Columnist got facts wrong again

Jamie Hannah
senior, history-teacher education

Dear Editor:

I am writing in response to the Having my Say column that appeared Oct. 7 in the Daily Egyptian.

Once again, LeNie has gotten the facts wrong. What Rush said about McNabb's performance was 100 percent correct. The average quarterback rating in the NFL is 78.1. McNabb's career rating is 77.0, slightly below average, hardly the numbers of a superstar. Also, McNabb didn't have a great year since he missed six weeks with a broken leg and he was NOT selected to thee Pro Bowl last year as LeNie stated.

The most outrageous of LeNie's statement was her criticism, and I quote, "His introduction of favoritism by the media as it relates to race. Race is not or should not be an issue when assessing performance."

THAT is exactly the point Rush was making! McNabb is always being called a great quarterback even though his numbers are only average. Rush was challenging the media to not judge McNabb less critically because he was black, but to judge him on his performance. Brad Johnson is often described as a mediocre quarterback even though his rating is 84.8, almost 8 points higher than McNabb's rating.

Sadly, LeNie and other liberals are using the incident to take cheap shots at Rush such as calling him a racist and a bigot simply because they disagree with his political views. That simply is not true.

During his first commentary on ESPN, Rush attacked an NFL policy that requires teams to ONLY interview a certain number of minority coaches for an open head coaching position. The NFL did this in order to avoid a potential lawsuit. Rush argued that the NFL shouldn≠t have a policy that turns black coaches into pawns just to avoid being sued. Now black coaches don≠t know if a team is seriously interested in them or if they are just token candidates to avoid getting in trouble with the league. Standing up against a policy that could do more harm to black coaches than food hardly sounds like the views of someone who is a racist.

Jamie Hannah senior, history-teacher education

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