A TALE OF OPTICS
         (What Do You See)







At first glance, you may say I see a sprinter and a quarterback.  That perspective unfortunately would be deemed delusional when it comes to the anachronistic culture of the National Football League; the largest commodities broker in the country. The young man on the left is Troy Apke, a fleet-footed safety from Penn State University.  On the right is the electric, Heisman trophy winning, University of Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson.

I am going to regurgitate some of the hyperbole used to describe Lamar: "freakishly athletic, dynamic open field runner, game-breaking speed."  The NFL has stubbornly held on to an archetype of the field general; a position usually deemed to be the face of the franchise.  The so-called standard metrics for this position are: tall ( 6'5" ideally), pocket passer ( read slow) and erudite.  Since I referred to this league as a commodities broker, I will use this analogy to explain the algorithm to support this skewed lens of what a quarterback should be.  A classic pocket passer is going to execute the vast majority of his plays from the putative safety of the protective cocoon the offensive line provides.  From a longevity and efficiency standpoint, the analytics point to a higher rate of pass completions and less bone-jarring hits (sacks) from the defense.

Conversely, athletic, tuck-and-run type quarterbacks who dash at the first sign of turbulence have a shorter shelf-life and statistically seem to be less efficient outside of the pocket in addition to being subjected to potentially season-ending tackles from 250 pound linebackers closing with extreme prejudice.  The quarterbacks for the college football national champs from 2013, 2015 and 2017 all, except maybe Jameis Winston, ( he was also a Heisman trophy winner and the first pick overall in the draft) fall into the specious metrics that have general managers subjugating them into alternative positions-usually wide receivers. The 32 teams in the NFL are replete with dozens of backup quarterbacks who on paper fit the antiquated mold of what a next level passer should be. There seems to be a propensity to "develop" these projects because intrinsic value seems to be ascribed to them predicated on the so-called measurables and intangibles.

While I fully understand that this position carries a weighted measure in the league because of the immediate impact of a credible talent, their is a latent, almost mendacious attitude when it comes to developing college football stars who happen to be a diversion from the hard template that usually looks like Tom Brady or Peyton Manning; the later of which by the way had an egregious rookie season.

Troy Apke made headlines when he ran the fastest time for all the Combine invitees at the position of safety.  His time was so exceptional that football deity Deion Sanders exclaimed, "man, that dude can really run!"  What was really intimated by that statement was " that dude is really fast for a white boy!  In psychology the term used for optics that are familiar to an individual is pattern recognition. Under the divisive, dystopic narrative that has become American politics lies an insidious element of the social cancer that continues to metastasize.  One of its derivatives is eugenics, a byproduct of social Darwinism that also spawned unfortunate forms of prejudice like implicit bias and negative attribution.  Just as Lamar Jackson's freakish athleticism is a common form of prose used by sports commentators, Troy's "exceptional" display of speed fell outside of the norm reference for a white dude playing defense.

The picture of Troy winning a sprint featured in this blog would be seen by some as an anomaly.  In fact, there are so-called schools of thought that believe that fast twitch fibers are the exclusive physical attribute of black athletes therefore Troy Apke's performance is simply an aberration, a hiccup in the natural order.  The mosaic of sports has been a powerful platform to address many of the systemic challenges incongruent with the venerated decrees we promulgate to under gird our democracy.  Yet even within that tapestry, there still exist this benighted notion that only certain types of people possess the capacity to do certain things in the field of play and God knows other professions.  Yeah, even in 2018.