The Great White Hope of Football
There is a racial aspect to all layers of society today, and this is very true in sports, which seem to give race added dimension and connotation. Maybe it has something to do with the nature of the game ritual, their sublimated version of society enacted on the playing field. In any case, it is a place charged with racial dynamics.
This was brought to a head recently when former Jets quarterback Boomer Esiason blasted current Jests star quarterback Mark Sanchez on CBS radio, calling Sanchez a “wide-eyed … skittish chihuahua.” (Sanchez is not the first Mexican-American quarterback. But he is the quarterback most identified by the community, and is a third generation American and of full-blooded Mexican decent.) Why make this a racial attack? If it were a white quarterback, he would just be evaluated on his performance and not have his slipping play be attributed to being white. Instead, Sanchez's mistakes are attributed to being “scared, lazy, sneaky” – typical sleazy racial stereotypes.
But this unveiled racism is just the latest in a long line of racial barriers in the NFL. It is hard to believe now, but Rush Limbaugh once was a desk commentator for ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown. He was forced to tender his resignation in 2003 after he said that the NFL is promoting the success of Donovan McNabb as a black quarterback. He called it “reverse racism” that inflated football commentator’s opinions of McNabb’s performance. Eerily enough, Limbaugh tried to buy the beleaguered St. Louis Rams in 2009. (For something like 700-750 million dollars!) Black players cried out they would never sign a contract with the Rams if that was the case. Eventually the player’s union agreed and made an official pronouncement that they would not support the sale. Limbaugh was eventually outbid. (Though he probably could afford it, considering his 10 year/400 million dollar contract with Clear Channel.)
This is white supremacism at work in football – it is acceptable for players of color to man the front line, be running backs and receivers – but a quarterback, the field general, the captain of the team, must be white. With more people of color, more ethnicities represented in the game, the quarterback is still this special position in the game, the heroic position on the field. It is the last holdout. With the monopolistic hold on the position in doubt in an age of McNabb, Sanchez, Tony Romo, Vince Young, Michael Vick, and others, there is large segment of society that longs for another dominant white quarterback. And not just any white quarterback, but one that realigns football with the industrial-phallic-ascetic morals at it foundation. A whiteness that reminds them of a hygienic white lifestyle replete with bran muffins, saltpeter, cold showers and Skin Bracer.
Enter Saint Tim Tebow - a perfect alignment of the stars to fulfill the dreams of Midwestern values. A good boy who fights temptation, puts God first, and leads his team with the power of prayer. He is like the James Jeffries football. The Great White Hope of football.
Some may claim that race is one issue, and football another. But I am less likely to draw these lines. I think the social significance of football is kind of structurally racist. It is, at its core, a microcosm of the functioning military-industrial complex. To win in football confers the power of the phallic male to pummel the enemy into submission with the better strategy, better technology, and better faith. It’s naked machismo in action. This is also why this is a very American sport – it’s our culture’s machismo in play. It may be why it is our favorite sport at the moment – the sport that best conveys patriotic bluster. Compare this to American stereotypical attitudes about European sport. Europe in general is derided for being moody, existential; all about style, high culture, intelligencia. We mock them for liking soccer and not eating enough red meat. European basketball players are derided for being “floppers” and “soft” and “finesse players.” It’s like a rehash of American supremacy after World War II, a story we maintain today about “the good war.”
In Tim Tebow, we have more than just the player, but a built-in aura of the Great White Hope, a symbolic relation which confers to the public an Aryan hero. A Prince Arjuna of the gridiron. And in a sense, I don’t think this is just about race, but a way to redeem football too, and to redeem the hopes of white America against a colored president, his European socialist politics and his foreign nature. For white supremacist America, Tim Tebow is the symbolic Aryan Christ who will redeem the white race from that dark threat.
