It’s been 37 years since HBCU Legacy Bowl co-founder Doug Williams shattered the glass ceiling for black quarterbacks in the NFL by winning the Super Bowl.
This week the former Grambling State star and history-making quarterback thought about the road to his Super Bowl win in 1987 as he watched HBCU stars competing in the HBCU Legacy Bowl coming and practice.
“The guys that didn’t get an opportunity before me. And if those guys — the Marlon Briscoe’s, the James Harris and all those guys played back in the day — if they had gotten an opportunity to play in the National Football League, it wouldn’t be talking about two black quarterbacks — it probably would have happened a long time ago,” Williams said. “Probably would have happened before me.”
Williams then went through the list of black quarterbacks that followed him as Super Bowl winners — Russell Wilson and Pat Mahomes as well well as the latest member of that fraternity, Jalen Hurts.
Unlike Doug Williams, none of those quarterbacks played HBCU football like Williams did at Grambling State. But Williams has added to his legacy as a coach at his alma mater and as an NFL executive with the Washington NFL franchise. Then there is the work he and Harris — another Grambling State legend — have done with the Black College Football Hall of Fame and now the HBCU Legacy Bowl and combine.
Fifty HBCU stars got a chance to perform in front of scouts, with all 32 NFL franchises represented.
“We go through every drill they do at the NFL combine up in Indianapolis,” Williams said. “The long jump, the broad jump, the 40. Passing and whatever your position — running different drills and things like that. So there’s nothing that they do up in Indy that they don’t do in New Orleans.”
From there, Williams said, it is up to the prospects to prepare and take advantage of the opportunity that decades of previous HBCU stars never had.
“It is a combine. But you got to act like you belong here. Go out and perform. At the end of the day they got to understand too, that the National Football League is not just running and tackling,” Williams continued. “You can’t get ready in a week — you can’t get ready in a year. This is something that you think you can do it, you got the talent to do it — you do this from the time you set foot in college to this day.”