Cam Newton shuts down the idea he's criticized because of race

For as great of a football player as he is, Cam Newton still has quite a few haters. Maybe many of them are just sore losers, as the Carolina Panthers quarterback did a whole lot of winning last season. Or maybe it's because of the swagger and confidence he plays (and often celebrates) with.

But if you ask the Panthers quarterback and reigning NFL MVP, there's one thing he doesn't think leads to personal criticism of him as a player: his race.

It's a topic that has come up more than a few times already during the 27-year-old's career. There have been things written and said about Newton and his attitude that many have interpreted as having racial undertones. He's too cocky. He dances too much. He disrespects the game. He's selfish. Some wonder whether a lot of these complaints are rooted in the fact that he's an African-American quarterback in the NFL.

But Cam doesn't.

In a recent interview with GQ, Newton was asked whether he believed fans were racist toward him.

“It’s not racism. Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion," he told Zach Baron. "I don’t look at it like that. I look at it like some people have certain beliefs, and I have my own belief, and we can agree to disagree on certain things. But this is what makes sports so amazing, that we can start a discussion around a table, in the newspaper, in the magazines, that will get people’s attention. And that’s what sports does.

"I don’t want this to be about race, because it’s not. It’s not. Like, we’re beyond that. As a nation.”

Regardless of whether you agree with that sentiment, it's a strong deviation from comments Newton made during last season's Super Bowl media frenzy. Prior to the Panthers' loss to the Broncos in SB50, Newton was asked how he felt he was perceived by football fans. It was a question that came fresh on the heels of upset fans making headlines with excessive scorn of the quarterback. A Seahawks fan was mad he "disrespected the 12th man." An op-ed was posted in The Charlotte Observer criticizing Newton for not marrying the mother of his newborn son.

At the time, Newton said that it might be attributed to his being "an African-American quarterback that may scare a lot of people because they haven’t seen nothing that they can compare me to.”

That seems like a curious 180 from Newton's most recent comments, but it also sounds like he may just be sick of addressing the topic. If so, that's likely unfortunate for him because it doesn't seem like the discussion is going away any time soon. In both his failures and his successes, people dig deep to find reasons to complain about Newton. When he went 15-1 in last year's regular season, he showboated and had too much fun. When he lost the Super Bowl, he was too upset and didn't speak to the media in a professional enough manner for a satisfactory amount of time.

Newton is, and probably always will be, a lightning rod for criticism until the day he retires from the NFL. Maybe he really doesn't see it as being racially driven, and maybe that's a good thing. But maybe he's also just tired of it, and the fact that it's a discussion that has been had so frequently in the past year or so suggests that we are definitely not "beyond that" as a nation.