Why Aren’t There Any African-American Kickers in the NFL?

January 8th, 2007

Filed under:
Uncategorized

Why Aren’t There Any African-American Kickers in the NFL?

People get uncomfortable when you talk about race and ethnicity. I think it’s because my generation in Canada was taught that the way to avoid racism was not to talk about race. That’s a lousy approach, and fails to recognize the richness inherent in ethnic diversity.

Regardless, onto my very trivial ethnicity topic du jour. Over the holidays, I watched some college football. Then this weekend I watched some of the NFL playoffs. It occurred to me: all the kickers are Caucasian.

That fact is particularly odd because 75% of all NFL players are African American. There used to be a lot of bias and racism around certain positions–for a long time there were very few African American quarterbacks, for example. I gather that’s changing for the better.

So why are there so few black kickers? There have been a few. Reggie Roby, for example.

I did some digging around Google, and the only reason I came up with was expressed by this dubiously-capitalized editorial:

It is quite a bit murkier when it comes to kicking a football. African Americans may have to take the Blame here. Some observers suggest it is because Soccer playing produces the best kickers and lots of white kids play soccer while few Black kids do. Well who is to Blame here. Soccer is even cheaper to play than football or basketball.

That makes sense. I randomly checked five NFL kickers’ Wikipedia entries for references to soccer, but I only found one that mentioned the sport. I can’t imagine that there are many kids of any colour who dream of being placekickers and punters, but you never know.

Can you think of any other reasons for this statistical abnormality?

Comments: 11 Responses so far

Brian El
January 9th, 2007
1:54 am

Darren: i’m not sure, but i’ll brief you more when i move to the 49ers and get the inside track.

[Reply]

Scottie
January 24th, 2007
8:22 pm

It’s 65%.

[Reply]

mike spino
January 2nd, 2008
5:13 pm

Are there any african american kickers in college. This needs to be brought to the attention of the youth leagues

[Reply]

DMan
January 10th, 2008
12:22 pm

Gene Mingo and “Cookie” Gilchrist were both African-American place kickers in the AFL. Mingo broke Lou Groza’s mark for most field goals in a season. Gilchrist was a multi-position player who was a beast at fullback, as well.

[Reply]

JP
June 30th, 2008
3:56 pm

Most Kickers are usually soccer players (ex: Sebastian Janakowski) which isn;t too big in the US. If you notice, most have foreign last names.

[Reply]

PS Reply:
November 17th, 2008 at 9:18 pm

Alright i was just randomly looking up info on African-American kickers in the NFL, and I’m sorry but I had to reply the the previous comment because it is so ignorant. What the heck do you mean most kicker’s have foreign name’s?! What is a foreign name?! This is the United States!, the only domestic last names would be those of Native Americans. I know my name doesn’t originate in the states and i’m pretty sure yours doesn’t either JP. I work in retail and I had this lady come in and talk trash about Barak Obama because she could imagine having a president with a “foreign last name” as you say… I’m not an Obama supporter but seriously what the hell is wrong with you people?! You give this country a bad name and are completely ignorant and should really figure out how this nation was formed and stop thinking you are superior because you are “american” and stop being afraid of “foreigners” because you know what your family used to be foreigners too!

[Reply]

Flam Davis
December 29th, 2008
8:39 pm

I think it’s because african americans tend to have more athletic ability than white people, that’s why they play more phisically demanding positions like running back or reciever. You hardly see white people playing those positions.

[Reply]