Racial Stacking of Black High School Quarterbacks as Dual-Threats

Since the turn of the millennium, Black quarterbacks have made a significant impression on the landscape of American football. While in previous decades Black quarterbacks were outright prevented from playing that position in the NFL and on certain college teams, in recent years this outright discrimination has seemingly ended. I sought to examine whether Black quarterbacks have achieved true equality with their White counterparts by analyzing the categorization of high school quarterback recruits as dual-threat or pro-style. Given the stereotypes that exist regarding Black athletic advantages, I hypothesized that Black quarterbacks would be more likely to be categorized as dual-threats, given the need for this type of quarterback to both pass and run the football and thus being a more athletic style of quarterback. I reviewed the football recruiting website Rivals.com\u27s rankings of the top dual-threat and pro-style quarterbacks in the classes from 2002 to 2023 to see if there are connections between race and a quarterback\u27s category. This revealed a statistically significant correlation between Black quarterbacks being labeled as dual-threats and White quarterbacks being labeled as pro-style. I then connect my findings with existing literature regarding the stacking of quarterbacks in certain positions based on their race, the history of Black quarterbacks, and public perceptions of Black athletes. My research indicates that Black quarterbacks are stacked in the dual-threat category, continue to be treated differently when compared to White quarterbacks, and are still perceived as inherently more athletic than their non-Black counterparts