If you ask me (and I know you didn’t, but oh well), the reason the race issue is wrongly dismissed when it is relevant and needs to be paid attention to is because it’s far too often thrown about irresponsibly where it has no place. Such as in Nakia Hogan’s piece for The Times-Picayune about a handful of unemployed quarterbacks who might be unemployed because they happen to be black.

In trying to figure out why “prominent” black signal-callers Aaron Brooks, Daunte Culpepper, Byron Leftwich, and Quinn Gray (prominent?) are currently without jobs, Hogan considers it “perplexing to some observers,” but only quotes one who references race — ESPN analyst and failed black quarterback Shaun King. King discredits himself completely by bringing his own agenda into the mix: “If you look at the rosters right now … and then you ask yourself based on accomplishment alone — how is an Aaron Brooks or a Daunte Culpepper or a Byron Leftwich or a Shaun King, for that matter, not somewhere?”

The truth is, Culpepper and Leftwich are unemployed because of injuries and inflated senses of self-worth. Brooks is unemployed because he was a bad leader and decision-maker who was adept at making enemies in the locker room. And Gray is unemployed because he’s not very good. And teams are going to take their chances on an unknown instead of a known whose known isn’t anything to write home about.

Hogan doesn’t mention that each quarterback has had more than one employer, or that there are a handful of black quarterbacks currently starting (including for the team that originally let Gray go, the Jaguars), not to mention backups and hundreds of black athletes in the league in general. Nor is it mentioned that one of those starters was drafted first overall and given $32 million guaranteed sight unseen just a year ago by the last team to jettison Brooks.

Hogan also says that the players are considering taking action with the NFLPA, but Culpepper, Leftwich, and Gray are nowhere to be quoted in the entire piece. I wonder how they feel being lumped into this discussion or if they’re as embarrassed to be a part of it as I was reading it.