African Americans in college football, Part 1: The early years

The Early Days — turn of the century

As the game began to evolve one of the first great innovations of the game was the line of scrimmage. Created by Walter Camp around 1880, he also innovated the concept of down and distance. Before this, the game was organized chaos in many ways. However, teams played nose to nose even with a defined offense and defense on opposite sides of the ball.

An innovation that coincided with the line of scrimmage was what we know as “The Neutral Zone.” This idea came from William Henry Louis a center and coach for Harvard University. The Neural Zone instantly made football a collision sport. It also allowed teams to innovate more offensive plays beyond the “flying V” formation commonly used. Louis was more significant than coming up with the neutral zone, however.

The son of slaves, Louis played center for Amherst before going to Harvard. While at Harvard, Louis became the first African American All-American in college football along with being a pioneer as an African American assistant coach for 12 years at Harvard.

Early in the 20th century most of the elite football programs still resided in the Ivy League. In the early 1920s, one of those teams was Brown University. The catalyst for those teams was their diminutive dynamo Frederick Douglas “Fritz” Pollard. In 1916, Pollard became the first African-American to play in the Rose Bowl in a game that almost didn’t happen. The hotel refused to let Pollard sign in and it wasn’t until the entire team threatened to go back to Rhode Island that he was allowed to sign in and the game was played.

That wasn’t the least of the roadblocks he faced. Although his teammates did the best they could to protect him, they could not protect him from the fans and he had to be escorted on the field by local police often.

In the pros, he was part of the first NFL championship team, the first African American to play quarterback in the NFL as well as the first African American coach in the NFL.

Before Bubba Smith and the Spartans of the 1950s and Sandy Stephens and the Gophers of the 1960s — we’ll write about them in more detail. There were a couple of African American players that broke the color barrier in the Big Ten.

In 1890, George Jewett broke the color barrier at the University of Michigan. During his time in Ann Arbor, he led the Wolverines in scoring, rushing and kicking. Not long after Jewett wreaked havoc at Michigan, Gideon Edward Smith broke the color barrier down the road in East Lansing at Michigan State.

At first, head coach John Macklin of Michigan’s Agricultural College — as it was then called — refused to allow Smith on the team. Undeterred, Smith showed up to practice in his high school uniform anyway. Impressed by his grit and toughness, Smith earned Macklin’s respect and a spot on the team.