyone in football knows that DeBerry is right about black players being generally faster that white players, talking about it in public rips the scab off of old racial wounds. Black people know that from slave days until now, they have been valued primarily for their athleticism.
Many people in the black community feel that sports still operate under the old plantation model, with white bosses and black laborers. During my senior year at Southwest Texas State University, I got invited to the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, and though I was flattered to be invited, I had never felt more humiliated in my life.
At the Combine, I was poked, prodded, weighed, measured and tested by doctors, coaches and scouts, and even though I knew I could be richly rewarded for submitting to this inspection for defects, I couldn’t help feeling like a slave on an auction block.
DeBerry’s comments reinforce the idea that black players are valuable only for their speed – not their intellect, character or culture, just their speed. And this discounting of black abilities plays out in the demographics of college football, where most of the players on the 117 Division I teams are black, but only three of the coaches are.
Chances are, those three men are the fastest coaches in the NCAA.
Former Bronco Reggie Rivers (reggierivers2002@yahoo.com) is the host of “Global Agenda” Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. on KBDI-Channel 12. His column appears every Friday.
