NFL Joins the Team

When Los Angeles Raiders owner Al (“Just Win, Baby”) Davis selected Art Shell as the National Football League’s first black football coach in modern history, his move was more a reaction to a losing team record and incompatibility with his former coach than to social fairness. But the motivations behind Davis’ decision to hire the former Pro Bowl great and Raider veteran really don’t matter to those outside the world of football. What is important is that with the hiring of Art Shell, the NFL has shed its embarrassing distinction as the only major American sport without a black coach, in a game in which 56% of the players are black.

There was one black coach before the NFL became the sports powerhouse that it is today. Frederick Douglass (Fritz) Pollard coached the Hammond, Ind., Pros from 1923-25. But as the sport grew in popularity and evolved into a big business, owners shied away from hiring a black coach. Small wonder, since blacks were kept out as players until Kenny Washington and Woody Strode broke the color line with the Los Angeles Rams in 1946.

We can hope that the day will come when the appointment of a black person to a top business position will no longer be so unusual that it becomes national news. But until then, Art Shell joins a small, but growing, number of black professional coaches. So, for as long as the Raiders are in Los Angeles and beyond, we wish Art Shell luck--which he’ll surely need, given the Raiders’ recent performances and Davis’ inimitable “hands- on” management style.