I’m going to have to admit there’s a measure of incontestable and irrefutable truth to that whole Make America Great/White Again fairy tale King Trump’s cult members are pushing 24/7. You know, that outlandish whining and crying about being “replaced” by Americans of color, Jews, Queers, and women, i.e., all the subgroups they’ve oppressed, excluded, and exploited throughout history.

One has to look no further than the National Football League: the game is a “living and breathing” illustration, an undeniable case-in-point for paranoid-driven Republicans and their endless claim of some grand, immense and widespread “Replacement Theory” being orchestrated by the “Left” in this country, to vindictively replace White men from their prominent “status” in US society.

White men, who once dominated and predominated the ranks of America’s national pastimes, including collegiate and pro football, are today being replaced. It seems they can’t occupy the dominant “Great White Spartan” role unless it’s Hollywood make-believing it’s so, or they “fix,” or “rig” the games by eliminating their prime competition - which is what they’ve done since the league’s inception.

This year’s NFL Draft highlighted the replacement of Great White Hopes with Ebony and Bronze Gladiators. Legit contenders versus propped-up pretenders.

Three Afro-American Quarterbacks, i.e., check it - 3 brothers go in the first 3 of 4 picks of the NFL’s 2023 Draft. While only 4 White guys went on to be drafted in the 1st round, and not one of them was a Quarterback. 2 other Black Signal Callers went in the middle rounds. That’s unprecedented!

Now wait, as this played out, the lone White Quarterback depicted to go in the 1st round of the draft, is snubbed, rejected. The empathy and sympathy for his plight across the sports world were so amplified, so loud, the tears of frustration ran so deep - that my eardrums almost burst.

Nonetheless, I never thought I’d live to see this “righting,” such a long overdue transformation that should have organically occurred decades ago when the gridiron became integrated. It’s been a long time comin’!

This is a seismic changing of the guard, tailback, defensive end, and linebacker. Yep, it’s a new day!

What I hypothesize is happening - poetic justice: “the fact of experiencing a fitting or deserved retribution for one’s actions.” Black men were branded as “too dumb” to play the “thinking man’s” position on a team of barbarians. That was insulting in itself, but the message it sent to Black boys like myself was the undeniable fact society accepted this notion of inferiority.

It’s taken my lifetime to get to this point. The change has come so slowly because White men, understanding the power of imaging and role models, have refused to relinquish their illicit stranglehold on “alpha male” positions within US society.

White males see this transformation and domination. White women see it too. White guys are well aware White women plainly see them being fairly replaced by Black men. White men recognize their children are seeing daddy and big brother’s reduction to back-up players and bench warmers. The embarrassment and shame add insult to injury.

What Trump-loving sports fans believe they saw in the NFL draft - they’re being erased from yet another prominent, dominant, impactful, and influential position in US society over which they’d fabricated a tight stranglehold for the last 250 years… or so. The most prolific Signal callers in the League are Black: Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurt, Lamar Jackson, Dak Prescott, and yes, Russell Wilson - with more to come.

Please note, fabricating is essentially what happened when it comes to the exclusion of Black field generals in the NFL: The non-Black owners, coaches, fans, players, and media all played along with the concocted and contrived narrative to blackball Black men which stated Black men lacked the brains, guts, backbone, stomach, character and heart to be a field general …a leader.

Do you understand the down-the-road ramifications and repercussions of advancing that false belief, and what it did to Black men mentally and emotionally? Financially? The idea that Black men weren’t “equipped” to be quarterbacks, pilots, lead men in a play, an astronaut. It stunted our growth and limited our role models. We were red-lined between the white lines.

Millions of White folks understand exactly what the negative impact was, and they’re ok with it, would actually wish to return to the fake, phony if not manufactured way it was. They don’t want their kids to want to emulate and imitate Black sports heroes.

That’s White America’s position, stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea: return to a time and place which only artificially existed to begin with, or be replaced because of fairness, balance, equality, inclusion, and diversity becoming the rule.

And let’s be honest: The White guy’s counterfeit monopoly on various positions of power throughout and across society, from Wall Street to Main Street, from Hollywood to Broadway to Silicon Valley, is the direct result of forbidding generations to participate, in part denying us the critical tools to navigate the hostile waters of life, denying us access.

And more critically, convincing far too many Black people that we couldn’t go beyond the subpar place in society they assigned us, shouldn’t even attempt to do it, it’s beyond our limited, inferior capabilities.

Across Trump’s America, in their jaded eyes, this overhauling of the game is in reality all about the end is near, they must, at any cost apparently “take back” their national identity and redefine “who” and “what” American culture is.

I don’t believe there’s any question most Americans can name more professional football players than they can US Congressmen or women, or US Senators. Tragically, more Americans know who OBJ is than know who LBJ was. I’d submit that more folks can tell you who the QB is of their hometown NFL team than they can cite their city councilperson or perhaps even their state’s governor.

Odell Beckham Jr. Wide receiver, Baltimore Ravens, and Lyndon Banes Johnson, 36th American president.

Football is for this nation, one which many contend is a “godless America,” its unofficial religion. And that religion desperately requires a reformation!

Let’s accept and recognize that last week’s NFL Draft drew roughly 350,000 fanatics to Bar-B-Que Heaven, Kansas City to witness the spectacle. 60 million or so more watched on cable. Unquestionably, more attention was paid to the draft than all the news stories on FOX, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, C-SPAN, and CBS combined. It’s not even debatable; this nation consumes football.

Why the widespread appetite and attraction?

At its core, the NFL is a male soap opera that both reflects and embodies vast elements of life which appeal to most Americans, starting with physical violence, athleticism, and drama. 21st-century gladiators. It ain’t deep, at all.

This replacement of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant golden boys with these bronze field generals is representative of what occurs within society when you allow somewhat, I say somewhat, fair competition to flourish. It’s created a sky-is-falling climate and contributes to the gut feeling that White dudes are being replaced in virtually endless ways and manners.

Fairness and equality for all has produced frustration, anger, and envy for White men, I’m just saying.

Ponder this poignant pigskin point: we never would have seen the glory years of the “Great White Quarterback” if not for the exclusion of the Black athlete. Now walk with me: we never would have seen the gerrymandered present-day America we see now if not for the deliberate and strategic exclusion of Blacks from fully participating in society for centuries. Up until  relatively yesteryear, most of today’s population was uneducated, barefoot, in the back of the bus, drinking out of a separate water fountain, and the setup wasn’t by chance, happenstance, or coincidence. It was by design.

The 2023 NFL Draft exemplified Black Power.