ROCKET MEN

A history of the agonizingly slow acceptance of Black quarterbacks in professional football.

Who recognizes the name Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard? A Black Illinoisan born in 1895, Pollard was taught by his parents “to interact respectfully with whites but also to stand up for themselves when necessary.” As veteran sportswriter Eisenberg notes, he later became “the NFL’s first Black quarterback” as well as “the first Black player to participate in the game that became known as the Rose Bowl…and the first Black head coach in the NFL.” Pollard is not better known because after his time on the field, which ended in the mid-1920s, Black players were frozen out of the game, “and by the time the tiniest trickle of Black players resurfaced after World War II, the quarterback position had evolved, emerging as football’s most glamorous and complex role, deemed so important and challenging that owners and coaches would not dare trust a Black man with it.” That lack of trust was born of pure racism, of course, and the unfounded assumption that Black players lacked the intelligence to captain a team. Eventually, players such as Buffalo’s James Harris proved that assumption wrong—though Harris, a star college player, was selected No. 148th in the NFL draft, “a slap in the face.” Finally, in 1974, then with the Los Angeles Rams, Harris “became the first Black quarterback to start an NFL playoff game.” It would be another decade before two Black quarterbacks faced each other. Two decades after that, when Michael Vick ran afoul of the law, Black players were again effectively frozen out of the position. Now, of course, the situation has changed utterly: Aaron Rodgers, Eisenberg points out, is the NFL’s highest-paid player, but after him come four "Black quarterbacks with contracts worth more than $1 billion combined.”

A vigorously told story of the battle for equity on the gridiron, a battle that is still playing out.