Why Stupid Stereotype About NFL Players Is Played out and Patently False

NFL players aren't stupid; that is a lazy stereotype usually resorted to by people that haven't met very many of the players of whom they claim to be fans.

It's time to stop this nonsense.

When people say that NFL players are stupid (or, for that matter, any professional athletes), they are inferring, against all reasonable evidence, that the subset of the population that has played in the NFL are somehow less intelligent than the total population.

Was there a study that I missed?

People are stupid—all people. Every subset of our culture contains a solid group of people who daily defy natural selection. Men and women, both stupid. Republicans and Democrats, both stupid. College graduates, stupid. High school dropouts, stupid.

Unless your specific group of people is limited to Kardashians and/or nematodes, you better have some very compelling statistical evidence to call out that group of people as less than intelligent.

The Racial and Socioeconomic Undertones

OK, let's get this out of the way.

The NFL is made up of around 67 percent black athletes, while the country as a whole is only 12.6 percent black. Furthermore, NFL fans skew heavily toward white male viewers. So, it is logically honest to say that the breakdown of an NFL fan's experience is usually white males watching black males.

None of this should be shocking to anyone.

So, it is at least important to point out that racism is still alive and well in this country. No, not every person who thinks NFL players are stupid are racists, but it has to be part of the conversation, because these aren't new stereotypes. 

Once upon a time, white male slave owners prized slaves for their physical attributes while simultaneously claiming that the black man was too stupid to live on his own. Still today, people claim black people are less intelligent than whites because their brains are five percent smaller—ignoring the fact that there's no definitive link between brain size and IQ.

This is a country that long understood black men could work for us and, once slavery ended, people eventually figured out that black men could entertain them. Some days, it seems we're still far off from a day when people don't have to pretend they're genetically better than another to fulfill their own damage self-worth.

It isn't just racial, though.

Throw in the fact that the median NFL player salary is over $700,000, compared to $44,000 for Americans in general. Add in the popularity of the game. Remember that football is a sport many of those fans once played on the youth or high school level. Put that all together and you start to understand why it becomes necessary to denigrate NFL players...

Jealousy.

The average NFL fan sits at home and wishes he could be on the other side of those high-definition cameras. Whether it's intentional or subconscious, the NFL fans who seek to put down NFL players are usually the same people that so desperately dream they could trade places.

The Uselessness of Anecdotal Evidence

I can see the responses now. 

"Didn't you hear! [insert stupid thing NFL player X did.]"

Of course I did. I see all the stupid things NFL players do; that's a function of my job. It's also a function of our culture. Sites like Deadspin and Pro Football Talk make their money on the stupid things NFL athletes do. Bleacher Report isn't much different; people behaving badly sells—that's the nature of our star-obsessed culture.

Yet, anecdotal evidence is useless in almost any argument and it is even more useless here.

First off, the biggest weakness of anecdotal evidence is that it plays to our inherent biases, and as I noted above, there are lots of reasons poor white men might be biased about a bunch of richer blacker men. Hearing that they've done stupid things confirms those biases and a host of other stereotypes about black men and crime, intelligence and even the old "they can't take care of themselves" meme.

Furthermore, the reason anecdotal evidence doesn't work here is because it ignores all of the anecdotal evidence that would disprove the stereotype.

For every NFL player that wastes his money, another donates his to worthy charities. For every NFL player who gets into trouble with the law, another builds houses for those less fortunate than himself. For every NFL player that spends his entire check on bling, another buys his mom a house, just to say thanks.

Former NFL players have been Supreme Court justices, US Congressmen, doctors, lawyers, investors and bankers. Some become advocates for the players and others become advocates for the league. Some players enter media and others simply fade into obscurity to finally spend much-needed time with their family.

That doesn't make the papers. Maybe it should.

It Takes Brains to Play Football

If you're calling NFL players stupid, you're likely not talking about quarterbacks.  

Quarterbacks have to decipher an insane amount of information from the play call in the huddle to the pre-snap reads to the lightning-quick decision making that is done once the play actually begins.

If you somehow think a human could retain and decipher all of that information and still somehow be stupid, a trip to the mirror is likely in order.

If quarterbacks are out of the equation, middle linebackers should be as well because they essentially hold the same role in the defense. In fact, once someone learns the actual size of an NFL playbook and the constant changes and shifts, it's really hard to believe any NFL player could do it without some serious brain power.

Sadly, the same people who think NFL players are stupid are usually the most ignorant to what actually goes into preparing and executing at the NFL level. This isn't your high school team.

On top of that, the job isn't just what happens on Sunday afternoon.

More and more, players are learning to manage their money so they aren't taken advantage of by less-than-reputable agents and money managers. Nutrition and year-round strength training has become necessary, as the NFL offseason has become a distinction in term only.

Now, is every single player great at every single facet of the mental aspect of the game? Of course not. But to pretend they are any less intelligent than the guy who works a nine-to-five desk job is hilariously wrong and based less on reality and more on your ignorant preconceived notions.

Let's Make an Apples-to-Apples Comparison

If we're going to call NFL players stupid, we need to somehow prove they're stupider than the average person. Not only is that hard to do, but if you really think about it, it's absurd.

For every NFL player who acts like an idiot on Twitter, there are literally millions of people whose tweets would make that player look like a Rhodes Scholar.

For every NFL player who can't conduct a decent interview, there are millions of people who can barely put a complete sentence together as we stand behind them in line at banks, restaurants and (especially) Walmart.

For every NFL player who shows up on Pro Football Talk's "Turd Watch," millions of non-athletes pack the jails for more idiotic offenses that will never make the local paper, let alone a nationally popular website.

Idiots are everywhere, as reality TV has proven rather conclusively.

To think that NFL players are somehow stupider than the rest of us is a lazy stereotype with little use other than to make someone feel better momentarily as they silently wish they could be half as talented, rich and popular as the players they're nearly addicted to watching.

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Michael Schottey is an NFL Associate Editor for Bleacher Report and an award-winning member of the Pro Football Writers of America. He has professionally covered both the Minnesota Vikings and the Detroit Lions, as well as NFL events like the scouting combine and the Senior Bowl.