"Third and Long"

NFL Network's two part documentary "Third and Long" is terrific. It profiles the breakdown of segregation and the too slow advancement of blacks in professional football since 1946. These advancements shouldn't be that significant because blacks shouldn't have had to make them. Most of my early knowledge of those far away football days come from my father. He never presented those days to me in black and white. When he talked of those days he talked of football players and football games. He talked of Bill Willis, Marion Motley and Joe Perry no differently than he talked of Otto Graham, Elroy Hirsch and Frankie Albert. Like Paul Brown and Vince Lombardi, my father was color blind. They were all football players. I viewed the players of my youth in the 1970s in the same way. While the presence of blacks in professional football in the 1970s was no longer in question, where they could play on the football field was. They couldn't play down the middle of the field. They couldn't play quarterback, center, middle linebacker or safety. They couldn't play the "thinking" positions. Blacks were athletes. They could only play running back, receiver and cornerback. Of course the quarterback position was the greatest void. This caused no end of confusion for this little kid. Whenever I saw a black quarterback play well, it seemed the team sought to avoid it continuing. Prior to the Pittsburgh Steelers emergence as the team of that decade, they seemed to trot out any one of three quarterbacks. Each Sunday I might see one of the Terry's, Bradshaw or Hanratty, or Joe Gilliam. If the Steelers were on TV, I never knew which would start until they broke the huddle. I did know that Joe Gilliam was excellent every time I saw him play. I actually thought that Gilliam was better than either Terry. Bradshaw certainly went on to prove that he was the one to lead the Steelers to greatness. Still, I never understood how Joe Gilliam was out of football a couple years later. I had the same confusion over Warren Moon. He was fantastic at the University of Washington. I never understood how the NFL found no room for him. Canada did. When Moon returned to the states he showed what he should have been allowed to do all along.

Through the words of those that changed the game, "Third and Long" is a sad but amazing tale. Brave men broke down beliefs and barriers put up by a stupid and insecure society. As these men changed a game they changed that society.