Yesterday, I looked at how both the NFL and the upstart AFL dealt with the issue of integration in pro football. The common reframe is that the young, nontraditional AFL was more innovative and enlightened than the NFL, particularly on the issue of black players in pro football and the scouting of talent from small historically black colleges. The numbers don’t bear that out with black players generally, but today I want to focus on the game that is most responsible for creating that narrative: Super Bowl IV.

There were 10 black players on the Vikings, mostly from powerhouse programs in Big 10 country. That included six starters, like first round picks and future Hall of Famers DT Alan Page (Notre Dame) and DE Carl Eller (Minnesota), along with star DE Jim Marshall (Ohio State) and All-Pro WR Gene Washington (Michigan State).  A fifth was the team’s other starting WR, John Henderson (Michigan), while a sixth local talent was backup running back Clint Jones (Michigan State), the 2nd overall pick in the ’67 Draft.  The Vikings also had three black players who played college out west: starting CB Earsell Mackbee (Utah State), and backup running backs Oscar Reed (Colorado State) and Billy Harris (Colorado). Finally, the team’s punt returner and backup defensive back, Charlie West, came from Texas El-Paso. ^[1]Mackbee, Henderson, and West were unfortunately responsible for three of the game’s biggest plays.  Mackbee’s missed tackle on the game’s most memorable play, and Henderson and … Continue reading

With 6 out of 22 starters, and 10 black players overall, the Vikings looked like a fairly normal team from the late 1960s.  Most of the black stars in pro football in the early 1960s were from the northeast, the midwest, or the west coast, and a few were from the schools in Texas that were not part of the SWC and had just recently integrated. A few teams, like the Chiefs, had been scouting and bringing in a significant number of players from the historically black colleges in the southeast; the Vikings were not one of those teams. In fact, in the decade of the ’60s, Minnesota drafted only 9 players from HBCUs, and only spent two top-200 draft picks on such players. ^[2]One was Tennessee State’s Al Coleman with the 87th pick in 1967, but he played just two games with the team. The other was the 148th pick in the 1969 Draft, used on Marion Bates out of Texas … Continue reading Meanwhile, the Chiefs used 23 picks on players from historically black colleges, including 9 in the top 50 and 17 in the top 200, and also picked up in free agency two star defensive backs who were quarterbacks in college. ^[3]Hall of Fame CB Emmitt Thomas was a quarterback and defensive back at Bishop and was signed by the Chiefs as an undrafted free agent; starting safety Jim Kearney was a quarterback at Prairie View … Continue reading

Of course, nobody was criticizing the Vikings at the time. After all, Minnesota had just completed one of the greatest seasons in history: after a last minute, 24-23 loss to the Giants and former QB Fran Tarkenton in week one, Minnesota won 12 straight games by an average score of 29-8. After a meaningless regular season finale, the Vikings beat a Rams team that started 11-0 (before losing to the Vikings) in the Division Round, and then crushed the Cleveland Browns in the NFL title game. Heading into Super Bowl IV, Minnesota was considered a 12-point favorite. With a win, this Vikings team could justifiably go down as one of the best teams of all time.

But when the country watched Super Bowl IV unfold, they didn’t see the dominant NFL team cruise to victory. Instead, they saw a Chiefs blowout, powered by the most diverse team in pro football history. There is no simple way to break down the Chiefs roster, as almost half of their players were black, and the majority of those players came from historically black colleges.

Consider that of Kansas City’s 22 starters, a remarkable 8 of them went to HBCUs. That included 5 of 11 starters on defense: DT Buck Buchanan (Grambling), MLB Willie Lanier (Morgan State), S Jim Kearney (Prairie View A&M), and both starting CBs (Emmitt Thomas (Bishop) and Jim Marsalis (Tennessee State, and the ’69 Chiefs first round pick)). In addition, half of the remaining defensive starters were black — LB Bobby Bell (Minnesota), ^[4]Who, Vikings fans know, was drafted in the second round by the team; instead, the local star chose to go play in the AFL for the Chiefs. DE Aaron Brown (Minnesota), and DT Curley Culp (Arizona State). Lanier famously was the first black man to star at middle linebacker at a time when quarterback and middle linebacker were still nearly all-white; in all ways, this Chiefs defense represented a radical departure from how pro football appeared even a decade earlier.  Kansas City also had three members of the secondary on the bench from historically black colleges: S Ceasar Belser (Arkansas Pine Bluff) ^[5]Just a few months after Super Bowl IV, his son Jason would be born in Kansas City. Jason would star at Oklahoma and go on to play for 11 years in the NFL for the Colts and Chiefs. and CBs Goldie Sellers (Grambling) and Willie Mitchell (Tennessee State). ^[6]For the first half of the season, the Chiefs also had returner Noland Smith (Tennessee State), but he was traded to the 49ers during the season. Known as “Super Gnat” due to his 5-5, … Continue reading

On offense, all of the skill position players were black with the exception of the quarterbacks and TE Fred Arbanas. ^[7]And that would soon change, too. In 1969, Kansas City drafted 6’10 TE Morris Stroud out of Clark, a historically black college in Georgia. Stroud missed his entire rookie season due to injury, … Continue reading In fact, during the regular season, just over 50% of the team’s yards from scrimmage came from players from HBCUs alone! That includes one of the starting running backs, Pro Bowler Robert Holmes from Southern, and the team’s top three wide receivers: Otis Taylor (Prairie View A&M), ^[8]Yes, he caught passes from Kearney in college; the two were seniors together in 1964. Frank Pitts (Southern), and Gloster Richardson (Jackson State). That was a notable collection of offensive talent from HBCUs, continuing to put Kansas City ahead of the curve. The team also had a number of black players from traditional programs, like top running back Mike Garrett (USC), and backups Warren McVea (Houston), Curtis McClinton (Kansas), along with a pair of AFL veteran backs in Paul Lowe (Oregon State) and Wendell Hayes (Humboldt State in northern California).

The Chiefs had an incredible 12 players on the team ^[9]Not including Morris Stroud or Noland Smith. from HBCUs, and 8 of them were starters both in 1969 generally and in Super Bowl IV specifically. And the four backups (Richardson, Sellers, Belser, and Mitchell) would all see action in Super Bowl IV.  With four other starters (Bell, Culp and Brown on defense, and Garrett in the backfield) from major college programs, that means — for the first time ever — over half of a pro football team’s starting lineup was black. 

We can see from the Vikings that having a few black players, especially stars, was not uncommon at the time.  But the Vikings had zero black players who did not come from major college football programs, which stood in stark contrast to the Chiefs scouting success. ^[10]Kansas City’s broad approach to scouting paid off in another big dividend: Hall of Famer placekicker Jan Stenerud, from Norway.  One of the reasons that the Chiefs had been so successful in bringing on players from HBCUs was “The Judge”, Lloyd Wells, pro football’s first black scout. Wells went to Texas Southern and had a huge hand in bringing in Buchanan and the other players that followed.

So on this one Sunday, with the nation watching, the lasting image of the AFL was written: a dominant Chiefs team winning it all, with 12 black starters and 8 coming from small historically black colleges. But as we will see tomorrow, the Chiefs were a bit of an outlier in the AFL, in both on-field success and the team’s approach to bringing in players from historically black colleges. And yes, those two factors were related.