McNair -- Carrying the standard

By Eric Poole Sports Central Columnist

In a way, it's a shame that Rush Limbaugh lost his ESPN gig over the whole Donovan McNabb flap, because somebody needs to ask him what he thinks about Steve McNair.

Boy, he'd probably sweat like the fat guy he used to be.

After all, if there were a media conspiracy to anoint a successful black quarterback, McNair would be the man.

I mean, he's got the accurate shoulder cannon, and, unlike a lot of mobile quarterbacks, he gets the idea that moving to gain yardage is for running backs. Quarterbacks are supposed to move to evade the rush and create time to pass.

On top of all that, McNair is a warrior -- a compliment that isn't paid nearly often enough to black athletes. He wasn't healthy much more than a half-dozen days last year, yet he answered the bell every time.

This year, he's feeling good -- until his injury this week against Atlanta -- and it has shown.

McNair is leading the NFL in passer rating and he is at or near the top of the league in the more important passing statistics -- average gain per pass attempt and touchdown-to-interception ratio.

He's also a standard bearer, and not for black quarterbacks.

Limbaugh's ignorant ranting aside -- and isn't that a little redundant -- that's already been taken care of by guys like Willie Thrower, the first black to start at quarterback in the NFL; Marlin Briscoe, who had to change position, but did play QB on an emergency basis; James Harris and Joe Gilliam, the first to win starting QB positions in the NFL; Doug Williams, first to win a Super Bowl; and Warren Moon, who will probably be first in the Hall of Fame.

No, McNair, who almost won the Heisman Trophy while playing for Division I-AA Alcorn State, is puncturing the myth that big colleges have a monopoly on big-time pro football prospects.

It used to be that small colleges were the only path to the NFL for black players, who often were shut out of Top-25 schools, especially in the South.

But eventually, even drooling racists like Bear Bryant realized that they couldn't win without the dark-skinned players, so the big schools discovered civil rights.

On top of that, there were no scholarship limits, so the top schools could cast a wide net and pull in all the top prospects. Yeah, they got a lot of junk, but as long as most of them panned out, the schools could carry the occasional dud -- or run him off the team.

But the NCAA adopted scholarship limits, first to 100 per team, then to 85. And those limits should probably be even lower to keep colleges from turfing their wrestling teams in order to comply with Title IX.

Even with scholarship limits, almost all of the pro prospects still came out of the big schools. In part, that was due to perception -- there were some mighty fine Division II and III football players getting ignored by the NFL.

But by the 1990s, two other developments made it obvious that all of the top pro prospects weren't in Kansas, or Michigan, or Penn State, any more.

With the scholarship limit at 85, that means that a coach can fill 21 scholarships every year, assuming every player sticks around for four years. But most players don't stay around for four years.

They stay for five because almost all of them get redshirted as freshmen.

That means schools can fill only 17 slots a year. Even considering the players who don't get redshirted as freshmen and the ones who leave early for the NFL, most schools have less than 20 scholarships a year.

The second development is the practice of schools wrapping up most of their scholarship classes through oral commitments before the recruiting class' senior season.

That means a kid who wins a starting spot as a senior and sets the world on fire could end up empty-handed. That's what almost happened to Mike McMahon, now the Detroit Lions' backup quarterback.

He didn't start until his senior year and, while he didn't drop all the way into Division I-AA or Division II, he ended up at Rutgers, which is just about as close as you can get.

Because the battle for Division I scholarships is more fierce than it used to be, colleges can be more choosy. As a result, players who would have gone to big schools 25 years ago end up on lower division rosters.

Some of those players who have Top-25 talent, go to Mid-American Conference schools, which goes a long way in explaining why the MAC has pulled off a run of upsets this season against the NCAA's big boys.

In 1977, the University of Pittsburgh recruited a linebacker who weighed less than 200 pounds, which was small even back then. But the guy put on about 70 pounds of muscle between his freshman and sophomore years and ended up being an NFL standout.

If he were a high school senior today, Russ Grimm, now the Steelers' offensive line coach and a former Pro Bowler and original Washington Redskins Hog, would have been passed over by Division I, just like Steve McNair was.

And McNair's probably not the last small-college standout we'll see in the NFL.

A quick thought on ESPN's "Playmakers": When I was in college, one of our professors assigned us an interview with a police officer -- it's a pretty standard journalism school assignment.

One little-known fact about cops is that they spend an inordinate amount of time on paperwork. Now, how many of you want to watch Andy Sipowicz or Vic Mackey filling out the daily reports in prime time?

Using the NFL's logic as it applies to the ESPN television show "Playmakers," that's what the league wants you to see on cop shows.

Just like "NYPD Blue" and "The Shield" aren't accurate representations of police work, "Playmakers" isn't supposed to be an overly accurate representation of life in the NFL.

Television shows are supposed to be entertaining. I only saw a couple episodes of "Playmakers," but I think it succeeds at that.

It's not a reality show. The league needs to lighten up on this one before it turns back into the "No Fun League."

If it had been accurate, considering a book written in the mid-1990s that alleged almost one-quarter of NFL players had committed a felony, a lot more players for the fictional Cougars might have run afoul of the law.

Article courtesy of Sports Central.