1. Introduction

Throughout the inceptual years of the National Football League (NFL), there was one central issue with profound social, political, and economic implications: racial stacking at the quarterback position, beginning with Fritz Pollard: the first Black quarterback in the NFL and the league’s first Black head coach. As legendary as his tale eventually proved to be, it certainly did not start out as such. He began his career at Brown University in the fall of 1915, where he was refused a roommate, friendship with any member of the team, and even a practice uniform. When he requested one, his assigned cleats were two sizes too large. Even once he had thought he had earned his roster spot, he was surprised on what would have been his first game day by the equipment staff when they told him he hadn’t been assigned a uniform. “Pollard found a quiet spot in the corner of the field house, sat down, and cried” (Reid, 2022). Yet, Pollard managed to go down as a lodestar for aspiring Black football players everywhere: clearly, his situation improved.

Over time, as more Black athletes entered the NFL, the stigma naturally wore off, but one position remained gatekept from aspiring Black athletes: quarterback. Due to stereotypes of Black people as merely brute force athletes incapable of the leadership or cognitive ability their white counterparts possessed, this position remained racially stacked for decades. However, after decades of oppression, the NFL’s social structure turned a corner with the career of Doug Williams. In 1988, he became the first Black quarterback to win a Superbowl and its MVP award, the highest honor in all of football, disproving the mainstream narrative of the incompetency of Black QBs. Racial stacking did not disappear after this win, but it was the largest milestone that led to an exponentially accelerating landslide of future social developments, culminating in the first Superbowl matchup headlined by two Black quarterbacks in 2023. Doug Williams’ career was a symbolic milestone for the media and fans as much as the material constraints on Black quarterbacks’ careers. His story deconstructed the social barriers that prevented scouts, coaches, and managers from giving Black quarterbacks a fair shot by proving their success was possible at the highest level. It also inspired future generations of Black quarterbacks who looked up to Williams as a beacon of hope, which in turn led to even more Black success down the line.

Applied to football, racial stacking is prevalent where the media construes QB as a position suitable for only whites due to the IQ and leadership required. Subsequently, Black players were forced into positions like wide receiver or defensive back that required more ‘raw athleticism.’ This can also operate within positions: Black QBs are supposed to be dual-threats capable of running and taking big hits, whereas whites are supposed to stay in the pocket, safeguarded by the protection of their offensive line, and make smart decisions (Coleman & Scott, 2018, p. 1). One study examined the subconscious tendencies of performance evaluators and found that even when coaches and scouts were able to identify the better player objectively, when asked to provide subjective descriptions, they reverted to racial stacking. In this study, coaches preferred Black running backs over whites due to “intangible traits,” many of which certainly associated with race (Coleman & Scott, 2018, p. 2). This begins far before the pressures of professional football; a study found that stereotypes stem from youth football: even peewee players are subject to harmful discrimination that can inhibit their opportunities and self-confidence (Ferrucci & Tandoc, 2017, p. 53).

2. The Implications of Racial Stacking

Racial stacking is not a trivial social stigma, but one that can also lead to aspiring Black QBs being forced out of their chosen position into one more supposedly suited for those of their race. From a young age, Black athletes are conditioned to stop trying to get their foot in the door at predominantly white positions like QB, instead told to switch to more suitable positions like receiver or cornerback. These messages become internalized over time, further inhibiting the success of Black QBs, corroborated by studies that demonstrates a psychological disadvantage that comes with these repeated tropes (Mercurio & Filak, 2010, p. 61). In a study of over one thousand players across the 2008-2009 recruiting class, black QBs were 28.5% more likely to be forced out of their position than their white counterparts. On the other hand, white runningbacks were 31.7% more likely to switch to a less athletically demanding position where they could capitalize on their supposedly intrinsic intellectual advantages (Coleman & Scott, 2018, p. 2). This is a visible manifestation of racial stacking into stereotypical dichotomies across racial lines which forces code-switching, or in this case, position-switching, preventing Black people from fulfilling their potential.

Another result of racial stacking is salary discrimination. Despite similar performances, Black quarterbacks have been paid less on average than their white counterparts (Berri & Simmons, 2009, p. 25). A 2009 study found that even when they are perceived as equal performers, black quarterbacks struggle to earn as much compensation from front offices across the league (Ferrucci & Tandoc, 2017, p. 44).

3. Perceptions of Black Athleticism as Racial Stacking

The primary justification for racial stacking is the binary posited between Black people as raw athletes lacking cognitive capacity or awareness while whites were athletically disadvantaged but made up for it in cognitive supremacy (Billings, 2004, pp. 202–207; Coleman & Scott, 2018, p. 2; Van Otterloo, 2013, p. 3). A nationally representative study of hundreds of white American sports fans found that they frequently attribute black athletes’ success to genetic luck and intrinsic talent, not hard work (Billings, 2004, p. 203; Coleman & Scott, 2018, p. 2). In the same vein, white athletes who manage the “overcome the odds” are given gratuitous credit for their efforts (Billings, 2004, p. 203; Mercurio & Filak, 2010, p. 60). This refusal to give Black athletes due credit can be exhausting for they have to work twice as hard as their white counterparts to receive half the credit. As Hall of Fame nominee Donovan McNabb says, “they never wanna give you the credit because it’s too much for them to say, ‘I was wrong’” (Go Behind, 2022). In another study, researchers made participants listen to a radio broadcast of a play while looking at a picture of either a white or black athlete that supposedly was being described in the broadcast. The study found that fans were far more willing to excuse white athletes’ mistakes: when they were described as unathletic or underperforming, they received compensatory stereotypes like intelligence or ‘hustle.’ Alternatively, for black athletes, there was no ‘benefit of the doubt’ afforded (Coleman & Scott, 2018, p. 2). These results couldn’t have been starker: the only variable was a picture of the player which only varied in skin color. Black athletes’ mistakes were seen as “cognitive limits” inherent to their genes that can’t be improved through hard work or practice, whereas white athletes were seen as inherently more coachable and their mistakes recoverable (Coleman & Scott, 2018, p. 2).

Dating back to the plantation, black peoples’ value in society has been reduced to their bodily capabilities. This trope explains the dehumanization of black people in the sports world, too: it demonstrates why black quarterbacks are only seen for athletic ability, not intellectual prowess. The racialized mythologization of black athletes has been justified by gross, pseudo-scientific exaggerations in the media such as “arms that ‘reach below the knee,’ several inches longer than the arms of white men who were of comparable height.” Racial tropes about the disparate natural abilities of black and white people have been accepted as fact in white supremacist circles who leverage pseudoscientific, cherry-picked, and often blatantly racist examples to justify an incorrigible theory founded on and justified by racist principles (Van Otterloo, 2013, p. 4). In their eyes, if black people were inherently inferior, why attempt to level the playing field of opportunities?

4. Perceptions of Black Leadership as Racial Stacking

Another justification is the common notion that Black people are incapable of leadership over white teammates. This issue goes beyond the gridiron: black institutional leaders in every sphere of life experience discriminatory stereotypes that deem them unfit to lead white peers. For example, in the workplace, black employees are less likely to receive promotions for the same job performance as their white colleagues. Leadership categorization theory would posit that black employee are externalized from leadership roles because of unconscious perception processes that use preexisting mental categories of prototypical leadership qualities (in football, cognitive ability and whiteness itself) to determine the viability of a candidate. Because the mindsets of white employers are so often imbricated in racist surroundings from their youth, their predispositions can inhibit black success. The stigmatization of black leadership can have extensive impacts, such as inhibited career advancement, decreased odds of promotion, occluding upward mobility both socially and economically, and whitewashed institutional direction because of the absence of input from Black leaders (Carton & Rosette, 2011, p. 1141).

5. Perceptions of Black Expression as Racial Stacking

Another aspect of antiblack racism in the NFL community is the policing of Black expression. Not only are Black QBs held to higher standards, but they are also expected to fit the image of the prototypical Black QB cohered by white media members. As Warren Moon, the first Hall of Fame black quarterback, explains, this is what made 2015 MVP Cam Newton so unique (and simultaneously polarizing). He, in an unprecedented manner, was able to discard expectations of white conformity and play the game his own way. His play style transcended the strict dichotomy between "pocket passer’’ and ‘‘dual threat,’’ white and black, ‘‘raw athlete’’ and ‘‘intelligent player,’’ etc. (Ferrucci & Tandoc, 2017, p. 41). He was flashy, demonstrative, outspoken, etc. However, this invited backlash: one Tennessee mom who took her kids to see a game wrote to him, “Because of where we sat, we had a close up view of your conduct in the fourth quarter. The chest puffs. The pelvic thrusts. The arrogant struts and the ‘in your face’ taunting of both the Titans’ players and fans. We saw it all” (Craggs, 2016). Since “inappropriate expression” is an inherently subjective term, it has been stamped discriminately on Black QBs. The media doesn’t seem to bat an eye at flashy behavior like Newton’s as long as they continue to perform at the highest level, but when their play starts to slip, the floodgates of suppressed racial commentary open and their biases are exposed. This is exemplified by Colin Kaepernick’s protests: for years, he was the NFL’s poster boy, but when he spoke out against institutional racism and called them out for their own racist practices, they channeled their insecurity into his expulsion from mainstream acclamation and, soon after, the league itself (Coleman & Scott, 2018, p. 3).

The underlying reason that influences these material barriers is media representations. One explanation for why they can be so influential is social learning theory, which posits that individuals take on mindsets, worldviews, rhetorical practices, etc. through habituation and modeling. The more they see someone perceived as “successful” engage in a certain behavior, the more likely they are to follow suit. This means that negative, stereotyped depictions of Black QBs do, in fact, spill over. The broader public is more homogenous than often assumed (Mercurio & Filak, 2010, p. 57).

6. Progress Against Racial Stacking

It is notably difficult to isolate a single moment to herald as the turning point for Black QBs: “Some say the door opened slightly when Willie T. Thrower became the NFL’s first Black quarterback in 1953 (Farmer, 2002); others believe it was Washington Redskins quarterback Doug Williams’ MVP performance in Super Bowl XXII; still others believe it was when Atlanta selected Michael Vick as the number one overall pick in the 2001 NFL draft (Chapman, 2001)” (Billings, 2004, p. 201). The most compelling of these is Doug Williams’ performance. It forced racist media members to change their minds because they had been proven outright wrong: a Black QB had finally accomplished the most impressive feat in the world of football. This victory cascaded into a series of social and institutional breakthroughs over the years. In 2019, four of the eight last starting quarterbacks remaining in the playoffs were black. The AFC Pro Bowl roster was led by three black QBs. The AP All-Pro First and Second Teams were both led by black quarterbacks. In 2023, the Superbowl matchup featured two Black starting QBs. All of these were firsts (Reid, 2022). Stereotypes being deconstructed daily provide Black players the opportunity to redefine their culture, play style, and revenue outside white normative notions of how black players should fit into the sports world (Coleman & Scott, 2018, p. 5). As for stereotypes that disavow Black leadership, the same is true. Although the justifications remain racially stacked, broad perception of leadership ability is evening out. The “anti-intellectual” raw athlete stereotype is largely declining, no doubt a huge contributor to black QBs’ increase since the eighties and before (Coleman & Scott, 2018, p. 2).

This is significat at every level of the game. For All-Pro Mike Vick, his youth inspiration came from his predecessors. As he says, “I still didn’t believe it at the time, and then Donovan [McNabb] got drafted, Dante Culpepper got drafted, Achilles Smith got drafted. And then I was like, okay, here we go, and then, this trend that was created […] was the origin of my career” (NFL Roundtable, 2021). The NFL’s first five black quarterbacks have joined forces to form an organization they’ve labeled The Field Generals: a group dedicated to preserving a place for black quarterbacks for years to come as well as teaching their evolution through history (Rhoden, 2007). This is just one example of how black quarterbacks have created intergenerational communities of solidarity forged on the battleground of racial discrimination and demonstrates the unique duty black quarterbacks have to their successors to embody mentorship for the good of the game and black youth everywhere.

7. Conclusion

For the first half-century of its existence, no social issue implicated the game of football more than the racism embedded in it, particularly seen through stacking at the quarterback position. In 1988, however, Doug Williams became the first Black QB to start and win a Superbowl along with its prestigious MVP trophy. This forced racist fans and media members to entirely reevaluate their ideals and subconscious tendencies, culminating in today’s league: one where Black QBs are now seen for more than the value of their ‘raw athleticism,’ now appreciated as some of the most intelligent leaders the game has ever had the opportunity to witness, and now valuable social critics as much as they are performers on the field. Finally, the league, media, and fandom of their precious game have begun to listen to them as more than just pawns in their grand scheme to improve viewership and profit. And with this has come immense social progress: from the injection of social justice messaging on helmets and stadium banners to outreach programs for marginalized youth communities, today’s game is truly a whole new one.