better, faster, stronger

Seven months after his knee surgery, Terrell Owens is back as a free-agent and looking to stir things up once again. In an interview with NFL.com, he talked about his public workout, some former teammates, and the success of rookie quarterbacks Cam Newton and Tim Tebow.

"Cam Newton is amazing. He's getting praised, but I guarantee you if Tebow was doing what Cam was doing, he'd be all over billboards. He'd be on every commercial. He'd be all over the place."

T.O. is infamous for saying and doing some arrogant things on and off the football field so I don't usually like listening to him, but here I think he's pointing to an important aspect of athletics that sometimes goes unnoticed. Especially in professional sports, there's this illusion of colorblindness. Analysts claim to objectively critique the decision-making and athleticism that goes into every play, but they do it in such a way that glorifies black athletes. They fuel this prevailing opinion that blacks are stronger, faster, and bigger than everyone else, which unconsciously gives people permission to downgrade their achievements. People call black athletes "naturally gifted," implying that it's somehow easier for them to excel physically, rather than calling attention to the intense training and hard work that every talented professional athlete has to endure. So they will evaluate Newton's performance against a backdrop of expectation and see Tebow as overcoming some disadvantage. Maybe T.O. is right in saying that the hype would be bigger if Tebow were in Newton's shoes.. I don't know. But I do think that this presumption of black athleticism kind of sounds like a substitution for racism.