Penn State Sports Magazine
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times but also have socialized with him and Leonore, his wife of 63 years. They are great people who I am humbly proud to call friends, and I still intend to write a book about the history of Penn State's black athletes, with Wally and his own family history as a central part. The first black player to be drafted to play in the NFL – he was chosen by the Lions in the 19th round of the 1949 draft – Wally has lived most of his life in Detroit. He was also eager to talk about the Detroit Lions hiring their first black head coach at the same time as Franklin. Coincidently, Detroit's new man, Jim Caldwell, was the fourth black assistant football coach in Penn State history, coaching quarterbacks from 1986-92. "Caldwell says he wants to win now and doesn't want to wait three or four years down the road," Triplett said. "I hope he can do that for Detroit, and I hope Franklin can do that for Penn State." I'm with Wally. I have been a dedicat- ed Detroit Lions fan since seeing my first NFL game on Thanksgiving Day 1952 at Briggs Stadium, and it has been a frustrating epoch for us Honolulu Blue loyalists since those glory days of the 1950s. However, even more noteworthy than the Detroit-Penn State connection is the history that links Penn State and the University of Texas. One week before Penn State hired Franklin, Texas hired the first black head coach in its 120-year football history, Charlie Strong. The link derives from a highly contro- versial episode that happened before both Franklin and Strong were born. Late in the 1969 football season, Penn State was presented with an opportuni- ty to play Texas in the 1970 Cotton Bowl but spurned the Longhorns for a return trip to the Orange Bowl, where it had defeated Kansas the previous year. In that era, bowl pairings were made a week or two before the end of the regu- lar season. When the Cotton Bowl invi- tation was issued in mid-November, undefeated Penn State was expected to defeat Pitt, and undefeated Texas was expected to beat Arkansas and serve as the host Southwest Conference team. At the same time, powerful Ohio State seemed to have a lock on its second consecutive national championship, with only heavy underdog Michigan and a weak Rose Bowl foe standing in its way. Penn State formally announced that players had voted during a team meet- ing to go back to the Orange Bowl, but the reason was not fully explained. Some reports indicated the sentiment was that Michigan had no chance of beating Ohio State, so why not go back and enjoy the warm beaches and hos- pitality of Miami again? That rationali- zation brought down the wrath of many in the media, who attacked Penn State for cowardly ducking a superior foe. However, to this day, the players say they never saw the actual results of the votes made during a secret ballot. They were given the final result by coach Joe Paterno, and some players are still upset the team didn't play Texas. Michigan upset Ohio State, and Texas won the na- tional championship by defeating Notre Dame, 21-17, in the Cotton Bowl. It didn't become public until years later that the half-dozen or so black players on the team led by senior run- ning back Charlie Pittman expressed a strong desire at the meeting not to go to Dallas because of the tense racial at- mosphere in the Southwest Confer- ence. The conference did not have a black football player until Jerry Levias at SMU in 1965, and desegregation was so slow that by 1969 there were only a handful of black players in the confer- ence. Texas and Arkansas were still all- white teams, although Arkansas had a TRAILBLAZER Triplett starred for the Nittany Li- ons and later the Detroit Lions and is happy to see African-American coaches in charge of both of his former teams. Penn State Sports Archives