Barry Switzer says he would 'never recruit a white quarterback'
“I’ve always said I’d never recruit a white quarterback. The only way I’d ever recruit a white quarterback to play for me is if his mom and daddy would both have to be black, and that’s the only way I would do it. My quarterback is a quarterback-fullback offense – how the wishbone was. I’d have to have a Jamelle Holieway, J.C. Watts and Thomas Lott (former Oklahoma quarterbacks who are all black). Those guys are gonna be my quarterbacks – great runners, great ball carriers and be able to pass. Those guys could throw and run.”
It was clearly an off-hand remark by Switzer that didn’t seem to have any ill-intent behind it, but it can be construed in different ways. The stereotype of the black quarterback when Switzer coached was ordinarily a run-first player, while white quarterbacks stayed in the pocket. To effectively operate Switzer’s style of offense, mobility was crucial, as his team’s ran the ball far more frequently than they threw the ball.
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/former-oklahoma-coach-b…
replace the word 'black' with 'white' and imagine the righteous cries of outrage.
and there never was a more crooked program than the one b switzer ran.
I was alive in the 60s and early 70s and I remember what people said, remember what some of my friends had to say about Cornelius Greene for example. Was probably the same for Franklin in Michigan but I wasn't there so I don't know.
Don't remember any cries of outrage though.
I was actually feeling nostalgic about those times tonight, listening to some 60s music, then I saw this quote and it reminded me of stuff I'm damn glad is gone.
We've got it rough as white men in this country, WindyCityBlue. But we'll make it if we stick together.
What was it that Larry Foote said recently?
How about Jordan Kovacs wasn't recruited because he was undersized, had average speed for his position, and already had a knee injury. How many college coaches ask HS players to fill out a Wonderlic?
If you take out DL, OL, and QB in your argument as well, that leaves you with LB, CB, S, RB, WR, and TE. Off the top of my head, you've got Kyle Berger, Michael Ferns, Ian Bunting, Nic Weishar in 2014 class alone between M, OSU, and ND. I'm sure there were plenty of others.
Looking at the NFL, there aren't as many white players at RB, S, CB, and WR. As recruiting rankings tend to rate NFL potential, it would make sense that many highly rated players at these positions would be non-white. Correlation =/= causation
your counter argument actually contributes to my point.
Doug Williams was too stupid to be an NFL quarterback. Haven't forgotten that either. That's about the point Switzer seems to be stuck at, somewhere between Franklin/Greene and Williams winning a super bowl. For a while black quarterbacks were good if you needed an athlete to run an option but you had to have a whilte guy if you wanted to run a pro-style attack. And, no, there weren't howls of outrage then either.
And in the present day you've got a whole thread here of people that think Switzer's way out of line. So I'm not really sure what your point is. There probably won't be much media attention because, frankly, who really gives a damn about Barry Switzer nowadays, other than Barry Switzer? He's stuck three or four decades in the past and since he's long since retired and no longer in a position to do any harm, I guess I'm happy to let him stay there.
Just because that happened doesn't make it ok to have the exact same thing happen now, but in reverse.
So far, the number of people that think this is OK is precisely zero. Got any examples?
Well, maybe one...
Considering our country's past, "righteous cries of outrage" probably wasn't the best choice of words.
i wasn't kidding about that, no snark in that word. switzer's comments are offensive, period. it is even easier to imagine how foolish and racist his comment was if you do switch the colors in his original, racist, comment.
gotcha, misinterpretted the internet.
right, because there is a history of blacks dominating and literally owning whites in all aspects of society. for that reason, these things are 100% comparable.
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So to make up for slavery, it's cool if for the rest of this country's history we let people say racist stuff?
Or maybe, just maybe, we should call out racist crap regardless of direction.
i could explain why you're completely misguided, but... this guy can do it a lot better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M
Can't watch YouTube at work. Paraphrase for me.
Maybe it's possible to make that point and stay in the present? It's not the history that's directly relevant here, it's current conditions. Imagine these two parallel cases:
1. All the black head coaches in the FBS refuse to recruit white players.
2. All the white head coaches in the FBS refuse to recruit black players.
They're exactly, equally, offensive at a personal level. And in both cases you have players' opportunities being restricted. But in the first case the restriction is that 40% of the athletes are locked out of 12% of the available scholarships, while in the second case 60% of the athletes are locked out of 88% of the available scholarships and a whole lot of kids are going to be shut out altogether.
We're making progress: 30 years ago those numbers would have been a lot worse and case 1 would hardly have impacted anyone at all because there was only one black coach at an FBS school.
Call out individual attitudes wherever you like, in either direction. i'm with you. But globally, what matters is the attitudes of the people that control access to opportunities. And until very recently those people were just about all the same color.
I notice some people think racism is just personal sentiment, i.e. prejudice against another individual or group based on skin color/phenotype. That's a kind of racism, for sure, and it's one that can go in any "direction."
But what your post highlights is a "deeper" form of racism is institutional in nature, and can exist and reproduce itself even in the absence of personal racism. I think the NCAA and NFL have come a long way over the past few decades, but even still most of the reins of power remain "white." Black athletes still have fewer opportunities to become coaches, ADs, etc., even though they certainly have more of those opportunities than before, and football is fairly progressive and egalitarian when compared to, say, congress or most private industries.
This context of institutional racism makes "black on white" personal racism inherently less damaging than "white on black."
Racism is a personal prejudice about other races. Honestly, I think most people hold some degree of racist views - making snap judgments about people we meet is something that's hard to avoid. (Race is just one aspect of this - we make snap judgments about gender, body size, clothes, you name it.)
Racial discrimination is when people act upon their personal racism to the detriment of others. That's the "deeper" form you're talking about.
I think it may be impossible to create a truly non-racist society, but if people can become aware of their personal prejudices and stop themselves from acting upon them, we can have a more non-discriminatory society.
Seems to fit.
How so?
What about Taylor Martinez or Dan Persa?
EDIT: Just realized -- JOHNNY MANZIEL!??!!??! Come on, Barry!
If you listen to the segment mentioned in the interview, what the OP quotes is Switzer's response to the question that was asked regarding whether or not he would recruit or interview Manziel if he were the one in charge of a team. Switzer goes into a brief summary of both his critical and complimentary comments when it comes to Manziel and then says, well, that which is quoted above.
Barry Switzer is senile, and was a dirty coach at Oklahoma. Go away.
Does he think white guys can't jump too ? someone send him that video of Zack Novak winning the dunk contest. Lol.
The "black" and "white" stereotypes and just replace them with "mobile" and "pocket" which is usually what they mean, it would save a lot of people from getting into a lot of trouble. You can't tell me that Tebow doesn't fit into the category he described while being white and Byron Left which isn't A statue while being black. These comments are not only inflammatory but inaccurate as well.
While there are some athletic white QBs (Crouch, Tebow, etc.) and pocket-passing black QBs, there are differences in the biology of athletes of African (particularly East African) descent and those of European descent. Some of those differences are the width of the pelvis, limb length to height ratio, proportion of type 2 muscle fibers, bone density, and the ability to deal with heat among others. We do not need to hide from this. It's biology, biomechanics, and physiology. One is not neccessarily better or worse, only better or worse for certain things. It just happens to be that most of the sports we value in this country (basketball, football, baseball) the biology of black athletes is beneficial. But, for other sports such as powerlifting, gymnastics, speed skating, hockey, skiing, etc. the biology of the white athlete is often better suited.
Why do people downvote this? Someone points out that science isn't necessarily politically correct and it's viewed as a bad post?
Come on, people.
Pretty sure he recruited Troy Aikman. And he's like Whitey McWhiterson.
Yes he did.
If there was ever a poster boy for corrupt coach..Switzer would be that guy.
His Mom and Dad are black.
Aikman actually started for Switzer in a move to a pro-style offense that lasted about three and a half games into the 1985 season. He broke his leg in a loss to Miami (YTM). Freshman Jamelle Holieway took over as a wishbone quarterback, and the Sooners won the rest of their games (including an Orange Bowl victory over Penn State) to finish no. 1 in the polls.
Aikman transferred to UCLA and Switzer ran the wishbone at Oklahoma until he retired after the 1988 season.
What is with Switzer recently? It seems like he just wants attention.
