“All the Makings of an Eventual NFL Starter:” Racial/Ethnic Disparities in a Decade of National Football League Draft Profiles as Revealed by Natural Language Processing

Abstract

Student-athletes are often treated differently and inequitably based on their race/ethnicity. For example, Black student-athletes often face unjust stereotyping and discrimination because they are seen for their athletic achievements over their academic achievements compared to White student-athletes. Using in-game broadcast data, Black athletes are also discussed differently than White athletes, with disparities in how broadcasters focus on players’ physical and cognitive abilities. The current paper draws on and extends this literature by using natural language processing techniques to identify how experts communicate about different National Football League (NFL) prospects. A decade of data (2014-2023), including nearly 4,000 draft profiles, suggested writers attending to Black draftees used fewer positive emotions in player narratives than writers attending to White draftees. Narratives of White players also mentioned the NFL more than narratives of Black players, revealing a possible disparity in perceived belonging to the league. Implications for theory and equity in sport are discussed.

Answering the Question on a ‘Racial Reckoning’: Resistance and Persistence in US Sporting Representations

“…In reviewing the articles in this issue, what is striking to us (but perhaps not surprising, given the swift and powerful backlash that often accompanies any promise of racial progress) is the documented resistance to progress and persistence in communicative practices that reinforce inequity. Perhaps the most illustrative of this is the research by David M. Markowitz (2024) in this issue as he uses natural language processing to update research on descriptions of NFL prospects, which has previously found stereotypes in descriptors that disadvantage Black athletes' in team drafts (Boylan et al, 2017). Unfortunately, Markowitz' comprehensive study, spanning from 2014-2023, found more of the same.…”