Rush Limbaugh on black Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb:

I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve. The defense carried this team.

McNabb, naturally, didn’t take kindly to the comments, and neither did the usual suspects, who called for ESPN to fire Limbaugh from their Sunday NFL pre-game show. They didn’t. He resigned, instead, saying a statement that his comments weren’t “racially motivated,” but I think that’s a crock.

The only reason for Limbaugh to speculate that “the media” overhyped McNabb because of his skin color is because he subconsciously believes that there’s still some doubt about blacks’ ability to peform as NFL quarterbacks.

Why would “the media” need to hype McNabb, given that there are several successful starting NFL QBs out there already — Michael Vick, Steve McNair, Kordell Stewart (OK, he has been successful) and Daunte Culpepper, to name a few. Randall Cunningham and Warren Moon are just two of the great retired black QBs.

So there would be no need for “the media” to overhype McNabb any more than they do with any other quarterback. NFL QBs usually get too much credit for their teams’ successes and too much blame for their failures — that’s true regardless of skin color.

How that thought could even occur to Limbaugh is because he, at some level, has some doubt about blacks’ ability to perform as QBs that would somehow necessitate the naturally liberal-minded news media to shade the facts to favor an African-American like McNabb under some kind of secret sports affirmative action program.

It was a stupid thing to say, but perhaps not as stupid as having Limbaugh on the ESPN show in the first place. He has no football expertise or experience. He’s never coached or played the game. He was on there to generate excitement and unfortunately he generated a little too much excitement for ESPN.

If ESPN is so badly struggling for ratings that it resorts to these kinds of stunts — hiring Limbaugh, I mean — well maybe football fans aren’t interested in watching eight hours of pre-game coverage. But on that I could only hazard a guess, not being a football fan myself.