Last week when we picked up Matt Giordano and cut Aaron Rouse, I thought it was a little curious that we picked up another white guy. It seemed to me that the Packers seem to have a lot of white players. Maybe more than most teams. So I journeyed over to NFL.com and took a look at the rosters of all 32 teams in the NFL and sure enough, the Packers are the whitest team in the league. A few years ago we were the dumbest (based on lowest average wonderlic scores), for the past few years we have been the youngest, being the whitest now adds merely another distinction to our beloved team.

I took a look of every picture for every player in the league. If there was no picture or if there was any doubt about a player on any team, I classified them as white to make any comparisons with the Packers conservative. I came up with 523 active white players in the entire league, or about 30.8% of the entire NFL. That's an average of 16.3 per team. The Packers on the other hand have 24 white players on their active roster (45.3%), or almost one and a half times the league average and more white players than any other team in the league. That's not counting Chillar as white even though he is white hispanic. The vast majority of players in the league with hispanic surnames are not white hispanic and I didn't want to bias my results.

The second whitest team in the league is Houston with 22 active white players followed by St. Louis with 21. The Patriots and Bills are tied for third with 19 and six teams have 18. The Eagles, Redskins and Bears are tied as the least white teams with only 11 white players on each of their active rosters.

I noticed some very curious patterns acroos the league while doing my little visual survey. Literally every long snapper in the league is white as is every punter. With the exception of the hispanic and recently under fire Olindo Mare, every place kicker is also white. Obviously most of the quarterbacks are white, but white players are over represented on offensive lines and curiously enough at fullback. We are not the only team in the league with two white fullbacks as Denver also has two. Overall, there are far more white players on the offensive side of the ball than on the defensive side of the ball.

My next question was whether this is a long standing pattern with the Packers or a recent development. It seems it is mostly a recent development. In 2005 when Ted Thompson took over as general manager there were 18 white players. That dropped to 17 in each of the years 2006 and 2007. In 2008 the number jumped to 21 and in 2009 up to the current 24. So our number seems to have always been higher than the current league average of 16.3, but it hasn't been significantly above average until recently.

The biggest change in the team has been on defense. When Thompson took over the team in 2005, Aaron Kampman was the only white guy on the defense. That has changed considerably, with the biggest change coming at linebacker. Having been a white linebacker in the league, it almost looks like our GM is trying to clone himself. While white linbackers are not particularly rare in the league, no other team has quite the collection of them that we do.

Next, I tried to figure out where all of these white guys were coming from. Given that 30.3% of the league is white, are the packers drafting a disproportionate number of white players? Of the 51 draft picks in the Ted Thompson era, 20 (or 39.3%) have been white. While this is above the incidence of white players in the NFL, it is still not as high as the 45.3% currently on the team. Of the 51 draft picks, 20 are currently not on the active roster. That includes 5 of the 20 white players drafted (25%) and 15 of the 31 non-white players drafted (48.4%). So not only are we drafting more white players than the league average, we seem to be cutting fewer.

Now, my purpose isn't to call out the Packers for being racist, and I won't speculate regarding what might be causing this. One could actually argue that the Packers are really the most "diverse" team in the league since whites are really a minority across the NFL. I would just add this to the string of somewhat curious distinctions the Packers have had in the Thompson era. This is just a curious thing that I noticed and wanted to share with other fans.

Interesting, but the only thing I think it really means is you got a lot of extra time.

Then how the heck are they always jumping into the stands like that?

I noticed this on draft day, when the Packers spent three of their first four picks on white players. It came back to me on an early play against Chicago when they put out four white linebackers, and the camera cut to Brady Poppinga, who was standing on the sidelines.

The offensive line has been all-white for some time now. Wasn't Earl Dotson the last African-American starter? That dates it some. Funnily enough, at one of the league's whitest positions, tight end, the Pack's #1 and #2 on the depth chart are black. That suggests there's no deliberate racial agenda in Ted Thompson's drafting.

I do think Thompson has a selection bias which works in favor of a particular kind of individual, and white guys may benefit from it. He dislikes showy players. He will take a hardworker who is physically limited over a gifted athlete who has proven to be difficult to coach. The roster very much reflects Thompson himself: it is full of quiet, introspective, mature over-achievers. I don't think this is color-conscious — the most Thompsonite player of all, I would argue, is Greg Jennings — but like I say there is probably a selection bias. The perception that many white players (or workers, or politicans) tend to be "low-risk" has not gone away, despite all the Jared Allens and Jeremy Shockeys. (And these are just the sort of guys that Thompson would not touch with a bargepole.)

Off the top of my head, Will Whittacker.

Did Junius Coston ever start?

Who cares...?

Dude, are you serious? Why is this even a topic?

Brandon Chillar is Indian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Chillar

I took a look of every picture for every player in the league.....
Tell me it ain't true....you didnt really look at a picture of every player on every team...did you?

Next, I tried to figure out where all of these white guys were coming from...(and learned that)....not only are we drafting more white players than the league average, we seem to be cutting fewer. So where'd all the white guys come from? We know most everybody gets drafted, but from where? What conclusions can you reach as a result?

Now, my purpose isn't to call out the Packers for being racist, and I won't speculate regarding what might be causing this.
Oh come on...you cant go thru all this and come up empty......
Are white players cheaper (?) and TT is just being a tightwad as usual?

Have you done an "ethnic economic" study of all the player salaries throughout the league?
Get back to us.....

I would like to add a "so What"

I think Green Bay is probably not a preferred destination for many African American players. It's a mostly white community and some assumptions are probably made. Charles Woodson has said he did not want to come here orginally, but has obviously changed his mind once he got here. I think that's probably pretty typical. TT gets critcized quite a bit for not signing more free agents, and I think this is one of the obstacles he faces.

I think it's funny this came up as a topic. I've been noticing this trend for the past few seasons and have mentioned it to a few friends. I never had the time to actually do the research and crunch the numbers, but I'm glad someone did so that I know my perception wasn't off. I do wonder what's up with this trend? I doubt there's any true reason beyond coincidence.

On a side note, a few years ago I tried to use an entirely white FF team out of curiosity if it could be done. The results weren't pretty. Kids don't try this at home!

Oh great... young, dumb and white! That is what we get for letting that cracker from Mississippi hang around for so many years

I cant even believe the Mods let this topic on here. Serves absolutely no purpose with the acception of inviting racists comments. Close this now before some says something stupid.

How about nobody say anything stupid?

Way to much time on your hands my friend!

Not gonna comment til I see the Official stats fron The NFL.

It's just a guess, I haven't done an actual survey, but I bet the white players all have two white parents.

This is close to an issue I thought of a couple weeks ago. Our newest Supreme Court justice, Sotomayor, made a ruling a few years ago that a Connecticut town was racist because they had a promotion test in their fire department that caused mostly white guys to get promoted. She said the department should resemble the community in racial make up. It occurred to me this federal court ruling left several NFL cities, especially Buffalo and Green Bay, open to a lawsuit over the racial makeup of their teams.

They try not to let stupid people in.

Of course it doesn't work. But I commend their efforts.

Oh, nonsense. I think we can all be reasonable here. And it is something I've been thinking about the last couple of seasons, and as with the OP, solidified with the dump Rouse, bring in a white safety maneuver. That's what I like about internet discussion forums: we can discuss things here that maybe mainstream radio outlets can't talk about.

One more factor may be special teams--it seems a lot of the white guys on the team are there because of their ST prowess. I'm not sure why that would skew white.

Again, as with the OP, I can't really draw a conclusion from all this (and I don't think it's because guys won't come here as someone suggested), but if it is noticed around the league it may become an issue of guys not wanting to come here because, whether it's reasonable to think this or not, maybe they won't get a fair shot from TT. And you wonder also if some on the current team would notice it and also hold it against management. Say, you were Greg Jennings and your best buddy Ruvell gets cut in favor of some white dude--it might be hard for him not to kind of think, "hey that's been happening a lot recently." It's human nature to look for patterns and human nature to get angry when your friends are let go. And I don't know if Rouse was anybody's best buddy or not, but you could see it creeping into guys heads.

I do think it might have something to do with TT going after guys that remind him of himself--white, try-hard LBs, where, as mentioned, we seem to have a lot of our white guys.

It is legally defensible to have a (promotion) test that results in one class of individuals being disproportionally impacted as long as the test can be shown to be validly work-related. An employer who chooses to not adhere to it's own valid test results when promoting persons (but instead chooses to use race as a factor in promotion) would risk a reverse discrimination claim. What comes to mind for me is Taxman v. Board of Education of Piscataway (1993) where the school board chose to lay off the white teacher and keep the equally-qualified African-Am teacher in order to maintain a "culturally diverse" workforce. Because they used race as the criterion, the school board lost in the US Court of Appeals (in part because the board was not remedying any past racial discrimination and Af-Ams were already well represented in the workforce). I'm not sure Soto's ruling would fly in other Circuit appeal courts. For NFL teams, proof of past discrimination would play a major factor in any case that might go to Supreme Court. I don't see evidence of disparate impact occurring amongst NFL players regarding race. While very convoluted to sort out, it seemed more possible there was racial bias in hiring head coaches -- where minority candidates seem underrepresented among the higher echelon coaching positions.

Anecdotally, I can buy the observation that TT picks players more kin to the leadership style he likes to see on-the-field ...and this may have resulted in more caucasion players...but not intentionally picking them (Woodson for example)...if there's a correlation between personality type and ethnicity among NFL players.

In addition to being the youngest and whitest, as mentioned elsewhere on this site, the Wall Stree Journal also reports that GB has the most long-haired players of the 32 teams.

stay on topic here

What is the precise definition of "long-haired?"

Long-haired linebackers seems to be a growing trend in Green Bay, especially. Did Ted have long hair when he played?

Well, the long hair started with Hawk, and Matthews apparently has the same look because he liked Hawk when AJ was still at OSU. We also have an original long haired dude in Greene as a LB coach. I guess they all decided as a group it would be there thing.

Where da white men at?

So, we all agree it means nothing significant?

Good.

Sorry, you're completely mistaken. The test used in Connecticut was developed specifically to be racially neutral, it had been certified by numerous other fire departments in numerous other states as being a completely performance-based test, it had passed many certifications, and Sotomayor threw it out just 'cause. I do the math for a friend who is perhaps the leading performance-based testing guy in the country, e.g. he's president of the performance testing council. He was outraged, and at the next testing meeting there was talk that Sotomayor had just outlawed performance testing entirely in the US. He was very entertained by my thought of suing NFL, NBA, MLB teams for not having a racial makeup that matched their communities and therefore under Sotomayor's rule were prima-facia hiring illegally.

There was a great editorial written recently by a black Pulitzer prize winning writer in Miami. He pointed out that to most white people "racially biased" means someone has a better chance; to most blacks "racially biased" means someone has a better result. Hence the screams of "racism" when Serena Williams was penalized to a loss after screaming at a line judge.

Perhaps Thompson is just ahead of the curve.

Perhaps we're misinterpreting each other, Mark? I may have also misinterpreted your point. If so, apologies.

Let me rephrase...If a test is valid - measures what it intends to measure - it can be used (for promotions) even if it results in a disparate impact on some group. The Supreme Court (this summer) overturned Sotomayor's ruling 5-4....

June 29th...

"New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide, potentially limiting the circumstances in which employers can be held liable for decisions when there is no evidence of intentional discrimination against minorities.

"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.


Read more at: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-1428.pdf

That pithy rejoinder, especially following immediately upon the heels of the post it responds to, really made me laugh out
loud. If there's such a thing as perfect timing in the written word, that was it. Made my afternoon. Well... made an hour, anyway.


Why not? I think it's quite interesting.

What's more interesting to me, though, is that an ethnic group that makes up about 13.5% of the entire US population provides almost 70% of all NFL players.


Except that you provided the link to answer my question, the first thought that came to my mind reading your comment was, "Is that Indian Indian or American Indian?" I guess it's politically incorrect now to call a native American an Indian, but I can't help wondering if even to this day, if you refer to "Indians" in the company of Americans, would they assume you meant native American or native of India? I suspect the former, which is the opposite from what everyone else on the planet would more likely assume.

It's very interesting. It's most likely that the former under representation of black head coaches in the NFL had nothing to do with racism so much, but simply more with familiarity with people.

For all the crabbing about affirmative action measures like the Rooney rule, the number of black head coaches has tripled in the few years since its implementation. Yet no team would say, quite honestly I believe, that they hired a black coach because he was black. This interesting article suggests that all the rule really did was expose people to one another and allow some familiarity to grow that pushed the borders of the ole boy network. It seems to have worked pretty well.

(One absolutely delicious thought that this brings to mind is the idea of peopling a Meet the Press panel with the neocon sympathetic sons and daughters of the political and media elite - the latest addition to that esteemed crowd is George Bush's daughter who was hired to be an MSNBC pundit even while MSNBC is busy cutting back on the numbers of real journalists in their emply - like her (Ms ????, née Bush), Cheney's daughter, Peter Jennings son, Bill Kristol, etc sitting around crabbing about affirmative action and crowing that America should be a meritocracy.)

Seriously, one reason I come to chat on these forums is to escape from all the BS everywhere else. For most of us (who don't get paid to play it or talk about it), football is an entertainment. Now I come here to dive into my favorite escape, and I hit my head on the same BS I was trying to get away from. Thanks for nothing.

A good thread........
Although I replied in "tongue in cheek" fashion, its become a good mix of self-effacing humor and interesting detail put forward intellligently.

Thought provoking.
Kudos to the Mods for letting it continue and to the posters whose input is a refreshing relief from the "druggery" of examining the Packers OL woes.

Of possible concern however.....
It seems a certain Mod has a problem with Latino women!
LOL (Sorry, couldnt help throwing that in)

Right on brother.

The folks that squawk about affirmative action, etc., are the first ones to make up crap like this thread to label, separate and divide everyone into catagories like black & white, "neocon sympathetics" & liberals, etc.

We come here to enjoy Packer talk, not to be bored to death by your political agendas.

Not Latino women. Just one. And it's based on her job v. performance, not her latinoness.

Right on man!

No politcal agendas being put forward that I can see...just an intelligent discussion that many find interesting. We're all adults.
On a humorous note, I think you'll find a fair amount of BS shows up here as elsewhere else (my posts put forward as proof positive evidence....).

Thank you. Agreed.

Stick to Packers.

My Brett Favre and 'what to do when he comes to Lambeau' got shot down after about 10 posts and this garbage is still going.

Amazing.

( place where emoticon hitting himself in the head with a hammer is supposed to be)

I love how people post in a thread to complain about how it gets posts. How about don't read it or worry about it if you don't like it?

Yeah, because Im really worried.

agreed, this is still politics or didn't anyone notice that.

I'd say it's much more sociology than politics. The makeup of the team, from whatever angle you look at it, is still relevant to the Packers

I'd like to reiterate my bafflement to the bitterness over this thread. It's a reasonable topic and as you mention cleary germane to the GBP.

Yes but the question remains "what difference does it make"?
This thread could be restarted with the tag line of;
The Packers have the most men born in the South, or have brown hair or eat sushi. What does it mean or what difference does it make? Or is the thread starter trying to implicate someone? Then it turns political.

Still don't like but hey it's a free world.

You need to get a job.

No, it's not politics. Mark injected something political, as did I, but that doesn't make the thread political. It is, as JASIII says, sociological, if you must hang a label on it.

I remember threads about the hiring of black head coaches in which poster after poster after poster moaned and groaned about the Rooney Rule and I don't recall a single poster bitching about the thread being political. But Mark or I utter a couple of short comments that push the border a bit and suddenly the room fills with moaners and whiners about how it's all BS and un-Packer-like.

Actually, some of that could be interesting and informative.

JS Online had an article this morning about how many Samoans are in the NFL. Do you think that was something that made all their readers' blood pressure go up because they thought it was political?

You say "it's a free world" and I bet you'd be flabergasted if someone turned around and said to you, hey, keep politics out of it. And I'd agree with your bemused reaction. But what do you want to bet if I responded, no, it's not, that the mob will all pick up their pitchforks and torches again?

I wish I could find a job. Then my house wouldn't be in foreclosure and my kids could eat meat again and I could afford surgery my mom needs and the medical procedure little Johnny needs to fix his crippled leg...and.....

None of that is true. The point is, especially in this economic environment, that's a pretty insensitive remark especially coming from someone in Michigan. I have a job, thanks (and thank God).

Truth be told, I never expected to look at all the teams. I never really expected us to be that far off from the league average. Once I looked at the Lions (15), the Vikings (16) and the Bears (11), the difference became so glaring that I looked at a couple other teams in the NFC and was drawn in by the contrast between them and then simply continued in order to satisfy my own curiosity. The whole process took less time than it would take to watch one game so I didn't have to take off from work or anything. Curiosity is a wonderful thing. It leads to knowledge of the world around us, for those of us interested in knowing.

I certainly didn't mean for the discussion to become political and it really hasn't. I'd be interested if the Packers were different from the league on any attribute, particularly if they were the most on anything. When they're the most and 50% above the average I find that interesting. If we were the heaviest, or the lightest, or the fastest, or the slowest, or most left handed, or most right handed.....I would find any of those things interesting. I haven't checked, but I would be willing to bet that we're the blondest.

I think the discussion on the thread has been very interesting, for the most part. I think it's a real credit to the intellectual quality of the posters on Packer Chatters. Because of that, it would be the only place I would dare post something like this.

As far as what difference does it make, I don't know. When I first discovered it, I was strangely troubled by it, and couldn't quite put my finger on why. I had hoped that some discussion might help me. I think I was more troubled by the trend than I was troubled by the fact that we lead the league. Maybe some of the posters that were curious as to why this was even a topic might have been feeling the same kind of discomfort with it that I was. I would hate for us to become the Boston Celtics of the NFL. Up until only a few years ago the Celtics had a hard time attracting black superstars because they had developed a reputation as a "white" team (or at least as much as any NBA team could be considered a white team). Most fans probably didn't even know that, but most black fans did and so did most racist fans. They became sort of a favorite team for racists solely because they had that reputation. Different people are drawn to teams for different reasons. I would be pretty disgusted if I ran into someone who told me they were a Packer fan solely becaaue they are the whitest team in the league. Like I said, I think it's the trend that is troubling more so than the current level. While we're the whitest team, we're not yet a white team which I think I might find troubling considering that 70% of the talent in the league is not white.

I also wonder if there might be an unwritten white rule in the NFL. I think it was back in the 1970s when the Pittsburgh Pirates won the world series yet had annual attendance among the lowest in the league. A lot was made about the fact that in that particular year, the Pirates didn't have any white starters on their team. For years, I've heard talk about an unwritten white rule in the NBA...that while it's great if they are a starter, it's imperative that white is represented somewhere on the roster. I thought it was curious that there was more variance in the NFL above the mean than there was below the mean. The Packers have 8 more than the average, yet no team has less than 5 below the average. It made me think there might be an unwritten rule in the NFL. That might explain why a team was willing to give up a draft pick for a long snapper when its very uncommon that a team would actually draft one. I think a fact of life in professional sports is that while the average fan isn't racist, at least some portion of the market will be. It would be hard for any team to walk away from that revenue.

So it's easier for you to believe a team gave up a pick for a long snapper just so they could have an extra white guy than because they, ya know, got to camp and found they needed a long snapper?

There are plenty of white long snappers out there that are looking for jobs and they wouldn't cost a team a draft pick. Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, the talent level of that particular snapper had something to do with it and not his race?

I don't know why GB has more white guys than other teams. But I find your insinuations to be awfully ignorant. I mean, the fact that cutting Rouse and replacing him with Giordano sparked this thread is crazy. Rouse wasn't progressing as a player and the coaches obviously didn't like him. The Packers worked out a bunch of guys and signed the one with experience and a Super Bowl ring. You don't mention any of that. And the fact that you don't says a lot more about you than about the Packers.

Lighten up, Francis