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It is obvious that the white athletes who dominated the gridiron before true integration began in the late 1960s have all but vanished from stadiums across America. No matter how much we may like and respect them, Sammy Baugh and Don Hutson (two 75th Anniversary Team picks) did little more than dominate slower (white) players than themselves.

So while Steve Van Buren, Bronko Nagurski, Raymond Berry, and many other pre-integration Hall of Famers are decidedly overrated ... so are Jim Brown, Marion Motley, Gale Sayers, Lenny Moore, Mel Blount, and almost every African-American NFL star until well into the late 1970s.

Huh? Allow me to explain.

It is very easy to downgrade or diminish the accomplishments of players in a segregated league, because, well, they simply were not playing the highest level of competition. An illustration of the corollary argument would be that J.H. Lloyd, Rube Foster, and Satchel Paige put Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Roberto Clemente in the major leagues -- those three MLB stars returned the favor by putting their predecessors in the Hall of Fame (through their own splendid performance).

But back to the cold assertion that the trailblazing African-American stars of the past were overrated ... Every time I watch the highlights of Jim Brown and co., I must say that I get less and less impressed, and more and more convinced that they, unbelievably and ironically, benefited from the racism of the National Football League.

How is that possible? What about the countless death threats and nasty racial slurs they endured, just because they happened to be talented football players? The honest truth is we don't know how good they were, but, based on the contemporary evidence before us, we have to conclude that they benefited in a respect their successors would not enjoy.

Think about it. The next time you watch the old highlights of the great trailblazing African-American stars, take a closer look at just who they are running away from, whose tackles they're breaking, and who is continually "posterized" on their glorious highlight compilations? That's right, white players.

Consider that Jim Brown won eight rushing titles in nine seasons, that is an incredible accomplishment, but it cannot be considered as impressive (in my mind, not even close) as Emmitt Smith's glory years (1991-1998) and we should all know why. Due to the racism of the NFL, Brown never faced (what we must consider now) the best athletes of his era -- as the players who would later garner scholarships to prestigious football powerhouses (and make NFL Pro Bowls) languished in the anonymous world of black football.

Only the most sparkling of African-Americans were grudgingly admitted in the NFL, and we know that teams yearned to keep their number of "(n-word)" to minimum. Thus African-Americans were anomalies, and in a role reversal of today (for white players), if they could not start -- they did not make the roster. Yet, the ones who did dominated (or had a greater opportunity to dominate) the NFL.

To be clear, this is not just Gale Sayers running away from beguiled whites on punt returns, but also Johnny Unitas hooking up with Lenny Moore on yet another deep pass play, at the expense of, oh never mind. How great was Dick Lane? "Night Train" essentially made the Hall of Fame because he could shut down and intimidate white wide receivers, nearly all of whom he could outrun. You could make a similar, more diluted, argument about Mel Blount.

The unbalanced nature of the game resulted in a few fortunate African-Americans, through absolutely no fault or intent of their own, having an unquestioned "easier time" (on the football field) than stars such as Ray Lewis, Jerry Rice, or Barry Sanders ever had. This in no way diminishes their importance to the game and their prodigious influence on later stars (particularly those pioneers such as Willie Lanier and Willie Davis who emerged from once-called colored football), but it is not something you can ignore.

I mentioned Unitas earlier, and there should be no doubt that he benefited from picking on white defensive backs (slow) and white linebackers (slower) with Hall of Famers Moore and John Mackey, both African-American. So it is not just confined to the select few African-Americans permitted to liven up the white game, meaning, regrettably, the credentials of every "great" NFL player until legitimate desegregation (probably attained during the 1980s) are suspect.

It is also undeniable that of the plethora of busts in Canton, many, in all fairness, should not be there -- in order to make room for the legions of busts that should have been there, names of players we'll never know and highlights that survive (barely) only as anecdotes.

Now, some might claim that we cannot undue the past, we cannot teleport back in time and provide the atmosphere that modern African-American football players "enjoy" (though it is far from ideal) to the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Others might argue, somewhat convincingly, that the innovations of weight training, the 40-yard dash, and workout supplements (legal or otherwise) have magnified the black-white gap (if not widening it) -- rendering the proceeding analysis ridiculous "white-guilt race-baiting" that only serves to further divide the sporting world on race.

Perhaps there is something to that, but fans and followers of the league should pose these questions. If you correctly argue that the NFL's racism in the pre-desegregation days significantly boosted the prospects of the white elite (read: Hutson, Baugh ...), then it had to have some affect on the few African-Americans that snuck through the cracks, right? The two scenarios are not mutually exclusive at all. The slim number of African-Americans who made it to the league benefited from the despicable racism of the NFL, because they did not face (on balance) their athletic equal.

Those who cherish and honor Gale Sayers and Jim Brown might be disturbed by this analysis, but in no respect do I argue that their presence and cultural impact should be ignored or mitigated -- absolutely to the contrary. I just do not want so-called experts to continually rank them above desegregated stars because, to use their own argument, "they stood out." One wonders if they ever ponder precisely why that was the case, and I think they should.

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