In my lifetime, Black quarterbacks were denied opportunities both at the major-college level and in the National Football League.
Warren Moon was a remarkably gifted passer who in 1977 concluded his college career at Washington. If he now were a young man and draft-eligible, there’s no question Moon would be the top pick overall. In advance of the 1978 NFL draft, however, he was informed that he would be a late-round selection, so Moon chose to play in the Canadian Football League.
After six seasons of CFL greatness, Moon finally scored an appealing NFL situation with the Houston Oilers. Seventeen NFL seasons later, he had been a nine-time Pro Bowl selection who had passed for more than 49,000 yards and for 291 touchdowns.
Moon is the only player to have been inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
People are also reading…
“In the history of the game, no one threw a prettier pass than Warren Moon,” Spencer Tillman says. “I saw it up close. The talent was unbelievable, and he still had to go to Canada to prove himself.”
Tillman got an “up close” look at Moon’s abilities to pass, lead a team and win games because they were Houston teammates in 1987-88 and again in 1992-93.
In 1976, as a Tulsa seventh-grader at Edison, Tillman was riveted to the OU-Texas football telecast. The game itself was not a classic and ended in a 6-6 tie as OU botched an extra-point snap with 1:38 left to play, but Tillman witnessed something historic that day: Barry Switzer’s decision to start a Black quarterback — Thomas Lott — for the first time in the history of the Sooner program.
Southern Cal, Notre Dame, Ohio State and Penn State had Black QBs before OU did, but during the ’70s and ’80s, Switzer and the Oklahoma Sooners became synonymous with having Black athletes at the quarterback position.
“That Thomas Lott game — yeah, we understood the significance of it,” Tillman said by phone from his home in the Houston area. “We understood that it was different and important.
“I knew that Thomas Lott had to be the best quarterback on the OU roster. I knew he had to be the most prepared and ready to handle that responsibility. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been on the field.
“The pathway that a Black quarterback would have to tread during those years — it was going to be difficult. But that’s the historical through line of this nation.”
Before the 1976 Texas game, according to OU football historian Mike Brooks, Lott’s Sooner experience amounted to only 17 rushing attempts and one pass attempt. Ultimately, he would finish with 29 starts. OU’s record with Lott as the starter was 23-5-1.
Increasingly common
During the 2023 NFL regular season, 20 Black quarterbacks got at least one start. During the postseason, six of the 14 teams were quarterbacked by Black players.
On NFL.com’s ranking of all starting quarterbacks last season, nine of the top 20 are Black.
In the 2023 NFL draft, three of the top four selections overall were Black quarterbacks Bryce Young of Alabama (Carolina Panthers), C.J. Stroud of Ohio State (Houston Texans) and Anthony Richardson of Florida (Indianapolis Colts).
When this year’s draft begins on April 25, it is expected that Commissioner Roger Goodell will announce another Black quarterback — Southern Cal’s Caleb Williams — as the first pick overall of the Chicago Bears.
Before 2001, when Virginia Tech’s Michael Vick was picked by Atlanta, no Black quarterback had been the first pick overall in an NFL draft.
Black quarterbacks may be prevalent today, but they weren’t on a national basis when Switzer became the OU head coach in 1973. By the time his OU run ended after the 1988 season, seven Black quarterbacks had started in at least one game during the Switzer era: Lott, J.C. Watts, Darrell Shepard, Danny Bradley, Jamelle Holieway, Eric Mitchel and Charles Thompson.
Watts led the 1979 and 1980 Sooners to Orange Bowl wins over Florida State.
“With his arm, his scrambling, his running ability — if J.C. Watts were playing college football now instead of 40 years ago, he would be a first-round draft pick,” Switzer said. “J.C. would have been great today. Instead, he left OU, went to Canada and had a (five-year career in the CFL).”
By the end of the 2006 season (during which Paul Thompson quarterbacked the Sooners to the Big 12 title), OU in its history had 14 Black starting quarterbacks. The University of Texas in its history had four.
OU’s all-time total on Black starting quarterbacks is 18.
Kyler Murray was the 2018 Heisman Trophy recipient.
Jalen Hurts was the 2019 Heisman runner-up.
In 2021, Williams was a dazzling Sooner freshman quarterback. In 2022, he was a Southern Cal Trojan and won the Heisman.
Switzer: 'Skin color didn't matter'
Of the criticism Switzer would receive for having had Black quarterbacks operate the Sooners’ triple-option wishbone ground game, he now says, “I would get letters from (detractors). I would read them, tear them up and throw them away. Racist (bleepers).”
“I was doing the right thing before a lot of other people were doing it,” Switzer explained. “I was recruiting the best players at every position, and skin color didn’t matter. Quarterback, too? You bet your ass.
“I wanted my assistants to feel the same way about it that I did. It was all about bringing the best players we could to the program, and it was also about fairness and opportunity.”
“Because we were so far ahead of so many other schools on recruiting Black athletes,” Switzer added, “the Black families in Texas wanted their kids to go to OU.”
OU’s recruiting class of 1975 might have been the greatest in program history. It included a Texas high school running back, Billy Sims, who was destined to win the Heisman Trophy as a Sooner; and it included quarterback Thomas Lott, who had been a triple-option dynamo in San Antonio.
The Sooners’ freshman class of 1982 would include running backs Marcus Dupree (a Mississippi phenom who still ranks among the more heavily recruited players of all time) and Spencer Tillman (a brilliant Tulsa kid who after his college football career would play eight NFL seasons and have post-football success in the business world, as a public speaker and in the college football broadcast booths for CBS and FOX Sports).
When the 1985 Sooners were matched with the mighty Miami Hurricanes in Norman, then-OU QB Troy Aikman sustained a season-ending leg fracture. A Black freshman from Los Angeles – Jamelle Holieway — would quarterback the Sooners and contend with a Miami defense that was loaded with NFL-caliber personnel.
“I will never forget the moment when Jamelle ran to our huddle,” Tillman recalled.
Before that first snap, Holieway made eye contact with each of his 10 teammates and asked, “Y’all ready to roll?”
That Saturday afternoon did not end well as the Jimmy Johnson-coached Hurricanes returned to Florida with a 27-14 victory, but Holieway and that Sooner team would roll to the 1985 national championship.
“Jamelle was ice, man,” Tillman says. “People thought that Black quarterbacks couldn’t play because they didn’t have the mettle or the poise or whatever.
“I can assure you, nobody had more poise or more ice water in their veins than Jamelle Holieway. Nothing fazed him.”
Switzer’s legacy
Two weeks after Lott and the Sooners tied Texas in the Cotton Bowl, there was the 1976 Bedlam game in Norman. That was a landmark day for Oklahoma State as Harold Bailey became the first Black quarterback to start for the Cowboys.
Bailey was a freshman. During the second half, experienced senior QB Charlie Weatherbie was on the field as OSU outscored OU 18-0 during the final 23 minutes and prevailed 31-24.
In the history of OSU football, seven Black quarterbacks have been starters.
If not for the misfortune of Kerry Jackson, OU likely would have had a Black starting quarterback during Switzer’s first head-coaching season in 1973. As the No. 1 recruit in Texas, Jackson had been signed out of Galveston Ball High School in 1972.
After it was revealed that a Galveston Ball administrator reportedly had tinkered with Jackson’s academic records, Jackson was declared ineligible at OU. There also was a car accident that left Jackson with a broken sternum.
By the time Jackson was eligible and healthy, Steve Davis was established as the quarterback of the Sooners’ national title teams in 1974 and 1975.
The Jackson-Switzer relationship never faded. Switzer says he has invited Jackson to visit for the upcoming OU football spring game, and to spend the weekend at Switzer’s home in Norman.
“Barry Switzer will never get the credit he deserves for opening doors the way he did,” Tillman said. “You and I know the history of the opportunities he provided for Black athletes, but it should be a much greater part of coach Switzer’s legacy.”
Switzer loves to revisit his time as the Oklahoma head coach, and especially the ’70s — a decade during which the Sooner program’s win total was second only to Alabama’s. The top three of the ’70s: Alabama had an overall record of 103-16-1, with OU at 102-13-3 and Nebraska at 98-20-4.
OU twice was the national champion during the ’70s, and contended for the national title in four additional seasons.
In 1969, the University of Texas football team won the national title with an all-white roster.
As an OU assistant in 1966-72, and certainly after he became the head man with a stunning first-year pay of only $24,000, Switzer aggressively recruited Black athletes.
“It was the right thing to do. That’s all it was,” Switzer said. “It was the right thing to do for a lot of reasons. It was about giving a lot of great kids a chance to play at a great place like Oklahoma.
“That was my philosophy, and my philosophy was the correct philosophy.”