African Americans and college football, Part 4: The “black” quarterback

Few opportunities

There were many great black high school quarterbacks that we will never know how good they could have been in college because they were asked to change positions. Unless you went to an HBCU — which we covered in part two — most times you were asked to switch positions.

There were, however, pockets of success for black quarterbacks. Even after anti-segregation legislation was passed after Brown vs. The Board of Education in 1954, blacks were not aggressively recruited by many historically white institutions, especially in the deep south.

As we mentioned in part three, there were some northern and west coast schools that recruited black players and even had a handful of black quarterbacks.

Jackie Robinson at UCLA in the 1930s, Willie Thrower at Michigan State in the 1950s and Sandy Stephens in the 1960s proved that blacks could play quarterback, but lead teams to huge victories.

Robinson — who played both halfback and quarterback — led the 1939 Bruins to an undefeated record. Thrower, a backup quarterback at Michigan State, sat behind All-American Tom Yewcic on the Spartans 1952 national title team. Stephens, the most successful of the three quarterbacks, played in two Rose Bowls (winning one) and was Rose Bowl MVP in 1962. Most importantly, he finished fourth in the Heisman voting in 1961.

Though a few black quarterbacks had a modicum of success, it’s hard not to think about the quarterbacks that did not have the opportunity to play on the main stage. There are many names from the 1960s and 1970s, but two that come to mind are Warren Moon and Doug Williams.

Moon, a standout quarterback from Los Angeles, received exactly no scholarship offers to play college football. After rewriting the JUCO passing record books at West Los Angeles College, he led the Washington Huskies to a Rose Bowl victory against Michigan in 1977.

Williams, a Louisiana native, also received little attention from major colleges out of high school. Instead of going the junior college route, he went to Grambling State and played for legendary coach Eddie Robinson. While at Grambling, Williams led the NCAA in passing yards, yards from scrimmage, touchdown passes and yards per play in 1977.