On the surface or to the casual fan, Griffin bust onto the scene this year. Griffin surprised many with the video game type numbers he put up this year. If you were to take a deeper look, you'd see this wasn't a surprise just a culmination of his career. Griffin was talented enough to start 12 games as a True Freshman, he did more than just start though. He was pretty productive throwing 15 TD's and only 3 INT's. Griffin should have become a house-hold name during his sophomore season, he would have if it weren't for an injury. He only played 4 games that year which resulted in a medical redshirt.
In his entire career Griffin never had a QB Rating under 142.0, his rating this year which resulted in him winning the Heisman was 192.3. Griffin was highly touted coming out of High School, the only surprise was that a prospect of his magnitude chose Baylor University. He is the first player from Baylor to have won a Heisman, hopefully he won't be the last. Griffin isn't an elite athlete with the ability to play QB, he's a very good QB with elite athleticism.
Think back just one year, who won the Heisman? Cam Newton from Auburn, Newton was basically unheard of as well before his Heisman campaign. Newton went to Florida where he was hidden on the bench behind another Heisman Trophy winner in Tim Tebow. After an interesting journey filled with the supposed "scandal," Newton ended up at Auburn and led Auburn to an undefeated season and a National Championship. Newton had a crazy year as well numbers wise, most didn't want to admit it but Newton led the nation in passing accuracy.(Newton wasn't found of any wrongdoing in the investigation)
It's a slippery slope, I won't go too far into it. Throughout the history of football, African American QB's have been known to be called athletes first and QB's second. Neither of these two young men were regarded as top QB prospects until they forced scouts, the media, and fans to see them on the national stage. Not many of the talking heads were high on Griffin or Newton prior to the break out games. The ones that everyone had to watch; for Newton it was the game vs Alabama, Griffin's coming out party was against Oklahoma. On each players run to the Heisman, scouts gave them credit for their awesome athletic displays and not much else. Each of these young men are great leaders, competitors, warriors, and lastly great people.
We shouldn't judge a QB on his color, but rather his impact on the game and his ability to WIN. Little else matters for QB's, it shouldn't matter HOW you get it done; just that you get it done. Congratulations to both of these young men for their accomplishments, I hope this changes the way some people view the QB position. Color shouldn't be a factor in rating ANY position, yet it still does. I hope this is the beginning of change, what do you think??
I like your perspective a lot here and agree to a very large degree. However, what I do have to point out is that both Griffin and Newton are incredibly mobile, athletic quarterbacks who use their legs to create a lot. Clearly, both have shown that they can play the QB position at a very high level and I think people, for the most part, have gone away from viewing a quarterback based on race. People don't worry about that so much unlike the days of Conredge Holloway and Warren Moon. You mentioned Tim Tebow, he's a guy who's picked on because of his elongated, inaccurate throwing and obviously he is white. His religion plays a part for some but definitely not for most from what I see. You look at Michael Vick, Cam Newton, Donovan Mcnabb and even to some extent Vince Young. These guys have all been given the opportunity to play QB at a high level and have succeeded. I think what people pointed out about Newton and Griffin had nothign to do with their race, rather it was the facts in front of them. But congratulations to both those guys for proving the critics wrong and Griffin is now looking in on the first round of the NFL draft so definitely believe people are moving away from that backwards attitude.
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