In the past, sports were an asset that was often used to lessen hostilities between countries and sometimes acted as a proxy to delay or even settle disagreements during times of conflict.
However, most of the time during the sports history of the United States of America, sports has been governed by a culture that has been created and maintained for the sole purpose of economically dividing the population and using games as lightning rods to intentionally disenfranchise athletes of color and to use time-honored institutions to promote and sustain racial and gender bias.
When Adolph Hitler preached his sermons of Aryan supremacy during the 1930s, he used sports as the sweetener for his limitless supply of “haterade.”
The 1936 Olympics were held in Berlin, Germany, and that was the perfect platform from which to validate the dark theory of Hitler’s favorable eugenics. Simultaneously, many American politicians faked outrage and pretended to be all up in arms, publicly speaking out against that negative racially superior paradigm, leaving out the fact that Hitler’s model for racial superiority was the Jim Crow system that was being vigorously practiced and condoned in the U.S.
It took the two events, the track and field victories of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic games and boxer Joe Louis defeating Max Schmeling in a rematch on June 22, 1938, at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York. In their previous meeting, Schmeling defeated Louis on June 19, 1936.
Those two sporting events threw the theory of Aryan superiority promoted by Hitler out on its ear. Let’s be real; the American Confederate and the Reich National Flags are tailored from the same cloth. That cloth that was woven with strands of racism, ethnic insensitivity and blatant disregard for the economic wellness of many athletes of color. The third Reich and the American paradigm of racism are Siamese twins.
Let’s switch gears. Quarterback Russell Wilson signed a one-year, $1.21 million contract with the Pittsburgh Steelers in March 2024. This deal was structured as the veteran minimum after the Broncos designated him a post-June 1, 2024, release.
QB Justin Fields signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers after he was traded to Pittsburgh on March 16, 2024, in a deal that sent him from the Chicago Bears to the Steelers. Fields earned a base salary of $1,616,724 in 2024, plus roster bonuses, for a total of about $3.23 million. Why have the Steelers been forced to wait in 2025 and 2026 for Aaron Rodgers to sign a contract when both Russell Wilson and Justin Fields signed in March of 2024, far in advance of any formal and mandatory team activities and they signed for far less money?
On June 7, 2025, Brooke Pryor posted an article on espn.com. “QB Rodgers with Steelers, signs one-year, $13.65M deal.” “Aaron Rodgers is officially a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The team posted a photo of a smiling Rodgers signing his contract Saturday with the caption, ‘done deal.’ The veteran quarterback signed a one-year, $13.65 million deal after passing a physical at the team facility.”
In 2026, could Aaron Rodgers possibly be looking to upgrade his 2025 contract to around 15 million dollar-rewskis or more? “The team posted a photo of a smiling Rodgers signing his contract.” You would be skinning and grinning too, if the GM of any team were ready, willing and able to pay you an estimated three times the value of a younger Super Bowl winning QB and a former number one draft pick.
Let’s now address the Cleveland Browns QB Shedeur Sanders’ fraudulent 2025 NFL Draft and fiasco. Sanders’ NIL earnings during his college football career were estimated at around $6.5 million.. This figure reflects the combined value of his endorsement deals and brand partnerships while he played for Jackson State (2021–2022) and Colorado (2023–2024). Now please decipher the following nonsense. Sanders signed a four-year, $4.6 million rookie contract with the Cleveland Browns after being drafted 144th overall in the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft. Sanders earned almost two million dollars more in college than the value that the Cleveland Browns placed on his talent. I’m puzzled; did the Cleveland Browns deliberately draft him in the 5th round or did the Browns, and the remainder of the NFL, forget to recharge their calculators? Although the NFL has tried to remedy the economic shortcomings for players of color, no matter how positive that some of these efforts may be, racial bias remains a dark and go-to tool that helps to continue the dilution of the value of players of color.
The valuation of Aaron Rodgers compared to the combined value of Russell Wilson and Justin Fields proves my argument far beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Let’s hit rewind for a few moments. Doug Williams became the first Black quarterback to both start and win a Super Bowl when he led the Washington Redskins to victory in Super Bowl XXII in 1988, throwing for 340 yards and four touchdowns in a 42–10 rout over the Denver Broncos. We all remember that.
However, despite this historic achievement, Williams was paid less than many of his teammates. In his first NFL season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1978, he signed a $120,000 annual contract, which was the lowest salary for a starting quarterback in the league at the time—even less than the pay of 12 backup quarterbacks.
During the 1987 NFL season, John Elway, the quarterback for the Denver Broncos, earned a base salary of approximately $1.4 million. During the same season, Doug Williams, the QB that spanked Elway by the score of 42-10 in Super Bowl XXII, earned about $400,000. Now that is a perfect example of equal pay for equal play, right? No, wrong; very, very wrong. Additionally, Doug Williams was named Super Bowl MVP after giving John Elway his comeuppance and throwing four touchdowns in a single quarter. The propaganda-like assumption that Black quarterbacks were cerebrally inferior to White quarterbacks died that day and 38 years after Doug Williams administered the “immaculate beat down,” professional football has yet to recover, and the members of that infamous Denver Broncos defense up until this day continues to question itself as to how they could have defeated a QB in Williams who, on that night, had all the answers.
As far as how to level the economic playing field in the NFL is concerned, the questions of the past have become the questions of the present, but like the Denver Broncos defense against Doug Williams, there are no ready-made solutions or comfortable answers.