Shadow Ball

A great many people have no particular reason for choosing the teams they do. Growing up in Eastern Oregon, my brother’s best friend was a big Cowboys fan, my best friend pulled for the Chargers, and among my little clique, I had Celtics, Lions, Giants and 49er fans. We were all Oregon-raised, and the only thing that seemed to unite us, sportswise, has a shared refusal to join in rooting for what passed for the local team: the Seahawks.

My stepdad, who raised me, was, equally inexplicably, a Rams fan, and I grew up an Oilers fan. An odd mulit-generational moment united us in our choice of teams. He grew up in an era in which only HBCU’s had black quarterbacks, and the Rams’ rather bold decision to start James Harris made him a life-long fan, even though he has had to sit through more than three subsequent decades of almost unmitigated failure, frustration and folly. I, in turn, settled in the Oilers in 1991 –the year I first became an NFL fan- after seeing Warren Moon lead Houston over the Chiefs by shredding their vaunted secondary for 527 yards.

Now, I understand that there is a problematic aspect of choosing a player because of his race, but even these many years later I still find myself doing it. If you told me that I had to put together a team with the fate of the universe on the line, I would tell you that I would want Randal Cunningham at the helm. I have always felt that Donovan McNabb was treated differently, and had to handle more pressure than anyone in the league. I even have a soft spot for Michael Vick, dog-fighting and all.

It’s not hard to understand why, I suppose. The victories and failures of black quarterbacks are in many ways emblematic of what the race has, on the whole, gone through. James Harris represented something of the first iteration of black football helmsman. In the era of The Jeffersons, the vanguard of black achievers often found themselves in lonely country, unable to ever be good or mediocre; they were excellent or gone, and success had to come without the support system of peers to buttress you or trailblazers to lead the way. The 1980s saw something of a regression for the black community, and, just as Jesse Jackson served as a sort of reigniting of hope in politics and thereby pave the way for today’s Obamas and Corey Bookers, so too do today’s generation of quarterbacks give rightful praise to Doug Williams and his masterful performance in the Super Bowl as being the moment that made them believe they could do similar things.

Even now, the black quarterback’s journey runs parallel to the larger societal situation. Certainly, no quarterback can say, like 20 years ago, that they could not get a break solely because they are black. But, the NFL or college starter still finds themselves treated differently and subject to pressures that the Mannings and Bradys of the world would never see. One cannot, for example, imagine a black quarterback being the recipient of the kind of adulation that Tim Tebow receives, nor would Peyton Manning or Tom Brady ever had to deal with the foolishness and racism of a Rush Limbaugh. No doubt there still also exists a pressure to put promising young black players at other positions. Much as with the election of Obama, or the business successes of hundreds of prominent black businessmen, one cannot allow the shining successes of top minorities to allow us to believe that all is fine for the masses of folks below.

So, now I find myself again rooting for the Titans/Oilers, again helmed by the third iteration of Warren Moon. But, in actuality it’s not moon that Young reminds me of, it’s a raw Randall Cunningham, a player who in his own right is sort of a tragic figure. Only once, very late in his career, was he gifted with any other offensive playmakers. He was perhaps the most under-utilized talent of his generation and, all told, might have been the best player I’ve ever seen play. My dad, watching Cunningham do his magic against the Giants, gave me a sheepish chuckle and smile when I told him that Cunningham might be the best I’d ever seen. “Sure son,” he quipped, “but that’s just because there a hundred brothers from a hundred small towns who never got to throw the rock.”