DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum ESPN's first of many articles to inform you that Hillis is not black

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Cleveland Browns running back Peyton Hillis hurdled the question as easily as he's cleared hapless defenders this season.

I wanted to know how much he'd been asked about his success as a white featured back in the NFL this season. He wanted no parts of the inquiry.

"I don't put race into the equation," Hillis said. "I'm a human being just like everybody else."

It was a predictable answer to a predictable question, and I don't blame Hillis for assuming the politically correct position. What I can't do is look at his breakout season and act as if his skin color isn't part of the storyline. Yes, the man clearly has talent that has been ignored for far too long. But it also has been even longer since we've seen a white man running through pro defenses the way he has this year.

The 6-foot-1, 240-pound Hillis has gained 726 yards through nine games, while scoring eight touchdowns and averaging a healthy 4.8 yards per carry. He's also accomplished all this while playing on a Browns offense currently led by a rookie quarterback (Colt McCoy) and a bunch of skill players who aren't going to make any defensive coordinators lose sleep in the near future. Hillis basically is the biggest reason why Cleveland fans have a chance to see a competitive game every week these days. His hard-charging, smashmouth style has turned him into an immediate hit with those long-suffering locals.

You'd have to go back decades to find a white runner who has meant this much to his team. Merril Hoge had some decent years in Pittsburgh in the late 1980s and early '90s. John Riggins was a dominant offensive force for the Washington Redskins in the late '70s and early '80s. Let's also not forget about those old-timers who cracked the 1,000-yard mark in the 1970s, men like Miami's Larry Csonka, Oakland's Mark van Eeghen and Pittsburgh's Rocky Bleier.

As for more recent years, there hasn't been a white running back who's even been capable of driving this kind of conversation (and please don't say Tampa Bay's Mike Alstott -- he never looked as dangerous as Hillis has become). Blacks have dominated the position, and it's become nearly impossible to even find promising college runners entering the league who aren't African-Americans. To put this into greater perspective, only eight of the top 100 career rushers in league history have been Caucasian. So when somebody like Hillis comes along to crash the party, you've got to be startled by how rare a guy like him has become.

Keep in mind, this is a man who waited a long time to be a featured back. That opportunity never came when he was playing fullback at Arkansas, primarily because the Razorbacks already had two exceptional backs who eventually would become first-round NFL draft picks (Darren McFadden and Felix Jones). When the Denver Broncos made Hillis a seventh-round pick in the 2008 draft, his prospects didn't look any brighter. Aside from having the versatility to be an effective fullback in the West Coast offense run by then-head coach Mike Shanahan, he had given nobody any reason to dream big about his future.

Then a funny thing happened: Hillis got a shot. When several Broncos runners sustained injuries in 2008, he proved he could do the job by gaining 343 yards and scoring five touchdowns before a torn right hamstring ended his season. The production was enough to keep Hillis on the NFL radar even though he vanished last season in the offense run by head coach Josh McDaniels. And the Browns eventually acquired Hillis (along with a sixth-round pick in the 2011 draft and a conditional pick in the 2012 draft) in a March trade that sent quarterback Brady Quinn to Denver.

When Hillis looks back on those days, he can't come up with an adequate explanation as to why nobody could see him in a feature role. Even in Cleveland, he started as a fullback until injuries led to a shot in a Week 3 game against Baltimore, a chance that Hillis turned into a 144-yard effort.

"I think it was about not being in the right place at the right time," he said. "Or maybe it was about not being in the right scheme. But I'm not worried about that now. I'm just focused on being in the right situation here."

Since Hillis can't make sense of his past, I'll take a stab at it. His previous coaches likely spent so much time looking for runners with certain skill sets that they never envisioned that Hillis could be more than what he was. He got placed in a box, and that's not just because of his skin color. It's because this is what happens when people don't have the vision to see beyond the expectations they've already established in their own minds.

If you think this is flawed logic, just consider the plight of black quarterbacks in the past. Many were labeled as "athletes" or "scramblers" and rarely given a chance to show their abilities as passers because they didn't fit a certain NFL mold. The irony now is that mobility is a treasured asset in quarterbacks, but that's also beside the point. In those days, if you didn't look the part, you didn't get the part.

In Hillis' case, some people will see race attached to this story and assume it's an attempt to be controversial. It's actually just an attempt to be honest. Hillis is showing us something we haven't seen in the league in awhile. In the process, he's reminding us of what makes sports so special in the first place -- that the whole point of competition is to make us understand what can happen when somebody gets a chance.


In fact, Hillis was so confident in his own ability that he promised to be the steal of that offseason trade when he arrived in Cleveland. It was a little out of character for such a humble man, but as he said, "I always felt I had the talent. It was just a matter of getting an opportunity."

As it turned out, Hillis was quite prescient in his thinking. What he couldn't have imagined, however, was that his ability wouldn't the only reason he'd turn heads in the league this season.


Senior writer Jeffri Chadiha covers the NFL for ESPN.com.

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Just let the man carry the darn rock.

I never understood why there was a need to qualify everything based on the color of a persons skin..."first black QB to win a Super Bowl", "first black coach to win a Super Bowl, and now "the first good white RB to come along in X number of years".

As Samwise said to Frodo in Mount Doom, "Just let it go".

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Here, here,...ESPN can't do that though. They have to make a story out of it.

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Here, here,...ESPN can't do that though. They have to make a story out of it.

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To further that point, currently on the ESPN main page we have these articles for your perusement (not providing the links because I don't want to give them the extra clicks. go to espn.com if you want to read them):

1. Is Pacquiao ducking Floyd Mayweather because he is black?
2. Is Shanahan a racist for benching McNabb?
3. Hillis is a white RB.

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Here, here,...ESPN can't do that though. They have to make a story out of it.

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To further that point, currently on the ESPN main page we have these articles for your perusement (not providing the links because I don't want to give them the extra clicks. go to espn.com if you want to read them):

1. Is Pacquiao ducking Floyd Mayweather because he is black?
2. Is Shanahan a racist for benching McNabb?
3. Hillis is a white RB.

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espn, if you watch, read, or listen enough, is trying to be as mainstream as possible. they want to be cnn instead of being a sports channel. they will take something and suck the life out of it. because there isn't as much non sports-sports stories for them to churn out like cnn has with all different kinds of stories.

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Well I think someone on here nicknamed PH the "WHITE RHINO"

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espn, if you watch, read, or listen enough, is trying to be as mainstream as possible. they want to be cnn instead of being a sports channel. they will take something and suck the life out of it. because there isn't as much non sports-sports stories for them to churn out like cnn has with all different kinds of stories.

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Good point.

I think they're just trying to continue their growth. They exploded into this mega power sports channel and are striving to grow X% every year. They already have most of the same people watching every other day.....so to raise ratings you go after the non-watchers. The ones that might get drawn into a racial controversy, Tiger's scandal, or following Favre 24-hours a day.

They can't just cover the games anymore. It has to be more fringe stuff to get the non-sports people to tune in.

Just like the NFL focusing on European expansion....they know they already "have" us. So why bother building the brand here? Focus elsewhere to continue growth.

Greed (not to say it's negative, but they want to get bigger even if they're already the biggest).

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Ehh... let's just go with The Rhino and be done with it.

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The White Rhino
The Orange Rhino
The Brown Rhino
The White Hulk
The Orange Hulk
The Brown Hulk

Pffftt.....he's the Juggernaut for Pete's sake!

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Ben Afflack

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Then I guess Hogzilla is out , huh Ytown
how 'bout just HOG since he's a Razorback or maybe
H= hillis
A=another
W=white
G= guy

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Careful, if ESPN gets a whiff of Browns fans using a nickname that glorifies his whiteness, we'll all be branded neo-nazi's.

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Wait, Peyton Hillis is white?

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He always looks kinda red to me.

This is why I never liked the "White Rhino" nickname that was thrown around on this board here and there.

JUGGERNAUT, baby! He's the JUGGERNAUT!!!

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only eight of the top 100 career rushers in league history have been Caucasian.

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I knew the white man was being held back, I'm calling the NAAWP, this is pure racism.

We need race quotas in the NFL.

/sarcasm off



Leave it to the media to make an entire sports article about skin color.

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He's a BEAST.

Juggernaut's not bad ...... but it's too long to say quickly when he breaks free. It doesn't roll quickly off the tongue. Same thing with Rhino ... no matter what color. Just too damn many syllables for a 4th (or OT) burst to daylight. (Especially after several beers on top of several more after several more)

You need a 1 syllable alias for football stars. (Unless you use initials, but that's another story entirely)

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My family calls him Beast most of the time, but because also we refer to him as a "truck," I gave him the nickname "Peterbuilt."

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Wait, Peyton Hillis is white?

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Not the color I would have chosen to describe this:

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Wait, Peyton Hillis is white?

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He always looks kinda red to me.

This is why I never liked the "White Rhino" nickname that was thrown around on this board here and there.

JUGGERNAUT, baby! He's the JUGGERNAUT!!!

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I knew the white man was being held back, I'm calling the NAAWP, this is pure racism.

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What? You think David Duke will answer?



I vote "The Rhino"

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Here, here,...ESPN can't do that though. They have to make a story out of it.

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To further that point, currently on the ESPN main page we have these articles for your perusement (not providing the links because I don't want to give them the extra clicks. go to espn.com if you want to read them):

1. Is Pacquiao ducking Floyd Mayweather because he is black?
2. Is Shanahan a racist for benching McNabb?
3. Hillis is a white RB.

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Even in Cleveland, he started as a fullback until injuries led to a shot in a Week 3 game against Baltimore, a chance that Hillis turned into a 144-yard effort.

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He's a BEAST.

Juggernaut's not bad ...... but it's too long to say quickly when he breaks free. It doesn't roll quickly off the tongue. Same thing with Rhino ... no matter what color. Just too damn many syllables for a 4th (or OT) burst to daylight. (Especially after several beers on top of several more after several more)

You need a 1 syllable alias for football stars. (Unless you use initials, but that's another story entirely)

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Where I live Beast is a two syllable word.

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Pffftt.....he's the Juggernaut for Pete's sake!

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j/c

I don't see what the big deal is about him being white. WTH cares.

I'm just surprised everybody so far in this thread has let the dandy go from the article above:

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Even in Cleveland, he started as a fullback until injuries led to a shot in a Week 3 game against Baltimore, a chance that Hillis turned into a 144-yard effort.

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Has Hillis played any FB this year? I've watched the majority of the games and I haven't seen it in any of the games.

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