I don't understand when exactly 5'11" became "short". I'm 6'1" and I feel like I'm quite tall most places I go. I go to the store and can look over the top of most customers heads and keep track of my kids, and I'd apparently be a midget or something if I played in the NFL. I was bigger than most guys I played baseball with, and I was huge for a soccer player and was a striker that was always knocking everybody else around (much to my advantage). Russell is pretty good sized. He's taller than Mike Tyson. Let's hear somebody call him a Hobbit.
I can remember some of the best players I ever saw and they weren't tall at all. I met Barry Sanders once and had my picture taken with him and got to talk to him. No way was he anything over 5'6". I didn't feel like a giant compared to him though. He was clearly a professional athlete. He was built like a truck, and 5'6" isn't all that short. I believe the average adult human was like 5'4" or 5'5" back when I was taking my college human development classes. It was supposed to increase to 5'7" I believe by 2020 or something like that, but there was thought it might go up faster because of changing eating patterns in third world countries (more protein, more exercise for physical health, and such).
But even for an NFL player, why is 5'11" considered short? Ty Detmer was 5'11" and played in the NFL for like 15 years. I never heard any short jokes about him when he won the Heisman or played in the Pro Bowl (and yes... he did). Steve Young is not any taller than I am, I've stood next to him many times, and I'm only 2 inches taller than Russell. Put Young next to Montana on the sidelines and you'll notice in pictures that Young was taller than Montana. So is Russell Joe Montana height? He seemed to play fine and I never heard anybody commenting on his size. Maybe if Russell had just skipped the combine and said he was 6'1" nobody would have made such a big deal over his height week after week after week. He isn't Little Mac from Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Geez. He's basically a six foot tall full grown man. Michael Robinson played QB in college and was a very good QB and looked every bit the part of a QB and is about the same size. Mike Vick isn't the biggest guy. If anything, I'd say he has about the same build and presence on the field as Russell, yet Mike was the first pick in the draft. It just seems silly.