In a feeble attempt for media pampering, a Philadelphia athlete attempting to steal the attention from the Super Bowl spectacle stated last week that he was a victim of “black on black crime.”For once this decade, it wasn’t Terrell Owens’ big mouth doing the talking; it was media darling and self-pitying soup eater Donovan McNabb opening his yap.

In an interview with ESPN last week, McNabb decided to take it upon himself and speak out against Owens’ agreement with ESPN football analyst Michael Irvin’s assessment that the Eagles would be winning more games with Brett Favre at quarterback.

Upon hearing McNabb’s explanation that the assessment was wrong because Favre is a white quarterback and this is a clear shot at his position as a black quarterback, I was sent into a state of nightmarish world of Campbell’s Chunky Soup ads, Rush Limbaugh and memories of a certain QB blowing the final drive of Super Bowl XXXIX.

It was the ultimate nightmare. Here was the pampered QB everybody felt sorry for, drawing a clear line between white and black quarterbacks in the NFL, and nobody seemed to care.

I searched everywhere for somebody to say McNabb was wrong, and everywhere I was shut down. Mark Shlereth and Tom Jackson steered clear of the issue, Dan Patrick just sat back and grinned, and Michael Wilbon of Pardon the Interruption told Tony Kornheiser that Owens had been taking racist shots at McNabb in some secret code language all year and that McNabb was right for what he said. I must have been in fantasyland.

Was anything McNabb said different than Jimmy the Greek’s assessment of black athletes 18 years ago?

Not hardly. McNabb wasn’t taking offense because Favre is twice the quarterback he’ll ever be, he was offended because Favre is white.

Maybe Owens would have been better suited to compare McNabb with Kordell Stewart or Charlie Batch. Is that what McNabb wants, to be compared with average-at-best quarterbacks?

Irvin made the assessment because no other black quarterback in the league today matches up with McNabb. Favre is a future Hall of Famer with three MVP trophies; so stating a team would be better with him is like saying the Dallas Mavericks would be better off with Michael Jordan in his prime than Dirk Nowitzki.

Maybe someday McNabb will realize how ridiculous his comments were, but at least America knows now that while they watched the Seahawks and the Steelers play for the Lombardi trophy on Sunday, McNabb saw white quarterbacks handing the ball off to black running backs.

Thank you, Donovan, it will be a pleasure rooting against you next season.

Josh Oates can be reached at [email protected]