In 2020, at least 70% of National Football League (NFL) players were black. This was not the result of an intentional hiring practice but of a performance-related one. Top performers, when it comes to speed, strength and agility on the gridiron, are overwhelmingly black. This is also a factor within the Women’s National Basketball Association where 68.5% of players are African-American.
Black NFL players over-represent, by tenfold, our African-American male population. Thus, if a coach announced his goal was to field a much more diverse team – more accurately mirroring America’s racial makeup of a white majority – he would necessarily have to limit selection to a pool of only white candidates.
Such a decision would almost surely generate irate fans ultimately bearing witness to their team’s deteriorating performance. The reality is that NFL success clearly turns on performance and not on diversity. Thus, only the top performers, regardless of race, are selected to play – and black athletes overwhelmingly fit the high-performance bill.
Interestingly, one NFL playing position under-represented by black players for many years was quarterback. Social justice warriors jumped all over this. Not until 2017 did all 32 active NFL teams start at least one black quarterback and by 2020, 10 of 32 starting quarterbacks were black. However, no one today criticizes the inequities of a player selection process overwhelmingly benefiting blacks over whites, specifically because it is based on performance.
Everyone associated with an NFL team – owner, coach, players and fans – all want a winner. What is important is playing a 17-game season, qualifying for postseason play, going on to win the Super Bowl and proving you are the best of the best.
But, what if the NFL made the irrational decision that postseason single elimination games would no longer determine Super Bowl finalists? What if it decided the final two teams to compete had to be geographically diverse, representing different regions of the country, as selected by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell?
For the team benefiting from this selection process and then going on to win the Super Bowl, the haunting question will always be whether it really represented the best the NFL had to offer. Clearly such a process would be unfair to players, regardless of race, who had worked hard to win games but were not selected by Goodell to represent the league in the final contest.
This post originally appeared on WND News Center.