There are 3 kinds of projects that, when announced, you can almost guarantee will mean work for black actors: movies or TV shows that tell stories about the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade; movies or TV shows set in prisons; movies or TV shows centered around sports – especially if the sport is football, basketball, baseball or track. 

I’m being partly facetious, but you all know what’s up! I should be preaching to the choir here.

One thing that immediately struck me about this first trailer for Draft Day is just how much it impresses the unfortunate reality that is the absence of black people in the executive suites of professional sports. Despite the fact that the overwhelming number of active NFL players are black (stats have the number at somewhere between 65 and 70%), ownership, management, and coaching of NFL teams is a majority white.

I believe a full 100% of the majority owners in the league are white. Although, one of the co-stars of Draft Day, Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs, recently said that he planned to change that soon, by becoming the league’s first majority owner.

Draft Day’s cast includes, in addition to Combs, Chadwick Boseman, Terry Crews, Chi McBride, David Ramsey, and Arian Foster (who actually plays for the Houston Texans). And I mention then specifically because they are black. But the film isn’t about them, which explains why none of them (except for a millisecond glimpse at Boseman), features in the trailer.

Kevin Costner stars in the film as an NFL team’s General Manager who is faced with tough professional and personal choices in the 24-hour period of the NFL Draft. Ivan Reitman directed the upcoming film, which is set for an April 11, 2014 release date, via Lionsgate.

Also in the cast are Jennifer Garner, Ellen Burstyn, Denis Leary and Frank Langella.

I’d guess that all the brothas are probably playing football players – except maybe Chi McBride.

Based on the below first trailer, this looks like a more reverential version of a previous football drama, Any Given Sunday, with Kevin Costner as the Al Pacino character (although Pacino was a coach not a GM), Jennifer Garner playing the role Cameron Diaz played in that film, and Chadwick Boseman stepping into Jamie Foxx’s shoes.

We’ll see.

Here’s the trailer for Draft Day: