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Only One Black Player From An HBCU Selected In NFL Draft
In Nine Recent Years, None Were Selected
One April day during my senior year in college, I was lying in bed watching television when someone knocked on the door and said a scout from the San Francisco 49ers was at the football field and wanted to see me. I was surprised because, though I had played high school football, I was a college basketball player and hadn't played football in four years. Unless you count, touch football on the lawn in front of Cravath Hall, where I was a star.
I put on some sneakers and jogged over to the football field, which was the equivalent of three long city blocks away. When I got there, I found that a scout was working out some Fisk football players; somehow, my name came up, and the scout wanted to see me. I had the size to play football, being 6'6" and about 225. I had played wide receiver in high school, but the scout considered me a tight end. The scout asked me a few questions, including whether I thought I could gain weight, and I was confident that wouldn't be a problem.
Fisk University is an HBCU with a student population of about 2,000. Fisk was known as an academic school and considered a part of the unofficial Black Ivy League. The ratio of women to men was about 8:1, and of the men, about 10% were athletes. The football and basketball players knew each other, and the football players were very helpful in preparing me for the workout the scout wanted to put me through. I can imagine a scenario where some football players could be jealous about me getting this attention, but I sensed none of that.
They helped me find some spikes and a helmet that fit. I was asked to run some routes and catch some passes. (I always had good hands and caught everything). I was timed in the 40 yd dash. My time could have been better, and I explained I hadn't run across the street in two months and could undoubtedly do better.
The scout didn't seem deterred. He asked if the Dallas Cowboys had contacted me (they hadn't). He gave me his card and told me to expect to hear from him after the upcoming draft. School got out, and I returned to my home in Atlanta (my family moved there from Minnesota during my freshman year). I ran every day in the heat to stay in shape. When draft day…
