McNabb on the money: Black QBs have to be Twice as Good

Both players are great examples of McNabb's point. Until last year, Manning was a perennial playoff loser but still the recipient of love notes from most football writers and columnists.

I'm not saying Manning was never criticized. He was. It's that the criticism was rarely accompanied with the kind of venom and harshness that McNabb receives despite the fact Manning's choke jobs -- with far better talent around him -- were notorious and historical.

Palmer, despite an anemic playoff background, has received the kind of magnanimous love from the media I have rarely seen. Excuses are made for Palmer's lack of playoff appearances while hatchets are buried into the back of McNabb and some other black throwers who possess more success.

There are lots of nuances and tertiary cracks and crevices to this story. One of them is how some black quarterbacks like McNabb and Daunte Culpepper (when he was in Minnesota) are seen as too close to management while Brett Favre, Manning and others are not.

One of the greater double standards was the Jacksonville Jaguars at one point asking their former quarterback Byron Leftwich to take speech therapy lessons. I have seen plenty of white throwers who don't properly conjugate but are not asked to be linguists for the United Nations.

I love these kinds of stories because they shatter the false and even dangerous image that our country is some sort of racial utopia. Blacks and whites can look at the same portrait and see two totally different things. This issue is no different.

I know Ron Jaworski was also booed in Philadelphia, but if his name were Ron McNabb, the booing would have been fiercer. I know that brave pioneers like James Harris were treated far worse than McNabb, but that still does not negate McNabb's point.

Sometimes I hear the criticism of McNabb and you would think his name was Donovan Grossman. That is the core of McNabb's argument. That he sometimes gets a little extra shot to the sternum from fans and some in the media because of the color of his skin.

There is a biography of Condoleezza Rice called Twice As Good. The title refers to a common saying throughout the history of African-Americans. Blacks have to work twice as hard to be the equal of whites -- in the eyes of whites.

That is also McNabb's message. A bad throw by McNabb is seen as doubly errant to some whites.

Or the fact that the Eagles were one of the sorriest teams in football B.M. -- Before McNabb -- and is now a league power is more quickly forgotten.

But I'm wrong. We're a colorblind society. So never mind. My bad.

The following is what we will now hear in the wake of this story.

The blacks won't be happy until all quarterbacks are black. All blacks do is play the race card. Maybe if African-Americans pulled up their droopy pants there would be more black quarterbacks. Mike Freeman is part of the black KKK.

Did I miss anything?

Of course, I'm wrong.

Because there is no racism in America.

Not an ounce of it.