Is Teddy Bridgewater’s NFL Draft Stock Dropping Because He Hired A Black Agent?

Teddy Bridgewater is the latest in a long line of top black quarterbacks to fall victim to a kind of racism that punishes African Americans in the NFL Draft.

In his case, the Louisville standout passer has been the victim of a whisper campaign that’s designed to lessen his value and would not have happened had he followed the standard practice where college coaches and university boosters, the majority of which are white, push black athletes toward white agents, where white quarterbacks are hyped beyond their college statistics and record over black quarterbacks, and where black qbs are regularly the target of bad-mouthing campaigns in the media.

Some of those agents have cozy kick-back deals with some media types who have incentives to talk one athlete down, and another one, their client, up.

For example, the pressure not to take Cam Newton was particularly high in 2011, with all kinds of negative media accounts coming out, and on top of that, the elevation of a white quarterback, Blane Gabbert to the point where he was said to be better than Cam and then-Nevada, and now San Francisco 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick (who, I wrote after his great Senior Bowl apperance, was better than Gabbert, who I said should not be drafted in the 1st round, but was eventually taken by the Jacksonville Jaguars in the 10th spot of the 1st round – and now has been declared a draft bust.)

The hype machine was so rigged against Newton, it painted Cam as a young man who got in trouble with the law years before his senior year, while choosing to ignore that Gabbert was involved in a bar fight in 2010, and less than a year before he was to be considered for the 2011 NFL Draft. Blane was never arrested, but he was detained by police, and the account not well-covered, whereas it seemed every media type had written about Newton’s 2008 arrest.

What if the police in Florida elected to treat Newton as the Missouri law enforcement officials handled Gabbert? I’m not condoning what either student-athlete may have done, only pointing out a racist double-standard that generally sees black young men arrested and white young men not.

NFL Ignores NFL Draft Racism, Picks Best Player

Fortunately, the practice of racist NFL Draft hype ends where NFL decision makers begin, and explains why Cam Newton, RG3, and EJ Manuel were taken as high as they were in 2011, 2012, and 2013, respectively.

But then there was Geno Smith, the West Viginia record-setting passer, who fired his agent Select Sports weeks before the 2013 NFL Draft. The firm started a not-too-veiled smear campaign of lies all designed to make him look like the quintessential uppity black young man.

Smith fell out of the NFL Draft 1st Round and into the 2nd round and into the waiting arms of Rex Ryan and the New York Jets. Listening to none of the totally ridiculous media rancor about Geno, Ryan made him the starter, and Geno performed well in a pressure-cooker of a role.

Now, even with Michael Vick brought in as quarterback insurance, Smith was declared the starter.

This is the World that Teddy Bridgewater has brought down on him because he interviewed a number of agents, and then hired a black representative, NFL Players Association Contract Advisor Kennard McGuire, of MS World LLC. Mr. McGuire is not only not known as a quarterback agent, he has a hard-ball reputation in the NFL, and is known for encouraging his players to hold out of practice or training camp. But he’s also known for being effective in getting good deals for players like Vince Wilfork and Andre Johnson.

There are people out there, agents and scouts and media analysts, who don’t want Kennard McGuire or Teddy Bridgewater to succeed, and they’ve revved up the hype machine full-bore against them.

Consider the whole deal about Teddy Bridgewater’s Pro Day. Now, Teddy’s Pro Day is widely reported to have been terrible, and you’ll read that he completed 57 passes of 65 attempts, or about an 87 percent completion rate.

What’s interesting is, it’s hard to find a media account of Blake Bortles’ Pro Day that actually records the stat. After a lot of clicking around, I found one: he was 38 of 47, or about an 80 percent completion rate.

Think about that. The supposedly bad Teddy Bridgewater has a better completion rate by a giant 7 percent over Blake Bortles. Tell me how that could be?

Blake Bortles is the one the media and the white agents machine have made sure to be the chosen one for 2013. I’m not going to say he’s the Blane Gabbert of 2013, but when you look at how he’s talked about in the media, and then start to compare that to facts, it does look that way.

Or if that’s not enough, how about the reports that Teddy Bridgewater had a bad private workout? Think about that one. The people who reports this weren’t even at the private workout to be able to confirm that report – proving once again that the label of ‘journalist’ is worn selectively – because the workout was private.

Even when Teddy Bridgewater’s the focus of good news, like the Jacksonville Jaguars working him out and meeting with him something like four times since December of 2013, its spun by ESPN as not meaning anything because of ‘all of the negative media reports.’

Think about it.

I know this blog post is going to upset a lot of people, and I want it to, and it should. There’s no excuse for the maintenance of a system that treats black college quarterbacks in this way. It’s got to stop, and I thank God that we have NFL coaches and general managers who don’t buy into an incredibly racist system of promotion that’s part of the NFL Draft.

Stay tuned.