There’s an excellent item on Portfolio.com regarding former the failed efforts of Southern Illinois running back Muhammad Abdulqaadir to get a shot in the NFL.

The article by Don Golden raises the question of whether pro teams have intentionally avoiding Abdulqaadir.  Not simply because of his ethnicity, but because his father has been linked to terrorist activities, including the September 11 attacks.

Though there’s no evidence that Abdulqaadir is, was, or ever will be a terrorist, the apple-and-tree stereotype could be holding him back.

Before the 2004 draft, Abdulqaadir indicated that several teams had contacted him.  “All I’m hoping for is to get into camp, because I have a strong feeling once I get into a camp, I don’t see why I can’t make a team,” Abdulqaadir said at the time. 

But he went undrafted in the seven-round selection process, when well over 200 players are chosen.  More surprisingly (and by all appearances), he hasn’t gotten a sniff for a free-agent contract or a tryout, even though hundreds of additional former college players at least get a shot to show what they can do at an NFL practice facility.

Undeterred, Abdulqaadir is still hoping for a shot, even at age 27.

Meanwhile, the NFL’s teams continue to acquire players with criminal records of their own, even those not deemed good enough to be drafted.

UPDATE:  In the interests of clarity, we don’t believe that the NFL has discriminated against Abdulqaadir or anyone else on the basis of religion or national origin.  The issue is whether teams have shied away from Abdulqaadir because of his father’s alleged terrorist activities.  As a reader pointed out, such matters didn’t keep Musa Smith out of the NFL.  Still, the full article on Portfolio.com does a generally nice job of looking at both sides of this issue, including a second-hand quote from an unnamed G.M. that “[i]f Osama bin Laden’s son ran a 4.3 40, we’d draft him.”  Of course, the article would have be more balanced if the eight-page item had at least mentioned the case of Musa Smith, who was drafted by the Ravens in 2003.  It didn’t.  Finally, we realize that the title to this blurb probably should have more clearly addressed the crux of the issue, but “NFL Blackballing Muslim Player Whose Father Has Alleged Terrorist Connections” was too wordy, and anything less than that created the appearance that the son, not the father, had the alleged terrorist connections — or that the terrorist connections of the father were something more than merely alleged.