NFL: Fritz Pollard’s pioneering role in American football history

He founded a newspaper, and set up an investment fund and a company trading coal. He later worked as a tax and public relations consultant.

“If anybody had the right to be angry about the way he was treated it was my grandfather, but he never showed it,” says Fritz III. “He always let his skills on the field, and his actions off it, define who he was. That’s something that was drummed into me.”

After Pollard, the second black starting quarterback was Marlin Briscoe in 1968. His case is typical of a process called ‘racial stacking’ which still influences the number of black head coaches we see today. There have been 24 in total, with three currently among the 32 teams, despite about 70% of NFL players being from ethnic minorities.

Briscoe passed for 14 touchdowns in 1968 – still a Denver Broncos record for a rookie. Yet the next summer Denver held quarterback meetings without him and he asked to be released. He never played quarterback again.

“African-Americans have historically been drummed out of the quarterback position and shifted into more ‘athletic’ positions like wide receiver, defensive back or running back,” says Professor N Jeremi Duru of American University in Washington DC, one of the leading experts in US sports law and discrimination.

“Offensive co-ordinators tend to come from quarterbacks, and head coaches from offensive co-ordinators, so the pipeline is thin for African-Americans because of discrimination against black players in so-called ‘thinking’ positions.”

When the Los Angeles Raiders hired Art Shell as head coach in 1989, he was asked in a live broadcast how it felt to be the NFL’s first black coach.

“But I’m not,” he said. “The first was Fritz Pollard.”

Fritz III recalls: “You could see all the reporters going ‘who’s Fritz Pollard?’ They had to cut to a commercial and then my phone just blew up with people saying ‘they’re talking about your grandfather’.”

Pollard had died just three years before, at the age of 92, but so many people were only hearing his name for the first time. It was time for his family to take up the story.