ority" superstar quarterbacks: four blacks and a Jew. An outraged letter to the Los Angeles Times in response to its entry in the black quarterback phenomenon sweepstakes correctly addressed the problem. "I find it sad and disappointing that you find it necessary to label these athletes as 'black quarterbacks.' Why can't they just be quarterbacks?" On one playoff team, the Philadelphia Eagles, 20 of the 22 starters, including all 11 on defense, are black. (www.usnews.com/usnews/Febissue/sports.htm)Given that blacks are over represented in the most popular sports and that young black men are more likely than young white men to consider athletics as a career, there has been much commentary about whether sports are bad for blacks. One could make the analogy that sports are a form of slavery or blatant political and economic oppression. Superficially, this argument is made by discussing a player is the "property" of his team or of his manager; he can be traded or "sold" to another team. On a more sophisticated level, the slavery analogy is used to describe sports structurally: the way audiences are lured to sports as a false spectacle, and the way players are controlled mentally and physically by white male authority, their lack of access to the free-market worth of their labor. Contrary to the white perception that it was an absolute triumph for African-Americans when Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier, former Negro Leaguer Bob Scott of Elizabeth told of the flip side: the destruction of the Negro Leagues after their stars defected to the white-owned major leagues. "It was the only empire, the only big business that Negroes had in those days," he said. "It was a source of pride. People came dressed to the ballpark the way they came to church. Today, we make millions of dollars and still we don't own anything." (www.bergen.com/moresports/races.htm)...
