There’s a video going around of Keon Coleman appearing not to know how to sign a contract, and the media is using it to suggest he has a low IQ and to justify the Bills’ Brandon Beane and Terry Pegula not wanting to draft him. This is misleading and part of a long history of racial bias in sports coverage. Black athletes are often portrayed as “unintelligent” or “unprepared” based on minor mistakes—what some call “dog whistling”—while similar behavior by white players is rarely scrutinized.
Content creators post clips like this for clicks, framing it as “proof” of incompetence, while hiding behind the story to validate their own implicit biases. The average person who has never signed a professional contract—especially a college player entering the NFL—might not know the exact process. That has nothing to do with intelligence, yet these narratives get amplified because they reinforce harmful stereotypes about Black athletes.
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