On Wednesday February 1, 2006, Donovan McNabb, the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, took offense at being overshot in comparison to one of American Football’s great quarterbacks, Bret Favre, on account of Favre’s skin color! McNabb described the offense as “black-on-black crime,” referring to Terrel Owens who made the comment of how the Eagles would have been better served by Favre instead of McNabb.

McNabb would have preferred a comparison to another black quarterback: “Michael Vick or Daunte Culpepper or Steve McNair or Byron Leftwich”.

In the wake of McNabb’s reaction of “black-on-black”, I curiously find myself increasingly more sympathetic to T.O.’s difficulties during the last year – that’s not to say I find T.O. a sympathetic character. It just seems, given the competitive nature of professional sports, few athletes, especially obscenely paid superstar athletes, can fathom their place in the sports industry, which is the more reason why all such athletes should first and foremost hire Public Relations agents in addition to business agents. In an industry where images of racism don’t quite match the reality of it, McNabb’s pernicious comments have the potential of creating more of a division in sports than anything T.O. had ever stated.

On what basis does McNabb want to be compared to “Michael Vick or Daunte Culpepper or Steve McNair or Byron Leftwich”? McNabb has the distinction of being one of only three black quarterbacks to have ever started in the big game, with McNair being the only other active black quarterback. The third, Doug Williams, is the only black quarterback to have led his team to a Super Bowl victory; but he’s no longer active. As T.O. probably knows all too well, it’s not enough to simply lead a team to the big game. A quarterback of distinction must also win the big game, and no active starting black quarterback can claim that distinction today.

Through such a comment, McNabb has not only failed as a decent human being but also as a leader of his football team. It is not only white Philadelphia football players who should be wary of McNabb’s reaction. The entire Eagles team has lost by those comments. As I’d written last year, selfless leadership is a trait shared by the most successful quarterbacks. Tom Brady and Troy Aikman consistently exhibited that winning trait in different ways, and McNabb, perhaps unintentionally, attributed their success to their skin color more than to leadership traits that can be nurtured and coached by anyone irrespective of race, creed, or political bend.

Coretta Scott King is dead, and with her dies an embodiment of racial struggle whose purpose has never been more relevant today but whose scope applies to everyone. As McNabb’s difficulties with T.O. have illustrated, the struggle for racial inconsequence has evolved from a fight against overt discrimination to an inner struggle against one’s base tendencies – to a greater jihad, so to speak.

Learning American football in Dallas, I naturally rooted for the Cowboys. The one live game I attended was against the Seahawks sometime in 1981. I remember the wet chill of that day, and I guess it was Thanksgiving. My weak eyesight notwithstanding, I could visualize the dots on the field, representing Danny White, Too-tall Jones, Tony Dorsett, Randy White, and other literal giants, as they decimated the Seahawks, scoring over 50 points, if my memory serves me correctly.

I was so captivated by the energy and the excitement of American football that when I returned to Lebanon in 1982, even after witnessing my birth-country’s arguably most traumatic event of the twentieth century, my calls to my sister’s family in Dallas invariably included the question: how are the Cowboys doing?

My interest in the Cowboys continued despite my subsequent residence in Dallas for one year in 1984 and another six months in 1988; but, as luck would have it, I landed in Pensacola FL with the US Navy, where I could continue to root for my “home” team, the Dallas Cowboys. Oh, the agony of the 1 and 15 season; but a peculiar thing happened. A new owner fired the legendary Tom Landry and hired a former Miami Hurricanes coach named Jimmy Johnson. Another ominous thing happened, Dallas then drafted Emmitt Smith, a Pensacola native. I was still in the navy on active duty during the 1991 season, when Dallas made the playoffs, and I remember turning to a civilian supervisor the week after Dallas was defeated and telling him that Dallas would win the next 3 Super Bowls. I’m not sure if Ernie would remember that very biased prediction from one of his junior enlisted employees.

I guess my disillusionment with American football, and perhaps all professional sports, came when I became a junior accountant for a Pensacola firm, where I compiled the books for one of Emmitt’s businesses. I told the manager on Emmitt’s account that the partner should advise Emmitt to take that goat and shoot it. I didn’t believe in business decisions based on tax write-offs. Taking a page from Jerry Jones’, owner of the Dallas Cowboys’, playbook, I fully support investing in a winning strategy at the cost of short-term losses, and there comes a time when a goat is recognized for what it is and shot. A year later, and after dumping another $1 million cash into that venture, Emmitt did just that.

My interest in American football continues today, but I’m now interested in their strategies, business as well as game. I’ve become just as interested in professional baseball after my wife taught me the game.

One can argue that American football, baseball, and basketball are so intertwined in US culture that an idiot can profit from owning a franchise. Dan Snyder of the Washington Redskins might prove that argument false. Furthermore, the reach of US professional sports internationally would categorically disprove that view.

Having moved to Atlanta, I now root for the Atlanta Braves and for the Falcons. Yes, I still follow the Cowboys’ news; but, given the option, I’ll turn the TV on to watch the Falcons. Last year was supposed to feature the swan song of the Braves’ long championship run; so you can imagine my disappointment with missing more than half of the Braves’ unlikely championship season while I was in Iraq; but during one Sunday stay at the Sheraton Amman I felt like I was in fan heaven when I turned on the TV to watch a double-header featuring the Cowboys and then the Falcons, well into the night. What’s more, the color and play-by-play commentaries were in Arabic! To me, that is the highest testament to the NFL’s successful marketing.

NFL marketing, of course, relies on the macho image of its players, with all their failings. The player’s tantrums and dramas must fill the NFL network schedule, and it’s all part of the business.

Of more interest to me is the leadership it takes to focus a bunch of obscenely high-paid and egotistically competitive men on the business at hand. After all, their job is to entertain us, and they do so by winning for us, the home crowd. Bobby Cox’s management should be the envy of all business leaders, and it is so simply effective that it surprises me when so many managers fail to adopt it. Like in business, there is no democracy in professional sports, whether on the field or in the back-offices. The hierarchy is well defined and quite rigid; but a manager’s inability to nurture and empower his most junior employees while maintaining team cohesiveness is a manager that will fail.

Maintaining his grip on his team, Bobby Cox has not hesitated in disposing of his prima donnas, and he has done so consistently. But his ability to muster a winning season with a record number of rookies this year, which is incomparable to my knowledge, best illustrates his uncanny success as a manager who takes measured risks, builds a team culture, and, most importantly, let’s his team’s lower managers, players and coaches, fail or succeed on their own merits. Bobby’s coaches could not have transformed a veteran pitcher, acquired after a losing record with Tampa Bay, into a winning starter if they were not empowered to do what they know best. His veteran players’ positive embrace of their younger teammates cannot be overlooked either. It is so simple that it is almost impossible for micro-managers to master; but it relies heavily on having the team work together without being distracted by larger-than-life egos.

And that’s where my admiration for Tom Brady trumps Mike Vick. Don’t get me wrong, I feel lucky to have the opportunity to study the forces that power today’s Atlanta Falcons. Jim Mora Jr. seems to have the same managerial philosophy as Bobby Cox; but, as demonstrated, the reliance on Mike Vick is very detrimental to the Atlanta Falcons’ team cohesion. While Vick has responded positively to Mora’s challenge last week, there is a more substantive quality that Vick lacks and that Brady embodies: selfless leadership.

Brady recognizes and respects both the business and the marketing aspects of the professional sport he plays. I think Brady recognizes that his success is dependant on more than his throwing arm and his swift legs. His relatively modest acceptance of a reduced contract, for example, solidifies his image as a selfless leader among his teammates, and that’s priceless for any Visa commercial in which he is featured. An effective leader, whether in business, politics, or sports, cannot even be perceived to have a selfish agenda. Vick, on the other hand, has made it quite clear that money is his most important motivation, and by that admission he loses much of the leadership qualities that enabled Brady to lead a team to three Super Bowls in this decade, proclaiming a new dynasty in the business of professional American football.

Sadly for now, Vick is not yet fit to hold a mike to Brady’s selfless leadership, and, until he does, the Atlanta Falcons will continue to fall short of winning the big one.