John Riggins, A Personal Viewpoint

Lance Alworth

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bigman said:
the problem is that like Jim Kelly and Thurmon Munson, he will be remembered for being on the loosing side of a superbowl as much as he will be remembered for having great stats... that is the nature of the NFL... only the true fans will appreciate the Munson, James, Tarkington etc...

I think you mean Thurman Thomas. Thurman Munson was a baseball player
 

Realgeorge

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Riggo is Still King


Despite the fanatical, almost hysterical anti-white sports bias in the Washington DC press, John Riggins continues easily to be the all-time great Redskins running back. Riggins is practically religion for long-time Redskin fans. Such a fan knows onlyresults on the field, oblivious to the caste-system manipulation of the NFL game behind the scenes. The Super Bowl victories of the Gibbs-I era are the Glorious Mysteries of the Washington sports Rosary, and John Riggins is the Patron Saint of Redskins football. HE alone won the Skins' first Super Bowl, in the lore and legend of DC sports.


Many other good Redskin running backs have come and gone, and nearly all are black. They are revered and respected: Larry Brown, Earnest Byner, Charlie Harraway, Stephen Davis, and many others. But John Riggins remains GOD as the Skins' alltime running back. In fact it would be hard to deny Riggins' spot as perhaps the alltime Redskins player. Only Sammy Baugh and Sonny Jurgensen would come close. Riggins in his prime was a prime media interview target. In his retirement he has constantly been on hand for Redskins' TV analysis shows on the local stations. And he is immortalized for showing up drunk at some sort of DC celebrities' dinner and making an off-color remark to a female Supreme Court justice.


I like Riggo. He's ornery, disheveled, intoxicated, rude .... and sincere and funny and always willing to mug for the microphone. We former Redskin fans miss him.
 

white lightning

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I long for the days of watching running backs like John Riggins.When will we ever see another running back like him even get the chance to play,let alone star in the Super Bowl.I keep hoping and dreaming.I just hope that the Caste System falls and is destroyed forever someday.Riggins was really special and had better speed than people give him credit for!
 

robcat

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Wasn't Riggins a sprinter at the University of Kansas? He was one of the fastest running backs early in his career.
 
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Riggins was a sprinter in high school. I have seen a film of Riggins making a 69 yard run for Kansas in 1970. He just blew by the defenders with his speed, and was indeed one of the fastest runners in college football at the time.


As I wrote when starting this thread, Riggins was a different runner in his first two years on the Jets than what most people remember from his Redskin days. He tore up a knee late in the 1972 season, and tore up the other knee in 1977. Even at age 33 in the 1983 Super Bowl, he had a burst of speed for that long run he's famous for.
 

backrow

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very good post sport historian, and very true indeed... i had John RIggins highlights on tape, including his early years and he was faster than most tailbacks in the league at the time... and even after years of injuries and putting on more muscle in his later years he was still very explosive runner...
i think Brian Leonard is the closest thing to Riggins in the college at the moment, but he will probably just get to play fullback and never a featured runner in NFL...
 

whiteCB

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Lets say all things equal that John Riggins came out of Kansas here in 2006 as a RB and great sprinter would he fall victim to the caste system and be put at FB or would some team actually give him a chance at RB? I honsetly don't know what my answer would be right now I'll have to think about it.
 

surfsider

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Here's a snippet from the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame site:At Centralia High School, the 6Ã’-2Ãâ€￾, 220 pound fullback was an imposing figure who averaged over 13 yards per carry and an unbelievable 61 yards on punt returns to lead the Panthers to a 9-0 state championship season in 1966. A two-time indoor track state champ at 60 yards, and two-time state 100 yard dash champ,....
 

Don Wassall

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whiteCB said:
Lets say all things equal that John Riggins came out of Kansas here in 2006 as a RB and great sprinter would he fall victim to the caste system and be put at FB or would some team actually give him a chance at RB? I honsetly don't know what my answer would be right now I'll have to think about it.

The first question would be, would Kansas or any other I-A school let him be the featured runner? Probably not. But even if say Kansas did, the NFL would turn him into a fullback. Guys like Luke Staley, Travis Jervey, Jesse Lumsden, Brock Forsey, Rob Konrad, Mike Alstott and others over the past 20+ years have had great combinations of size, speed and running ability and only Alstott got to run with the ball at all, so I don't think it would be any different with Riggins today.
 
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When George Allen signed Riggins for a huge contract with the Redskins in 1976, Allen moved Riggins up too close to the line of scrimmage and used Mike Thomas at TB as the primary runner. It was a puzzle to me at the time, why did Allen sign Riggins if he wasn't going to use him as his main runner?


When Jack Pardee became Washington's coach in 1978, he moved Riggins back some and gave him a fair amount of carries. Riggins gained 1014 yards in 1978 and 1153 in 1979. Then, he held out and didn't play at all in 1980. Joe Gibbs coaxed him back in 1981, and gave him a huge amount of carries in the 1982 playoffs, and that was the pattern for the remainder of Riggins' career.


John Riggins had an NFL career with many stange twists and turns. I still wonder what he would have done if he had played on a top team throughout his career, with the intensity he showed in his last years with the Redskins.


No, Riggins would be very unlikely to get a chance to be a major runner today. It should be said that he WAS given plenty of chances during his playing days. He didn't always take advantage of them due to the flakiness that was common during the 1970's.


I have posted before that the late Joel Buschbaum predicted in one of his draft books that Mike Alstott would be a Riggins type.Alstott never got the carries that Riggins did on the Redskins during 1982-84.
 

whiteCB

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Sport Historian, whats this flakiness of the 70s your referring to?


And Don yes the players LIKE Riggins are good but are anyone of them as good as Riggins. What I'm getting at is was John Riggins simply too good to not give the ball to. Coaches just couldn't deny how good he was that they couldn't follow the caste system rules.
 
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White CB, you must not have been around in the 1970's if you have to ask that question. Several months ago, Don mentioned on another thread that the 1970's featured many flaky white athletes who didn't always play with high intensity or motivation. Riggins was one of them. Except for George Allen in 1976-77, the coaches that John Riggins had WANTED him tobe their primary ball carrier. Players like Rob Konrad, Staley, Jervey, and others didn't get the opportunities that Riggins did.
 

Colonel_Reb

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Truth be told, one or the other of the white guys over the last 20+ years who have come out of college as star runners are probably better, faster, and more durable than Riggins was, but the Caste System is so strong, they will not get major carries even if they are superman. The black-supremacist NFL will not take that chance at any cost.
 

Don Wassall

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At this point, it's going to take almost a white superman to break down the decades-long ban on starting white tailbacks. Someone at least as big and powerful as Riggins, Staley and Konrad but faster, quicker and with great elusiveness, basically a power back with the moves and speed of a great scatback. Someone who gets to start at a I-A school and smashes all kinds of records, someone who is obviously a man among boys, just as Matt Jones was too talented to keep out of the NFL (though the Caste System fanatics did almost succeed in making him a tight end).

Hoping for someone that good to emerge may be pure wishful thinking, but it's not the only way it could happen. If Lumsden would be given a genuine opportunity this year, then Brian Leonard next year, followed by Kyle Bell and Peyton Hillis, that would at least open a lot of eyes to the suppressed fact that there always have been and always will be great white runners of the ball. If there were two or three white NFL running backs, just as there are several white receivers allowed to play out of the very large pool of qualified white candidates, maybe that would begin to at least break down the complete taboo that exists on recruiting and playing white RBs. As soon as the monkey see monkey do college coaches see that they don't have to recruit only blacks to run the ball, some at least will stop snubbing the great white running talent that high school football produces every single year.

This second scenario is almost as unlikely as the first. The supporters of this site are really the only people talking about the Caste System and trying to enlighten others about what is so obvious and institutionalized to us. If we can build the Caste Football community to a large enough size and get our message of fair treatment of white athletes out to a large audience, even though many will be hostile to the message, we may be the key factor in forcing change, and quicker than we think. If we grow to include a number of white athletes who have been discriminated against and who are willing to speak out, combined with the growing number of news stories escaping the censors detailing white running backs and cornerbacks being told flat out that they are the wrong color to play certain positions, a class action suit could shake the NCAA's racist recruiting policies to the bone.

Another factor is that the coaches and executives may finally become revolted by their endless pandering to the criminals and other low-lifes who form a substantial amount of current players, players who have no respect for whites and white values and traditions, including teamwork, unselfishness, playing hurt, and plain old sweat and blood. There may actually be a yearning developing for more "old school" players, solid citizens with solid values who play consistently excellent, fundamentally sound football, and are willing and eager to sacrifice for the good of the team. Of course that too is most likely wishful thinking in this jaded, corrupt society.

But there are solid cracks emerging in the Caste System and its near total control of information. White sprinters, white heavyweight boxers, European basketball players and some excellent American college basketball players, the feats of Lance Armstrong, continued white domination of baseball, the stunning failure of black quarterbacks in the NFL this year. The continued white domination of virtually every sport on earth. The cracks are there, and they're also there in the corporate media's control of information about sports.

Football is the engine that holds together the entire Caste System and its lies and myths. As America's secular religion, football's place in the power structure is extremely important. But the seeds of destruction are already planted in the vengeful shutting out of whites at various positions in the face of so much evidence of the ability of whites to play every position at the highest levels; in fact there may be enough to easily reverse the current black/white percentage ratio in the NFL in favor of whites, akin to what it was like in the racially integrated NFL of the 1960s and early '70s.
 

GWTJ

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What we need is an owner who would be more involved with erasing the Caste system on his team. He would draft the top white athletes that other teams would pass on. He would make sure they get opportunity equal to their ability. When he wins a couple of Super Bowls, other teams will play copycat and we will make some progress.

He will have to be a strong man, one who can defend himself against the wave of writers who will villify him for his actions. Of course, winning we help.

He will have to hide his true intentions until he actually gets to buy a team. Maybe someone from this site will buy a team someday.

Red Aurbach of the Celtics was such a man. In the 80's he had no problem defending himself when people accused him of having too many white players. He continued to bring them in and had great teams until his nucleus of players got too old.
 

Colonel_Reb

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Good point GWTJ. I think it will take a combination of excellent athletes and a wise owner to help break the mold. Will we ever see an owner like that again though?
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JD074

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A pure white running back in the NFL- not an FB who will never, ever get more than the rare carry or two, but a real running back- is probably a long time coming. Look at the problems the white receivers are having; even though they get opportunities, they could do so much more. If Kevin Curtis and JJ get benched the second a black player gets healthy, if Stokley gets lost in the "high powered" Colts offense, what chance does a white RB have to get anything more than the very occasional carry a la Forsey, Hoover, and Evans? How can they get consistent playing time, stringing together several games in a row and putting up some respectable stats?

It looks bleak, but things can change. If there are phenomenal talents like Curtis, Urlacher, Hawk, Jones, etc., at their positions, why not RB? It's possible, but the system is stacked against it.

Most likely, the white players who are athletically capable of playing that position are playing other positions/ sports. Why should a white player put up with that crap? It's downright masochistic so long as they can play linebacker, baseball, hockey, wrestling, or MMA instead. Now, if there's a guy who, for whatever reason, doesn't have a better alternative (can't hit a curveball, can't skate, whatever,) but still very talented, that could be the guy who breaks through.
 

white tornado

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The only way were going to have a great white tail back is for that white kid to stand up for himself. When Bradly Van Pelt was told by a coach that he was not talented enough to play Qb and had to be moved to safty Bradly told the coach to "Go f*ck yourself"
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not only did Bradly become a great Qb but is now in the N.F.L A niece team first white guy will never play running back in the N.F.L. Kyle Bell will be moved to full back because he won't stand up for himself.
 
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