The Doubt Is Turning to Disbelief

Quietly, lost amid the hubbub of the Super Bowl, the America’s Cup and the Sacramento Kings getting outscored in 12 minutes of basketball, 40-4, a National Football League coaching vacancy was filled by those gerbils of the gridiron, those monsters of the middling, the Atlanta Falcons, who searched the whole wide world over and came up with . . . Marion Campbell?

True. After weeks and weeks of thorough research, of interviewing applicants, of accepting recommendations, of considering the head and assistant coaches of professional and collegiate football teams from Atlanta to Alaska, the management of the Falcons went out and hired Marion Campbell, the same man who had tried and failed to coach the Falcons once before.

Evidently, the Falcon front office was so exhausted by the strenuous negotiations with UCLA’s Terry Donahue and the furtive dealings with Bill Parcells of the Super Bowl champion New York Giants that they simply could not bear the thought of interviewing one man more. Either that, or they ran out of names of coaches who had won games at the Rose Bowl.

Perhaps it was such a devastating blow to have lost out on Donahue, that the Falcons never quite recovered.

Or perhaps it was such an embarrassing experience to have been caught smack dab in the middle of an obvious ploy for more money by Parcells, or at least by people with Parcells’ best interests at heart, that the Falcons felt like telling the Giant coach and the rest of the world’s coaches to go soak their heads.

“Get me Marion Campbell!” the Falcon boss man must have barked into the office intercom. “At least he’s one guy who won’t turn us down.”

And thus was filled the last remaining opportunity for a head coach in the NFL, unless, of course, Mike Ditka has been incarcerated in the last 24 hours for throwing Mike McCaskey into Lake Michigan. Marion Campbell’s got a job. Ron Meyer’s got a job. Ray Perkins has one, as does Buddy Ryan, and the new guy in Kansas City, whatever his name is, and Al Saunders has himself a fat, long contract in San Diego.

And the modern-day National Football League doesn’t have a black head coach.

Those of us who deplore racial injustice but rarely say or do anything about it have been watching the NFL for three or four decades now, armed with that most reasonable of weapons--benefit of the doubt. Coincidence, we say. Sheer coincidence that the NFL does not have a black head coach. Takes time, man. It’ll happen. Just you wait.

Well, we have waited, and waited, and waited, and pretty soon it is going to be the 21st Century and the Super Bowl is going to have an L after it, instead of a bunch of X’s and the only black you’re going to see on a head coach at the stadium on Sunday afternoon is going to be in the fabric of Tom Flores’ sweater.

Irv Cross of CBS did an update on this situation during the season that just ended, and at the time his report hit the airwaves we figured: Ah, that ought to do it. A little national attention on the subject. A little poke. A little reminder.

Cross was understated and gentle, as is his way, but presented the hard and cold facts as he saw them. Year after year, he said, NFL teams promote assistants, give opportunities to former players, check out the scholastic ranks or go back to some guy who has coached in the league somewhere else. And this appointee is invariably somewhat pale.

Well, c’mon, Cross said. You mean to say there is not one qualified black assistant coach on the sidelines of any of the 28 outfits on the circuit? Nor has there been one since the early days of professional football, back when George Halas was a young man and a young black named Fritz Pollard was player-coach of the Hammond, Ind., Pros in the mid-’20s?

Guess not.

It is going a step too far to flip the word racism into any conversation regarding the NFL. Yet, when you see opening after opening being closed, and the good ol’ boy network re-circulating around the league, finding jobs for the same familiar faces, and when aides like Ditka and Ryan and Saunders and Joe Gibbs get a shot, and U.S. teams go to Canada for coaches, and interview men as young as Don Shula’s son, and eventually get so desperate for candidates that they haul out retreads like Marion Campbell, well, enough’s enough. It is time for somebody to say boo.

Surely, some team such as Atlanta could have afforded a black coach a chance, if only to make a nice and proper gesture. Hell, if only to get publicity. But this is the sort of thing that happens when you have a sport that has no trouble selling tickets. It doesn’t need gimmicks--even decent gimmicks.

Baseball has not done much better in this obviously sensitive area, still giving the John McNamaras of the world four or five opportunities to do it and do it right, but at least a Frank Robinson and a Maury Wills did come along. At least baseball hasn’t gone oh-for-ever. Who would have ever thought that the National Hockey League would have more black goalies than the National Football League had black head coaches?

Next season, five or six more NFL headphone-wearers will not be needed on the dais at the postseason banquet. New head coaches will be hired. Some of them are going to look, shall we say, familiar.

We are beginning to think that this is no longer a pigment of our imagination.