Super Bowl Sunday is always the most important day of the year for NFL fans — both hardcore and casual. The Super Bowl is the most-watched event in American sports and the single most-watched broadcast in the United States year by year.
Regardless of the winner, history was already created on Sunday, February 12th.
This year’s matchup between The Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs featured a bout between Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts and Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, two of the NFL’s biggest stars. Their performances defined Super Bowl 57’s spectacle, as after an intense duel between the two superstars, the Chiefs edged out a 38-35 win. Hurts and Mahomes are important for much more than their incredible talents, however, as Super Bowl 57 was the first Super Bowl where both teams’ starting quarterbacks were Black.
While enthusiastic fandom keeps professional sports alive with ticket and jersey sales, the environment within the league does not always reflect the positive sentiment of the fans. The NFL has a long and well-documented history of anti-Black racism that has yet to be truly combated.
In the early to mid-20th century, the NFL was segregated. In 1933, the league officially banned Black players after sparingly allowing integration in the years since its inception in 1920. The NFL was re-integrated in 1946, but this formal desegregation of the league was not a story to be romanticized.
The league was not truly desegregated until 1962, as the former Washington Redskins were the last team to sign a Black player to its roster. Redskins founder and owner George Marshall had to be pressured to integrate his team by the federal government, with an ultimatum that the Redskins arena would be seized. When Marshall died in 1969, his estate was used to found the Redskins Foundation, an organization that he dictated would not be used for any purpose that supports racial integration.
This deep-rooted racism has persisted within the NFL in the decades since and has manifested itself in many harmful practices. One of the most prevailing trends in the NFL’s racism is its aversion to Black quarterbacks. The history that Super Bowl 57 made was a long time coming, but it took agonizing steps to achieve.
Black quarterbacks were consistently steered away from the position by racist owners and coaches. This involved constant belittling of their intellect and feel for the game, which often caused them to switch positions and fade into irrelevance. Their success was systematically undermined by whites in power who did not want them to become the faces of franchises. Despite this, Black quarterbacks have still found success throughout NFL history.
The first Black quarterback to start a game was Marlin Briscoe in 1968, and the first Black quarterback to win a playoff game was James “Shack” Harris in 1974. Both of these players were pioneers, but the average modern NFL fan is likely hard-pressed to remember these two.
When Black pioneers of the quarterback are mentioned, the first name to emerge from this discussion is Doug Williams. Williams was the first Black quarterback to start in and win a Super Bowl in 1988. His success is recognized as revolutionary, as he was the first Black superstar quarterback.
Doug Williams opened the quarterback position to Black athletes by reducing the stigma that Black quarterbacks were not savvy or smart enough to win. His legacy is tangible throughout the decades since he retired, as Black quarterbacks have reached true stardom at a much higher rate since the 1990s.
Even with these improvements, the institutional precedents of the NFL have still not been broken.
“The NFL is beholden to the owners, they are who really run the league,” Williams said. “The owners can make decisions about who they pay to run their teams, and those people make decisions about who they put on the field. It trickles down.”
Williams also spoke to the lack of accountability for this racism. “They choose who to pay without facing anybody, nobody can punish them and people will still show up to games regardless.”
Williams was a victim of this racism himself, as the Washington Redskins cut him when he was recovering from injuries in favor of a white backup quarterback. This ended his short but influential NFL career in an unceremonious and disheartening fashion.
The freedom of NFL ownership to exercise their racist biases is most apparent in the case of another former star, Colin Kaepernick. In the 2016 season, Kaepernick famously kneeled for the national anthem as a personal protest against police brutality and racial inequality in the United States.
This protest was misconstrued as disrespect for the country and its military, and Kaepernick was quickly framed as anti-military and anti-veteran despite not having expressed any of this sentiment. He was released by the San Francisco 49ers at the end of the 2016 season and has not played in an NFL game since.
This instance of blackballing by NFL owners displays the low tolerance that Black quarterbacks are subjected to. Speaking out for a cause he believed in caused Kaepernick’s career to be snuffed out.
The culture of racist intolerance surrounding Black quarterbacks has been a constant throughout the NFL’s history, but the success of stars like Hurts and Mahomes has started to shift the paradigm. As the success of Black quarterbacks becomes more commonplace and their statuses as true superstars remain constant, there is more hope for the racial biases perpetuated against Black quarterbacks to end.
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