One of the largest black marks upon the American culture is its history of racism. As recently as 40 years ago, we as a nation were still fighting about the place of minorities in the United States. We have made a lot of progress in this time by dismantling the negative stereotypes applied to people of African, Asian, Latin and other non-Anglo descent. Unfortunately, racist views do still appear in the mainstream. The reasons for this occurring are varied, but the important issue is the prevention of these incidents.

Sports, primarily baseball, have created a stereotype that non-white athletes do not put effort into their sport. Recently, this stereotype has moved away from a definition of what non-white athletes do not do, but to a definition of what white athletes do. White athletes try really, really hard and should make everyone's heart swell with love due to the effort extended to chase down a ground ball, complete a sacrifice bunt or catch a ball after a nine yard curl pattern. The same accolades are rarely, if ever, applied to non-white athletes.

For the most part, statements of this variety are limited to those made by broadcasters and commentators. This level of ignorance is rarely exhibited by the organizing bodies of sport. Recently, Major League Baseball has exhibited this stupidity.

The "Look Again Played of the Year" award, sponsored by Holiday Inn and voted upon on mlb.com, lists the following as what it recognizes: "Behind every great team on the diamond, lurking in the shadow of baseball superstars, live the role players who sacrifice for their team in often unrecognized effort." It's always good to recognize players who deserve recognition, but do not usually get it. Let's see the nominees.

Robb Quinlan, Mark Kotsay, Reed Johnson, Ty Wiggingon, Jake Westbrook, Jake Woods, Brian Roberts, Mark DeRosa, Kevin Youkilis, Mark Grudzielanek, Brandon Inge, Jason Tyner, Joe Crede, Scott Proctor, Chris Burke, Brian McCann, Brian Shouse, David Eckstein, John Mabry, Eric Byrnes, Andre Either, Mark Sweeney, Wes Helms, Jose Valentin, Nick Johnson, Woody Williams, Shane Victorino, John Grabow, Ryan Freel and Garrett Atkins.

For those of you not too familiar with this group, of the 30 players, 28 are white. Only 6.7% of the field is a minority. Compare that with the 39.7% of major leaguers who are a minority.


There are really only two possible messages to take from this, and as these messages are diametric, it's an either/or situation.

Choice A: The average non-white player does not exert the effort that the average white player does.
Choice B: The responsible parties for selecting the nominees for this award were, either actively or subconsciously, making racist selections with the idea that whites just try harder than non-whites.

I think it's fairly obvious that it's choice B, and is just another sign that racism has not been eliminated from our society.

Here are my current college football rankings.

1 Ohio State 8-0 (1) beat Indiana by 41
2 Michigan 8-0 (4) beat Iowa by 14
3 USC 6-0 (2) off
4 West Virginia 7-0 (3) beat UConn by 26
5 Texas 7-1 (5) beat #18 Nebraska by 2

6 Louisville 7-0 (6) beat Syracuse by 15
7 Notre Dame 6-1 (7) beat UCLA by 3
8 Auburn 7-1 (8) beat Tulane by 25
9 Florida 6-1 (9) off
10 Clemson 7-1 (12) beat Georgia Tech by 24

11 Tennessee 5-1 (11) beat Alabama by 3
12 California 7-1 (10) beat Washington by 7 in OT
13 Wisconsin 7-1 (14) beat purdue by 21
14 Rutgers 7-0 (17) beat Pitt by 10
15 Boise State 7-0 (15) beat Idaho by 16

16 Boston College 6-1 (19) beat Fla St by 5
17 LSU 5-2 (16) beat Fresno St by 25
18 Arkansas 6-1 (21) beat Ole Miss by 35
19 Nebraska 6-2 (18) lost to #5 Texas by 2
20 Oklahoma 5-2 (22) beat Colorado by 21

21 Texas A&M 7-1 (23) beat Okla St by 1 in OT
22 Virginia Tech 4-2 (24) beat SoMiss by 30
23 Oregon 5-2 (13) lost to Washington State by 11
24 Missouri 7-1 (NR) beat Kansas State by 20
25 Wake Forest 6-1 (25) off

Dropped out: Georgia Tech (20) after a 24 point loss to Clemson

In this week's edition of my poll, Michigan surpassed both Southern California and West Virginia for the second spot. The Wolverines' fourteen point win against Iowa helped assuage my doubts of head coach Lloyd Carr's ability to guide teams to fulfilling potential. However, USC has the ability to surpass them due to a stronger overall schedule. Ohio State remains locked in the top spot and continue to be the favorites for a BCS championship game bid on the strength of an astounding defense and an offense featuring future first round picks Alex Smith and Ted Ginn Jr.

WVU stays locked in the fourth position. While their offense is one of the best in the nation, their defense and weak schedule keeps them for joining the truly elite. If they win the rest of their games, they will pass the loser of the Ohio State-Michigan game. They will depend upon USC or the OSU-UM winner to drop another game for them to gain entrance into the championship game.

Texas wins out the battle for fifth best team in the nation, but their hold is perilous. They have played only two talented teams, and the results were a bad loss against Ohio State and a slim win versus Nebraska. It would be less than shocking for them to be passed by the likes of Notre Dame, Louisville or one of the SEC teams in the near future.

Other notes: Three teams jumped up three spots in this week's poll. Undefeated Rutgers (from 17th to 14th), 6-1 Boston College (19th to 16th) and 6-1 Arkansas (21st to 18th) all made the climb. Oregon suffered the largest drop of any top 25 team, falling from 13th to 23rd after an 11 point loss to Washington State. Georgia Tech fell from 20th to the first position outside of the poll after the ugly loss to Clemson. Replacing them in the top 25 is re-entrant Missouri, who got back on track with a 20 point victory over Kansas State.

The top five teams on the outside looking in are Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, Alabama, Penn State and Purdue. Four of these five lost this past weekend, but all losses came against ranked teams.

I've been doing a weekly top 25 for college football for the past month. Finally I decided that enough of the season has played out where I could post my rankings to the public without much of a worry of having a ridiculous stance on a poor team.

1 Ohio State 6-0 (1)
2 USC 5-0 (2)
3 Florida 6-0 (4)
4 West Virginia 5-0 (5)
5 Texas 5-1 (9)

6 Michigan 6-0 (7)
7 Louisville 5-0 (8)
8 Notre Dame 5-1 (11)
9 California 5-1 (16)
10 Tennessee 5-1 (18)

11 Auburn 5-1 (3)
12 Clemson 5-1 (12)
13 Virginia Tech 4-1 (15)
14 LSU 4-1 (10)
15 Boise State 6-0 (17)

16 Oregon 5-1 (6)
17 Wisconsin 5-1 (20)
18 Georgia 5-1 (13)
19 Nebraska 4-1 (21)
20 Rutgers 5-0 (22)

21 Georgia Tech 5-1 (23)
22 Iowa 5-1 (25)
23 Missouri 6-0 (NR)
24 Boston College 4-1 (NR)
25 Oklahoma 3-2 (19)

Dropping out: Florida State (from 14th) and TCU (from 24th)