While maybe there are some, but I can’t name a single black field goal kicker. Why are there none or so few?
Reggie Roby, Greg Coleman, Rodney Williams,Obed Ariri, Herb Travenio, and Donald Igewbuck.
There are only two whom I can think of off the top of my head – Donald Igwebuike and Obed Ariri, both of whom kicked for Tampa Bay in the 1980s, both of whom attended Clemson, and both of whom were from Nigeria.
There haven’t been many black punters, either (Reggie Roby and Greg Coleman are the only two I can easily think of).
I can’t think of any compelling reason why there haven’t been more, but it certainly does look like being a kicking specialist isn’t something which attracts a lot of young black athletes (compared to other positions in the game).
Roby, Coleman, and Williams were punters, not kickers (but I’ve already noted that black punters seem to be equally rare).
Roby was a punter, and a very good one, but not a place kicker.
The Tampa Bay Bucs’ Nigerian place kicker Donald Igwebuike is one of the few I’ve seen.
There haven’t been many black punters OR place kickers in the NFL, and there’s no complelling reason for that. PERHAPS it’s because, for a long time, a lot of place kickers were converted soccer players. In the Seventies, that meant a lot of imported European place kickers (Jan Stenerud, Toni Fritsch, Garo Yepremian, Horst Muhlmann, Pete and Charlie Gogolak, John Smith, Nick Mike-Mayer, etc.). Today, of course, there are plenty of American soccer players and we no longer have to import European place kickers… but most American soccer players are white kids from the suburbs.
It’s worth noting that Donald Igwebuike himself was a converted soccer player.
Very well could be. I don’t know any of them, actually. I just Googled up “black field goal…” and Google filled in the rest and I had my answer.
[sub]Sorta.[/sub]
That’s undoubtedly true, but:
a) High schools which have predominantly black student bodies play football, too (where do all the other black NFL players come from? 
), and undoubtedly have someone who kicks (and punts).
b) I bet you that most NFL kickers who grew up in the U.S. were playing football in high school (though many of them were probably also playing soccer).
It’s possible, I suppose, that playing both soccer and football as a youngster correlates strongly with making it to the NFL as a kicker, compared to playing football alone.
You do raise a fair point… and I admit, it’s surprising we haven’t seen any good kickers from all-black or mostly-black schools like Grambling in the NFL.
Strangely enough, I recall hearing a few years ago that even Grambling had brought in an Israeli soccer player as their kicker!
Yes, and typically badly. The kicking stats at HBCUs are pretty bad.
IMO, it’s partly the soccer thing, and partly that black athletes are resistant to being pigeonholed into a niche, “non-athlete” position.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYBhMqTmYsQ&feature=related
Couldn’t resist posting this.
From what I’ve read (and seen, in that clip), he’s actually pretty good at it.
Walter Payton was the Bears’ backup kicker, and he was, allegedly, often better than the Bears’ regular kicker. The story goes that the Bears didn’t like the idea of exposing their MVP to getting injured by someone running into his leg as he was kicking, and so, they never let him kick in a regular-season game (though he did punt once during his rookie season).
The sad thing is that he’s probably now the 3rd string kicker on the Patriots after Wes Welker, who was probably the best kicker in the state of Oklahoma when he was in high school.