Former Stanford running back Toby Gerhart is white. And, apparently, the color of his skin is affecting his draft stock.
An unnamed scout has told Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports that Gerhart’s race will knock him down by a round.
“He’ll be a great second-round pickup for somebody, but I guarantee you if he was the exact same guy -- but he was black -- he’d go in the first round for sure,” the unnamed scout said. “You could make a case that he’s a Steven Jackson-type -- doesn’t have blazing speed but he’s strong and powerful and versatile.”
Um, what?
Gerhart also told Silver he was asked about race during pre-draft interviews. “One team I interviewed with asked me about being a white running back,” Gerhart said. “They asked if it made me feel entitled, or like I felt I was a poster child for white running backs. I said, ‘No, I’m just out there playing ball. I don’t think about that.’ I didn’t really know what to say.”
We can discount the latter remark because teams say all sorts of dumb stuff during interviews in order to see how kids will react to stress. But the comment from the scout is mind-blowing.
As we see it, if anyone wants to pass on Gerhart because they think his skills are limited due to his race, the team that ultimately takes him won’t have a problem with that decision.
Previously, we’d believed that stereotypes influence football at the lower levels of the game, when the athletic kids with white skin are steered toward quarterback, and the frustrated jock with a whistle pushed athletic African-American youths toward running back and receiver. But it now appears that, even at the NFL, decisions get made based on factors that simply don’t matter.
Then again, the bad organizations don’t become bad organizations by accident.
