A few months ago we were shooting the shit in the Western Standard’s newsroom about racial and other ‘equity deserving’ quotas at the University of Calgary. I said something to the effect that “I cannot help but harbor a suspicion that someone does not deserve to be in their job if they benefited from quotas.” Without giving much thought to it, I blurted out “Just like when I know a CFL player is Canadian. There’s a 90% chance that he’s only there because of the Canadian quota. We all know the Americans are mostly better at football than we are.”.Then it dawned on me that Canadian CFL players are far more likely than Americans to be white. As bad as it sounds — and regular CFL fans will grudgingly admit — the easiest way to tell the difference between a Canadian and American player, is the colour of their skin..So my little rant about affirmative action and quotas led me to an uncomfortable, but kinda funny thesis about my beloved league; Canadian player quotas were probably racist..The next step was to put my thesis up against hard evidence. And boy, it didn’t disappoint..And for those not reading all the way to the bottom, this is a story about quotas and the law of unintended consequences. It is not a story about CFL managers harbouring any prejudice in their hearts..But first, some background..In the CFL, teams are required to have a minimum of 21 of the players dressed for a game be Canadian citizens — which works out to a bit under 50%. This rule is intended to ensure that the Canadian Football League is – at least to some extent – plausibly Canadian..And I don’t mean to put down our Canadian footballers. I love them, and some of them — like BC Lions quarterback Nathan Rourke — are brilliant Canadian athletes. But on aggregate, the Americans are just better..Suck it up. I know you’re angry at me for saying it. I hate it as well. But if you follow the CFL, you know it’s true..The Americans don’t have any innately superior God-given football gene. They just have a wildly superior football program and culture. Unfortunately, our football program is probably akin to England’s hockey program. There may be a ton of kids with the athletic protentional, but the opportunity and interest just isn’t there..So back to my thesis that the CFL’s Canadian player quotas are unintentionally racist..With the help of our reporter, Jonathan Bradley, we pulled the 2022 CFL player data into a four-part grid; white Canadians, non-white Canadians, white non-Canadians, and non-white non-Canadians. For the most part, the non-white players are black, and the non-Canadian players are Americans. Yes, Yes. I know there are exceptions. But come on. They’re mostly all black, and mostly American..To collect this data, our reporter went through the rosters and made the call on their racial makeup based on their pictures. It’s not scientific, but should do for the purposes of this little study..Among the Americans in the league, players were five times more likely to be non-white than white. Among the nine teams, a whopping average of 56.7% of players are made up of non-white Americans, ranging from a high of 58% in Edmonton, to a low of 32% in Winnipeg..White American players make up an average of just 11.4%..Among the non-Canadian (that is, American) players on a CFL team, they face fierce competition, so we can expect with a large degree of confidence that the best man for the job, is getting the job in those slots..Where things get a little racy is within the Canadian quota..Among those players hailing from the Great White North, the white/non-white ratio is flipped on its head; white Canadian players outnumber non-white Canadian players nearly two-to-one. The average team has in its lineup 20.2% Canadians of honkey stock, but just 12.1% were non-white Canadians..So let’s tie it all back together. White-American CFL players are outnumbered five-to-one by non-white Americans on their teams. But white-Canadian CFL players outnumber their non-white Canadian teammates by two-to-one..Now stop right there before you think I’m accusing the management of CFL teams of any kind of racism, white-supremacy, or other nasty smears. Despite the pretty lopsided racial breakdown in the data, there’s no evidence of racism driving any of it. It’s driven – it seems to me – entirely by the Canadian player quota policy..This quota unintentionally results in hiring disproportionately of more white (Canadian) players at the expense of non-white (American) players..The evidence would suggest that on aggregate, football is a ‘whiter’ sport in Canada than it is in the United States, at least on the level of the professional player. Glancing around McMahon Stadium in Calgary, most of the other spectators look a lot like me. That’s clearly anecdotal, but it’s noticeable in a city as diverse as Calgary..It’s also an expensive sport for children to play in Canada, meaning the economic status of the family may have a lot to do with the ability of a child to take it up. Less so in the United States, where every school in every town has a football team, with programs supported by the professional and college leagues..And some of it may just be cultural or passed on through families. While there are exceptions, most football players (in both Canada and the US) are overwhelmingly black or white. Take-up for the game just isn’t that big among other racial groups. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnston’s time with the Calgary Stampeders remains ambiguous on several levels.. Dwayne JohnsonDwayne Johnson .Whatever the reasoning, Canadian professional football players are more likely to be white (by a margin of two-to-one), while Americans playing in the CFL are far more likely to be non-white (by a margin of five-to-one)..By requiring the teams to have more Canadians on the field, they are unintentionally and artificially increasing the probability that these players will be white..But don’t pick up your BLM protest sign just yet. There’s no real easy answer to this, other than one: abolish the Canadian player quota..Abolishing the quota would almost certainly lead the CFL to become a league played almost entirely by Americans, just on Canadian soil. It would become an even less Canadian game than it is now. But on the other hand, making the team composition entirely merit-based would likely improve the quality of the game. And by making the team composition entirely merit-based, any racial disparities would be explained by natural market forces, not artificial interventions..What are the other alternatives? The only other one that comes to mind would be stacking micro-quotas inside of other the existing quotas. That is: require that CFL teams hire more non-white (Canadian) players at the expense of the white (Canadian) players..That idea is as silly as it sounds. Non-white Canadian players are not “underrepresented”. There are just less of them relative to non-white Canadian players..There’s probably nothing that can practically improve anything about it all, but this should be a telling example of the law of unintended consequences. Quotas and other “affirmative action” style programs are often designed with the best of intentions: increasing representation of minorities, disadvantaged groups, or Canadian football players. But these programs invariably distort pure merit-based hiring. Maybe that’s a trade-off that is worth the cost. Maybe it’s not..Perhaps all I want the reader to take from this, is that it is a trade-off, and there is a cost. However unintended.
