Where are the white DB's ?

[E.T.]

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Minority QBs make gains as starters

By Steve Wieberg, USA TODAY

Thu Sep 22, 7:08 AM ET

College football's scarcity of African-American coaches remains a sore spot. But the sport appears to be making strides on the field, where more than a third of the teams in the nation's major conferences - including five of the top six in the USA TODAY Coaches' Poll - currently start black quarterbacks.

Nine of the 22 top-rated quarterbacks in     NCAA Division I-A, from Texas A&M's Reggie McNeal to Virginia Tech's Marcus Vick to Texas' Vince Young, are black.

The numbers both encourage and confound minority activists who've long been galled by the inability of black coaches to gain a similar foothold. There are only three among the 119 I-A head coaches.

"It makes no sense," says Floyd Keith, executive director of the 4,000-member Black Coaches Association. "Why is it that the No. 1 position of leadership and decision-making on a football team can be occupied by a person of color but the person on the sideline can't?"

Nationwide, 34 of the 119 starting quarterbacks in I-A are black. The percentage rises in the top-tier Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-10 and Southeastern conferences, where blacks account for 22 of the 65 starters.

Almost half the teams in those six leagues, 32 of the 65, have an African-American starter or backup. Among them: seven of 12 starters in the SEC, including JaMarcus Russell at No. 3-ranked LSU, Chris Leak at No. 5 Florida and D.J. Shockley at No. 6 Georgia.

Young, a Heisman Trophy contender for No. 2 Texas, is among six black starters in the Big 12.

This time a year ago two of the nation's top six teams started black quarterbacks. At the same point in 2003, it was one of the top six. And in each of the two seasons before that, it was none. Never in the past decade have there been more than two of the six.

Notably, more than half of the overall 34 play in the South. Draw a vertical line through Manhattan, Kan., and only three schools in the nation's Western half start African-Americans: Utah, Utah State and Washington.