DC during football season is a place of mixed emotions. The season starts and the Redskins fluke in to some wins and it looks like they can make the playoffs and the city is full of hope. Then they drop eight straight in the middle of the season and everyone seems so deflated they refuse to even remotely embrace the perennial contenders, and fairly local, Baltimore Ravens. The Philadelphia Eagles would be a reasonable team to root for as they too are relatively local. But what I find most troubling about football season in DC is the abundance of Dallas Cowboys fans.
As a boy who was raised to believe the Redskins going 2-0 against the Cowboys could be deemed a perfect season, I saw it surprising to see so many star-clad supporters cheering the Redskins' most hated rivals. Yesterday, I asked my co-worker why it was so. My guess was that one is likely to find a number of contrarians who root for their home team's rival. But my coworker's answer surprised me. Apparently, he had been told that the Cowboys were the first team to racially integrate. If that were true, I could finally support them being referred to as "America's Team."
However, being the good journalist I was trained to be, I checked the facts. What I discovered was far more interesting, allows me to still hate the Cowboys, and leaves me with my initial question still unanswered. It seems the first team to integrate was actually the Los Angeles (now St. Louis) Rams. The story is pretty fascinating, so I will let it speak for itself:
In 1939, UCLA had, arguably until as late as 1962, one of the greatest collegiate football players in history, Kenny Washington,[5] a senior.[6] Washington, an African American,[7] was very popular,[8][9]and his team had garnered national attention in the print media.[10] After he played in the College All-Star game in August 1940, George Halas asked him not to return to Los Angeles immediately because Halas wanted to sign him to a contract with the Chicago Bears. After a week or so, Washington returned to Los Angeles without an NFL contract.[11][12][13][14] Washington spent the majority of the early 1940s in the Pacific Coast League with the Hollywood Bears, even during World War II, during which he managed to avoid military service, thanks in part to a timely injury that forced him to miss the 1942 season but likely rendered him ineligible for service. Washington, after his injuries were healed, was a rarity in that he was a healthy, available athlete during a time when the NFL was resorting to using partially handicapped players ineligible for service, but received no interest from any NFL teams at the time. In 1946, after the Rams had received approval to move to Los Angeles, members of the African American print media made the Los Angeles Coliseum commission aware the NFL did not have any African American players[15] and reminded the commission the Coliseum was supported with public funds. Therefore, its commission had to abide by an 1896 Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, by not leasing the stadium to a segregated team.[16] Also, they specifically suggested the Rams should give Washington a tryout. The commission advised the Rams that they would have to integrate the team with at least one African American in order to lease the Coliseum, and the Rams agreed to this condition.[11][16][17][18] Subsequently, the Rams signed Washington on March 21, 1946,[19][20][21] and racial segregation in the NFL was completely ended. The signing of Washington caused "all hell to break loose" among the owners of the NFL franchises.[22] The Rams added a second black player, Woody Strode, on May 7, 1946, giving them two black players going into the 1946 season.
Credit to Wikipedia which is not always the most trustworthy Website but is typically accurate as it pertains to sports history. Not only was this fact checking exercise informative, it also allows me to maintain my unfounded hatred of the Dallas Cowboys.
*Other semi-related things I learned:
1. The halfback Peyton Hillis of the Cleveland Browns is currently the only white starting running back in the NFL.
2. The Baltimore (now Indianapolis Colts) were the first NFL team to have cheerleaders beginning in 1954.
No comments:
Post a Comment