Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/260491
knowledge of the history of black play- ers, not only at Penn State but through- out college and pro football. What I have learned has been an education, particu- larly about the racist culture that pre- vailed in athletics, not just football. As I worked on the encyclopedia, I talked to many former players, including some whom I knew while covering Penn State football in the 1960s. Becoming the first director of the Penn State All- Sports Museum led to meeting more former players and enhanced my admi- ration for what the black players from the 1940s through the '60s went through during a time when the entire country was in a turmoil over civil rights. So, maybe that's why I was startled by the "Big Yawn" I was getting in men- tioning the historic nature of Franklin's hiring by Penn State. I'm sure the Black Coaches and Ad- ministrators (formerly the Black Coach- es Association) would agree with me. According to the BCA's latest report, of the 124 schools that competed in the Di- vision I Football Bowl Subdivision in 2012, only 15 had African-American coaches. Furthermore, only 312 of 1,018 assistant coaches and 31 of 255 offensive and defensive coordinators were black. It's even worse in the Big Ten, even though the Big Ten became the first ma- jor conference to have a black head coach when Northwestern hired Dennis Green in 1981 and then Francis Peay to succeed him from 1986-91. The league's third black head coach was Bobby Williams at Michigan State from 1999- 2002, but the fourth one didn't come until last season when Darrell Hazell be- came the 35th head coach at Purdue. That makes Franklin only the fifth black head coach in the 119-year history of the Big Ten, but that milestone also has been almost entirely ignored by the media. Because of the dearth of publicity about the historic hiring, even some of Penn State's great black players were unaware Franklin was black. "I'm really happy to see James Franklin at Penn State, but I didn't even realize Franklin was an African-American until a basketball friend of mine told me he belonged to the Black Coaches Associa- tion," Dave Robinson said on the tele- phone as he was en route to the Super Bowl. Robinson was a two-way offensive and defensive end from 1960-62 who be- came Penn State's first black All-Ameri- can as a consensus first-team selection in 1962. That was one year after he was the first black player to compete in the Gator Bowl, and his experience off the field while practicing in St. Augustine, Fla., for the game was classic racism. Robinson went on to become an All-Pro linebacker with the Green Bay Packers, and he and linebacker Jack Ham are the only Penn State players enshrined in both the College Football and Pro Foot- ball halls of fame. "When I played for Rip Engle, having a black head coach would have been out of the question anywhere in football," Robinson said. "When I finished up my NFL career with the Washington Red- skins in 1975, [coach] George Allen of- fered me a job as an assistant coach. I didn't want to be an assistant coach all my life, and I felt I would not see a black head coach [at the college level or in the NFL] in my lifetime, so I turned him down." Lenny Moore also was unaware Franklin was Penn State's first black head coach until I told him. "Is that right?" Moore said from his home in suburban Maryland. "That's really something." Moore is arguably the best all-around player in Nittany Lion history and also is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame after a 12-year career with the Baltimore Colts. "When I played, you never thought of anything near that," Moore said. "With the way the world was going during our time, it didn't look like any kind of movement of that enormity would hap- pen that quickly. Back then, we even wondered if we would ever have an as- sistant coach [who was black]." Moore, a star on offense, defense and kick returns from 1953-55, was part of the first contingent of black players re- cruited by Penn State after Engle be- came the head coach in 1950. Between 1950 and '55, 10 black players were on the varsity or freshman teams, including such standouts as Moore, tackle Rosey Grier, fullback Charlie Blockson and end Jesse Arnelle. In 1954, they had the dis- tinction of being the first black athletes to play a college game in Fort Worth, Texas. The game was against TCU. It may seem difficult to believe today, but before 1950, there had been only five black players in Penn State football his- tory, and the breakthrough didn't take place until 1941. Only three earned var- sity letters. Dave Alston, a triple-threat back from Midland, Pa., is recognized as Penn State's first black football player, and a bust of Alston is featured in the Penn State All-Sports Museum. When he died unexpectedly in August 1942 after a sensational freshman season, his older brother Harry, who also had been on the freshman team, left school and never re- turned. Denny Hoggard walked on that fall but left shortly afterward for World War II, and in 1945, freshman running back Wally Triplett became the first black player to start in a game and earn a let- ter. Hoggard returned in 1946, and that season the nearly all-white Penn State team voted unanimously to cancel a scheduled game at Miami after being told that Triplett and Hoggard could not play in the segregated city. The next year, Triplett and Hoggard became the first black players to partici- pate in the Cotton Bowl. Twenty-two years later, the Cotton Bowl would be- come the controversial element of a be- hind-the-scenes scenario involving Penn State's black players that may have cost the Lions a national championship. Like Moore, Triplett had been waiting for decades for his alma mater to have a black head coach. He is pleased that it finally happened, using virtually the same words as Moore when asked his first reaction: "This is something." I probably know Wally better than I know any of the other black pioneers. I have not only interviewed him many