Getty Image / Rob Carr
Former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall is picking up a lot of attention in a hurry after calling for a segregated ‘All-Black vs. All-White’ Pro Bowl and saying that whites are ‘not even good at football.’
Rashard Mendenhall retired from the NFL after the 2013 season. He won Super Bowl XLIII with the Steelers in his rookie season but played a crucial role in the Steelers losing Super Bowl XLV to Aaron Rodgers and the Packers after a 4th quarter fumble, something Mendenhall was reminded of on social media after calling for a segregated Pro Bowl.
On X (formerly Twitter), Rashard Mendenhall wrote “I’m sick of average white guys commenting on football. Y’all not even good at football. Can we please replace the Pro Bowl with an All-Black vs. All-White bowl so these cats can stop trying to teach me who’s good at football. I’m better than ur goat.”
There are two main types of responses to Rashard’s post. The first are from folks like this who remind him that he was directly responsible for the Steelers losing Super Bowl XLV to the Packers back in 2011.
X
The other main set of replies to Rashard’s post on X are folks who imagine what this segregated Pro Bowl might actually look like, posts like this from Barstool’s PFTCommenter:
Bosas would need to get home in 2 seconds or less or else were getting 70 hung on us with the DB situation we got. Might have to do a entire roster breakdown but early line is AB-13.5 https://t.co/9mzXrsr8cY
— PFT Commenter (@PFTCommenter) December 18, 2023
Whether he’s joking or not, it is pretty shocking to see Mendenhall publicly call for a segregated Pro Bowl. And it’s not as if he’s a comedian so it isn’t clear at all if he’s joking here or not. There’s also at least one person pointing out that Christian McCaffrey ran all over the Steelers earlier this season and McCaffrey had 187 all purpose yards on Sunday and 3 TDs against Arizona.
But that’s getting baited into his segregated Pro Bowl thought experiment when in reality we should all be asking ‘what on God’s green earth led him to share that on social media?’ And for what it’s worth, Rashard Mendenhall failed to make the Pro Bowl in any season of his NFL career.
This isn’t the first time Rashard Mendenhall has said some out of pocket stuff on social media. He previously criticized Americans for celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden and in the past he has doubted that Bin Laden was behind 9/11 at all.