National Sports Journalism Center

CBS Sports documentary highlights the infancy, evolution and impact of HBCU football

At a time when about 70 percent of the National Football League is African American, it is hard to imagine a time when black players rarely got a shot at professional teams and historically black colleges never played a game in a major urban football stadium.

But CBS Sports Network’s new documentary about the first game between historically black football teams played in New York City, “1st and Goal in the Bronx: Grambling vs Morgan State 1968,” captures the spirit of that time and more. Along the way, viewers get a potent history on how some corners of football lurched toward integration, and historically black colleges gained more prominence outside black communities in the South.

“The game was definitely a statement about being black in America,” said Richard Lapchick, author, founder of the Center for the Study of Sports in Society and a longtime advocate on diversity issues in sports. “White people had Woodstock – black people had this game. And it was a love-in.”

These days, it’s a common sight; historically black college football games as a showcase for black culture – from the energetic “step show” performances by black Greek organizations to the energetic and intricate songs played by college bands, which are as likely to offer a horn-filled version of a classic R&B hit than any typical marching band tune.

“That’s what a lot of black college football games were about; it’s part church, it’s part picnic, it’s part R&B concert,” historian Michael Hurd tells CBS’ cameras early in the documentary. “And somewhere in there, they’re playing football.”

But there was a time when white America – particularly folks in the northern states – had little idea what black college football games were like. In part, that was because the NFL and America’s big colleges were segregated; no black players ever made it to the widely-attended arenas where big football games went down.

Airing at 7 tonight, 43 years to the day after the Grambling/Morgan State game was played in Yankee Stadium, CBS’ documentary starts with a quick primer on the evolution of historically black colleges and their early efforts to get black players into the NFL.

Founded as a way to provide much-needed education to former slaves and sharecroppers after the Civil War, historically black colleges became an important refuge for success-oriented black people by the 1940s, when people of color still couldn’t attend institutions of higher learning alongside white people in America.

Those problems extended to the football field, where promising black athletes had to settle for playing at chronically underfunded HBCUs with almost no hope of hitting the big leagues, until coach Eddie Robinson at Grambling State University in Louisiana sent his player Paul “Tank” Younger to the Los Angeles Rams in 1949.

“Eddie says, ‘Now Tank, you gotta understand, you gotta make it,’” journalist Jerry Izenberg tells the cameras in the documentary. “’If you don’t make it, we may never have another black kid out of these black schools have any kind of shot. We cannot let them down.’”

As Grambling sent more of its players to the NFL, Robinson and the school’s reputation grew, fueled by the institution’s own efforts. Former Super Bowl MVP and Washington Redskins quarterback Doug Williams recalled being amazed that he would be submitted for the Heisman trophy from Grambling (“Coming in fourth,” as he did in the mid-70s, “felt like coming in first,” Williams said on camera).

Eventually, after well-known broadcaster Howard Cosell helped pull together a documentary on the football program at Grambling for ABC in 1968, the then-president of the New York Yankees suggested bringing a football game featuring the Grambling Tigers into Yankee Stadium.

The Yankees wanted to reach out to black fans, and Grambling wanted mainstream acceptance. Developed as a fundraising event for the Urban League’s street academy training programs in New York City, the game was finalized days after Robinson and other top black HBCU football coaches attended the funeral of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968.

As CBS’ hour-long documentary unfolds, narrated by expert voice Keith David, players recall marveling at seeing more black people packed into a stadium at once than they had even seen before – 60,000 fans hoping to see an amazing football game.

By the time the dust cleared, the exciting hard-fought contest proved that HBCU football could be an entertaining experience for the most demanding football fan, starting an annual tradition, which continues today. Such revelations eventually became a problem for HBCUs, who knew they would eventually lose their best players to bigger, predominantly white schools once the taboos against black players began to fall.

But CBS’ documentary shows how at least some of the seeds of today’s NFL success were sown in this pivotal game; the moment when some of the country’s top black football players made the case for their inclusion in the wider world of competition.

Gotta think, somewhere up there, Dr. King would be awfully proud.

The documentary airs at 7 p.m. tonight on the CBS Sports Network; check your local cable provider for channel listings.

Eric Deggans is TV and Media Critic for the St. Petersburg Times and a 1990 graduate of the Indiana University School of Journalism. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, VIBE magazine, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. He also writes a blog on media, The Feed.