<TABLE cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=2 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=v1>Posted on Mon, Jan. 31, 2005</TD></TR><TR><TD colSpan=2><TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=250 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=adlabel align=left><SCRIPT language=JavaScript1.1>_krdDartInc++;document.write('<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=\"JavaScript1.1\" SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/philly.sports/nfl;kw=center6;c2=football;c3=nfl;c4=nfl_homepage;pos=center6;group=rectangle;tile='+_krdDartInc+';ord='+_krdDartOrd+'?"><\/SCRIPT>');</SCRIPT><SCRIPT language=JavaScript1.1 src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/philly.sports/nfl;kw=center6;c2=football;c3=nfl;c4=nfl_homepage;pos=center6;group=rectangle;tile=10;ord=1107232223093?"></SCRIPT>
<NOSCRIPT>
</NOSCRIPT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
On the NFL
David Aldridge | If black QBs aren't rare, should we still care?
[size=-1]By David Aldridge[/size]
[size=-1]Inquirer Sports Columnist[/size]
JACKSONVILLE -- Is it progress when people think a problem no longer exists?
Or complacency?
In these turgid waters one finds Donovan McNabb, freshly alit from Philadelphia, ready as one can be for a media onslaught that careens from one subject to another like a drunk at last call. He is a lot of things: the self-professed captain of the Eagles' ship; the son of Sam and Wilma; Raquel's husband, corporate pitch man; an African-American man.
It is the last of these with which we are interested today, because he is interested in talking about it, and even moreso here, because this is the week of a Roman Numeral Game, and McNabb knows how rare it's been that men of his color have been the starting quarterback in Roman Numeral Games. In the 39th of these annual affairs, he is but the third, after Doug Williams and Steve McNair.
It means something to McNabb to be here, something other than being in the Big Game. You may just want him to shaddap and talk about football. But he's got the floor now. That's one of the things that happens when you break through and get here. The stage is yours.
"This is history being made," he said yesterday. "You go back to what Doug Williams was able to do, the struggles, obviously, being in Tampa, and then coming into Washington, and having to come into the Super Bowl game. That showed a lot about his character, showed a lot about his perseverance. It just showed a lot about his heart, about his desire for the game.
"And to be in that list of only three who have played in the Super Bowl, and I'll be part of that, it says a lot. He did a lot for us. He gave us an opportunity. And doors have been opened. What Steve McNair was able to do at the Super Bowl, it gives the kids now, at the collegiate level, high school, Pop Warner, it gives them an opportunity to dream and have aspirations to play at this level. (ital)And(endital) winning a Super Bowl."
A few hundred miles south of here, where he's currently a personnel executive with the Buccaneers, Williams has taken note of McNabb.
"I feel where Donovan is coming from," Williams said in a telephone interview yesterday, 17 years to the day since he threw five touchdown passes against the Broncos in Super Bowl XXII and won Most Valuable Player honors.
"I've been there," Williams said. "Now he has a chance to add to the history. It's sad that is has to be history and not just football. But we all know why ... we have to get to the point where it's not history."
Williams met with McNabb when McNabb was at Syracuse, and he's watched McNabb's career blossom.
"I was probably a lot more pissed off than he was last year about what that guy said," Williams recalled. "Don't mention his name and give him any more publicity. Then I watched the interview Donovan gave. I was proud of him."
A couple of weeks ago, when the story was McNabb and Michael Vick, there was uncertainty all around. How to handle the tale of a football game for the Super Bowl with African-Americans starting for each team? It was unprecedented. But was it newsworthy?
To harp on it incessantly would ... what? Call too much attention to a subject that many don't want raised -- not necessarily because it's about race, but because it isn't about football?
To ignore it would be ... what? Naïve? Not to mention disrespectful to the Marlin Briscoes and Joe Gilliams and James Harrises that blazed the trail?
In McNabb's view, again, it was a big deal.
"Last week should have been the time when people should have been talking about, hey, we have two African-American quarterbacks playing in the NFC championship, coming to the Super Bowl," he said. "A lot of people didn't even recognize it. They just think Michael Vick and Donovan McNabb played against each other."
Is it progress when there are more African-American quarterbacks starting in the league (six) than McNabb believes (four)? That there are black backup quarterbacks -- none of whom can be considered stars -- in places like Jacksonville and New England and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and New York and Houston? Or that, as McNabb pointed out, all of the NFC's quarterbacks in the Pro Bowl next week will be African-American: McNabb, Vick and the Vikings' Daunte Culpepper? That's a big deal.
Isn't it?
Well, ask Williams.
There follows a long pause at the other end of the phone.
"Are you (bleeping) me?," he said, finally.
Told that you weren't (bleeping) him, Williams said, "I guess we're making (progress). I promise you, I did not even think about that."
Williams has followed McNabb's career as much as McNabb followed his. And he knows why McNabb has continued to resist any notion that he is a "running quarterback."
"If you watch football," Williams said, "and the so-called experts want to be fair to Donovan, they should go back to the day he broke his ankle. He didn't run. He
couldn't run. But he threw two or three touchdown passes back there. He proved he could win a football game any way.
"When they say 'running quarterback,' they want to say 'athletic.' But what Donovan has is escapability. Ain't so sense in being a lame duck and letting people knock you around back there. Donovan's just got some tools. But nobody ever said Steve Young is a running quarterback, did they? I've seen Steve Young do some things that Donovan and McNabb did, but he wasn't labeled."
But McNabb would much rather have that debate than, say, answer one more question about Terrell Owens' ankle.
By the way, a slight knows no color. That's why McNabb bristles a little when it's opined that Owens -- also African-American, in case you didn't notice -- has somehow rescued him and the rest of the Eagles from purgatory this season.
"He did an excellent job of coming in and presenting a different kind of feel for our passing attack, and the rest of the guys have learned a little bit from him," McNabb said of T.O. "But he didn't make me into a better quarterback. If that's the case, then I made him into a better receiver."
He has spoken with Williams and McNair about what to expect on this stage, the stage on which each shined. McNair was 22 of 36 for 214 yards, in becoming the first quarterback to lead his team back from a 16-point Super Bowl deficit. But his Titans finished a yard short of tying St. Louis, so his performance has been forgotten by many.
While Williams has become part of the lore of this game, and this week, his place cemented by NFL Films and the like. That's what McNabb is shooting for. It's hard-wired into him, the need to be seen and succeed on this, the biggest stage, to be the vanguard of a new wave of quarterbacks who look different, talk different, play different.
"For the young people who are watching, who are wearing our jerseys, that's something you need to sit down and tell those kids about," McNabb said, without braggadocio. "Because there's going to come a time where, you never know, there may be two African-American quarterbacks in the Super Bowl." Wonder what we'll talk about then.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
arty: 
