Thread by @michaelharriot

Today, a lot of old Black men will be rooting for the KC Chiefs.

It has nothing to do with Taylor Swift, a Black QB or Travis Kelce's pioneering haircut. It's about HBCUs, Black history, a kidnapping & white affirmative action.

How Racism Invented the Super Bowl

A thread.

Pro football existed before the NFL. Independent football teams played each other & they even crowned a "national champion."

Remember, many colleges were segregated, which meant a lot of the BEST football players played at HBCUs, Ivy League colleges & on the West Coast.

Meanwhile, the biggest PRO football clubs were in the midwest, especially Ohio. Usually, these teams were all-white. But as it became more competitive, midwest football clubs began hiring Black and Native American players anywhere they could find them.

They wanted to win.

For instance, in 1919, the Rock Island Independents were tired of being also-rans. So they signed Bobby Marshall, a Black player who basically led a crew that went from team to team in Minnesota.

They only lost one game on their way to winning the national championship.

So, on August 20, 1920, the Independents and 10 other teams met in a car dealership in Canton, Ohio to form the American Professional Football Conference, which we now call the NFL.

Initially, the NFL teams could still play against non-NFL teams.

So when the Independents opened the 1920 season against the non-NFL St. Paul Ideals, it was STILL technically the NFL's first game and Bobby Marshall was STILL the first Black player to play in the NFL.

He was 40 years old

Marshall DEFINITELY wouldn't win the next championship.

See, as soon as they joined the NFL, the Akron Pros knew they had to step their game up. They had been 5-5 the previous year, so they hired Fritz Pollard to play QB.

At the time, Pollard owned every college accolade imaginable, so this made sense, right?

Not really

First of all, he hadn't played organized football in FOUR YEARS. He was a coach at Lincoln U (he led them to 2 undefeated seasons). Yes, he was the first Black player to play in the ROse Bowl and was a consensus all-American, but there's one other thing you should know:

He wasn't a quarterback.

He played RB in college.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Fritz Pollard the other "first" Black NFL player led the Akron pros to an undefeated season and the NFL's very first championship.

The next year, the Akron Pros named him co-head coach.

Marshall eventually opened his own law firm (did I mention he was a lawyer). J Mayo Williams, another one of the NFL's first Black players, left to start a record label & pioneer the industry that we now call "pop music."

They called it "race music."

chicagomag.com/arts-culture/m…

Paul Robeson also played in the1921 season.

Anyway, Black players were integral to the NFL's founding.

At the open of the 1927 season, every single Black player was kicked out of the NFL. No one knows why. No one has ever explained what happened.

(We know what happened)

After protests the NFL allowed 1 Black player each season. Not one per team. One. TOTAL.

In 1933, Boston Braves owner George Preston Marshall bought franchise. Marshall was rich & the NFL wanted him, so they agreed to his one condition:

No Black players.

He got his color line.

The NFL would eventually sign 2 Black players in 1946, ONLY because the Cleveland Rams moved to LA and the city wouldn't lease its stadium to a segregated team.

Before Marshall bought the team that would become the Redskins, all of the NFL champions were basically crowned.

But in 1933, they started having an end-of-the-season game to determine the champion.

To prevent teams from just signing a bunch of Black players to win the championship, NFL owners agreed to an unofficial "Black Cap" limiting the # of Black players per team

When you look at the NFL rosters, it actually seems like the NFL integrated in the late 40s.
In reality, only 1 or 2 actually played at a time. And, because of the "Black Cap," they earned about 4x less than white players. Even white players knew it.

They LITERALLY thought it was unfair if a team had too many Black players.

Then, in 1960, everything changed

The upstart American Football League began playing games. It was an immediate hit because it was basically the NFL, except for 1 difference.

Black players.

To compete with the NFL, some AFL teams paid Black players more than they could earn in the NFL. Some actively recruited big-name Black players. Others scoured HBCUs for talent.

This isn't a radical "woke" opinion. You know who else says this?

The NFL
nfl.com/news/afl-opene…

And then there were the Dallas Texans.

The Texans wanted to draft a Black player named Abner Haynes but the Steelers had drafted him in the 5th round of the NFL draft and every kid wanted to play in the NFL!

The Steelers coach and QB came even came to visit Haynes...

OK, the white boys were dead drunk when they came to visit, but it was still nice! There was just one problem,"

Haynes's dad was a minister and civil rights activist.

He signed with the Texans and won Rookie of the Year
And MVP
And led the league in rushing
And touchdowns

In 1962, the Texans won the AFL championship, moved to KC & became the Chiefs. Their 1st hire was Lloyd "Judge" Wells, the 1st Black full-time scout in pro football
Wells was well-connected with HBCUs & he also discovered Hall of Famers, but frankly, Wells had a cheat code:

Eddie Robinson.

Grambling's coach was a legend. He retired as the winningest football coach of all time. And if he said something about football, you LISTENED.

Before the 1963 draft, he told Judge Wells:

Forget about ALL the white boys in the draft, I have the best player.

Now think about how crazy this was. This Black man, in the first year of his dream job, was supposed to convince his bosses to draft a Black player from a tiny college they'd never heard of.

There was also another detail:

KC had the FIRST pick in the draft.

On Dec. 1, 1963, based SOLELY on Eddie Robinson's word, Buck Buchanan became the first Black player in pro football player to be drafted number 1.

He's also the 1st of 4 Grambling players in the NFL the Hall of Fame now.

The AFL wasn't just faster and more EXCITING.

It was becoming obvious that the NFL championship game was for the WHITE championship. NFL Owners upped the quotas but it was too late. The AFL already had the systems in place, the scouts and the Black players.

So in 1966, the NFL decided to have an AFL vs NFL game every year.

The Kansas City Chiefs faced off against the Green Bay Packers.

Kansas City lost.
The NFL won the next year, too.
But even though they were called "Super Bowl I" & Super Bowl II, its not true.

The FIRST year they called it the SUper Bowl was at the end of the 1968 season.

The NY Jets, representing the AFL won the "first" Super Bowl.

The next year, the Kansas City Chiefs made the SUper Bowl. Buck Buchanan was there and so was Otis Taylor a wide receiver from Prarie View A&M

The story goes that the Cowboys wanted to draft Taylor so bad...

That they put armed guards outside Taylor's door.

So Judge Wells gets Eddie Robinson to find the address they're keeping Taylor. He drives down, but they won't let him in. They've literally kidnapped Taylor. Wells parks outside and screams that Robinson knows he's there'e

Taylor climbs out of the window and signs with KC.

In the 3rd quarter, KC's leading 13-7 when Taylor catches a 46-yard pass and strolls down the sideline.

He's crying. No one knows why. He's already the AFC champ. The Super Bowl isn't really a big thing yet.

But the players know.

See, that wasn't the first super bowl. It wasn't the biggest.

But the KC Chiefs was one of the first in ANY LEAGUE or ANY era who started a majority Black team

They said they wanted to beat "the white boys," or, as writers more politely put it...

"They were proud of their diversity"

Now, the AFL didn't hire UNQUALIFIED Black players, they just just gave Black players the opportunity to succeeed because they WERE AWARE OF the NFL's PAST RACISM

But if you ask ANY of the previous NFL champions, even though they only played against white boys on teams that enforced quotas, they'd tell you they won on MERIT.

In reality, they won bc of white affirmative action

AND here's what happened

After pro football's FIRST real Black team trounced the white boys on National TV, the NFL merged with the AFL.

And that's why the Super Bowl is actually a DEI project.

Happy Black History Month!