Remember Al Campanis?
Nightline anchorman Ted Koppel had just asked him why . . . there had been few black managers . . . in Major League Baseball. Campanis' reply was that blacks "may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or, perhaps, a general manager" for these positions; elsewhere in the interview, he said that blacks are often poor swimmers "because they don't have the buoyancy." . . .
Today two African American NFL head coaches made history by taking their teams to the Super Bowl. More.
The history of racism in sport is long, and not just of the overt variety. While baseball's color line was famously broken by Jackie Robinson in 1947, the first black manager was not named until Frank Robinson became the manager of the Indians in 1975, nearly 30 years later. In 1992, Cito Gaston became the first black manager to manage a team into the World Series as he piloted the Blue Jays to the World Series championship.
The first black NFL head coach was actually Brown University graduate Fritz Pollard, before the NFL and pro football was actually a major sport. In modern times, the first black coach was Art Shell, who coached the Oakland Raiders.
The first black quarterback in the NFL was the aptly named Willie Thrower and Doug Williams the first black quarterback to start in and win a Super Bowl, when he led the Redskins to victory in 1988.
In the NBA, Bill Russell was the first black head coach and the first to win a championship, as player-coach of the Celtics in 1966, winning a championship in 1967-68.
In college athletics, you have a whole other story. Especially in the SEC. But, today on Al Campanis Day, let's celebrate another barrier shattered. And let's not forget the perniciousness of racism that has caused that it taken this long.
Is this an omen for Barak Obama? Or Hillary Clinton? Or Bill Richardson? I dunno, but the milestones they are setting are also historic.