Black like me: The CFL's '70s legacy

From the time he was in high school at Notre Dame in Portsmouth, Ohio, until he graduated as the three-year starter at the University of Toledo, Chuck Ealey’s record as a quarterback was 53-0.

Undefeated. Untouched.

His 35-0 at Toledo is the NCAA record. Some have come close. None have equalled it.

But in the spring of 1972, no National Football League club was willing to give him a chance at quarterback. Defensive back? OK. Wide receiver? Maybe.

But leading a team, no way. Chuck Ealey, you see, was black. And blacks did not play quarterback in the NFL.

Enter Ralph Sazio, general manager of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, who opened an avenue that would create a road for black quarterbacks to prove their worth in a place most of them had never even thought of playing — Canada.

The Canadian Football League is celebrating the 1970s this year, and an argument can be made there is nothing from that era more influential to the way the game looks and is played now than the introduction of the full-time, trusted, unleashed black signal caller.

Jimmy Jones, Condredge Holloway, Damon Allen, Tracy Ham, Danny Barrett … the book contains about 50 chapters.

But the tale begins with the confident, self-aware young man from Portsmouth who was not going to play professional football at any position other than pivot. It reaches its zenith 256 kilometres away with the 2006 induction of a guy from Los Angeles into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Right place with the right skills

Ealey, like most quarterbacks of any age, has a voice that booms around his 10th floor office at the Investor’s Group in Mississauga, Ont., where the 60 year old is a regional director. 

When you look around the bright room you might not even know he once was a football player, but for the statue in the corner (a replica of the Heisman, given to him by his former high school coach) and the Grey Cup ring that sits proudly on his throwing hand.

Ealey is aware, finally, of his importance to what would come after he first took the field as a hot-shot rookie for the Tiger-Cats in the summer of 1972 and led them to an 11-3 season and the Grey Cup.

"If you asked me 10 years ago [of my importance] I would have said no," Ealey says.

"But after looking … at the sequence, I think [my year] sent a message and created some opportunities. I would never think of myself as a Jackie Robinson or anything like that, but I think the style … because of the style, it was something important that you can play quarterback a different kind of way."

The style was roll-out [at the time called "scrambling"], athletic, creative. And Ealey brought it to Hamilton, where the previously 7-7 Cats put him at the controls and went on to beat powerful Ottawa in the two-game, total point Eastern final and then downed Saskatchewan, in the Steel City, in the Grey Cup on a final-second field goal by Ian Sunter.

On the way, Ealey threw for 2,573 yards, 22 touchdowns and only eight interceptions. Suddenly, everyone wanted one of these scrambling quarterbacks.

Ealey had difficulty getting anyone to want him for his chosen position even after that sparkling high school run. Bo Schembechler, then coaching at Miami of Ohio, wanted him to come to play defensive back and third (emergency) quarterback.

The young man said no.

"I think I feel very fortunate and lucky that the principles and values I grew up [with] were the guiding factors of making those decisions, rightly or wrongly," Ealey says now. "I told Bo Schembechler I don’t want to take your scholarship just to come as a defensive back."

But he wanted to go to school and get a degree. That happened at Toledo, where Ealey made history. Afterwards, teams called again — specifically Kansas City and Denver of the NFL.

"I talked directly to Hank Stram [coach in K.C.] at the time who said we want you to come and run a 40-yard dash for time."

Except, quarterbacks don’t run 40 yard dashes for time. Defensive backs do. No thanks to that offer, either.

So up to Canada he went, and after that glorious first year, and an equally strong second, the stage was set.

In 1973, Montreal signed Jimmy Jones, who had famously been a groundbreaker at the University of Southern California, and who had thrown a long, memorable touchdown to Bob Chandler to win the 1970 Rose Bowl.

Jones would split duties with Sonny Wade, play in two Grey Cups and over seven seasons toss for 12,405 yards.

The sublime Condredge Holloway, who had broken barriers by being the first black starting quarterback at a Southeastern Conference school when he took over at the University of Tennessee, also couldn’t get a look in the NFL.

So he came north to the Ottawa Rough Riders, joining another top rookie in Tom Clements, out of Notre Dame, in an outstanding 1-2 punch. He would throw for more than 25,000 yards, win two Grey Cups and make the CFL Hall of Fame.

Cornelius Greene, Matthew Reed, Karl Douglass — all crossed the border in the 1970s, leading to almost 20 more in the ‘80s.

Five black quarterbacks had played in the CFL up to 1972, but only one, Minnesota star Sandy Stephens in Montreal from 1962-63, had found any kind of real success.

Stephens lasted two years and threw for 2,800 yards. He would ultimately become a fullback in the NFL.

But it was Ealey, with his background and record, his rookie-of-the-year award and his Grey Cup MVP right away who seems to be the one who really set the pace.

Racism and athleticism

There is no doubt that racism had a lot to do with black quarterbacks not getting a chance in the NFL, but there were other factors as well. Blacks who played pivot also tended to have the athletic skills necessary to switch to receiver or defensive back.

Thus, there was a handy excuse for not using them at quarterback, Ealey believes.

"The stereotypical white quarterback at that time was not athletic. He could only be a drop-back guy and that was the thing they were looking for when I came out of college — the 6-foot-3, stand-in-the-pocket guy."

Ealey isn’t willing to let the offensive and head coaches of the time off too easily, however, if you suggest that perhaps they didn’t know how to handle the athletic quarterback who could run.

An NFL team could easily have built an offence around an athletic black quarterback, if they wanted to, Ealey says, in the way his first coach in Hamilton, Jerry Williams, did with him. Williams had been a drop-back offence guy coaching Peter Liske at Calgary.

Moon over Edmonton

Warren Moon is on the phone from Seattle, and Ealey’s story about Kansas City wanting a 40-yard dash time resonates with him.

All football fans know Moon now as the two-league Hall of Famer who parlayed six outstanding seasons in Edmonton to a place in NFL history.

But when he was coming out of high school, few college programs wanted to sign him as a pivot, so off to West Los Angeles College he went to try and turn heads. He did. The University of Washington took him on and Moon paid them back by leading the Huskies to a Rose Bowl win in 1978.

The NFL was so impressed he wasn’t even drafted. In 12 rounds. But teams would sign Moon if he would, say, switch to tight end.

"That was something I never considered doing," Moon says now, aware of what clubs were saying to his agent. "I went as far as when I ran 40 times for pro scouts, I would let up at the tape because I didn’t want them to know [how fast he was]."

Like Ealey, Moon didn’t know a lot about the CFL as a league, despite going to college near the border and having access to a few games on TV. He did, however, know about what the black quarterbacks were doing in Canada.

So when the offer was made, it was accepted. 

"When I came to Canada, they were giving me an opportunity to play a position I loved the most, which was quarterback.

"When I first got [to Edmonton], I was thinking in the back of my mind that one day I would get a chance to play in the NFL, but after my third year in Canada I was enjoying it so much and having so much success I felt like I was going to play my whole career there."

The Eskimos of that era were freakishly good  — winning five straight Grey Cups from 1978-1982 — that they were universally loathed around the country. Moon included. But that was because of his talent, not because he was black.

"It was such a refreshing feeling to play and not be judged by the colour of my skin," he says. "If I played well I was cheered, and if I played bad I was booed and that’s the way you wanted it to be. There was no racial slurs being yelled from the stands like in college."

Size, brains and speed

Ealey, who with injuries would play seven years with diminishing success, was officially six feet tall and 195 pounds, a size that would be more commonplace among African-American pivots coming to Canada in the 1970s.

Moon, however, was 6-foot-3, 220 pounds and able to both stand in the pocket (where most of the white QBs lived), or roll out of the pocket and throw from there if he didn’t tuck the ball up and run.

He could also, as any successful quarterback must, think out there, something that only became clear to the reactionary GMs and owners of the NFL once he had shown it on the frozen tundra of Commonwealth Stadium.

"You didn’t see a lot of African-Americans in passing offences [at the time] where you had to read defences, where you had to think, where you had to make quick decisions, where you had to audible at the line of scrimmage, all those things.

"There was a thinking [in the NFL] that [using the brain] is what we couldn’t do and so we have to put them in positions where they can do what they do best, which is instinctive stuff, running the football, more skill type of thing," says Moon, who along with Joe Gilliam and Doug Williams, would slowly change that.

In Canada, Ealey and the other black quarterbacks showed they could lead like any other pivot, could communicate with the whole team, white and black, like any other quarterback, and could win right away.

"I would venture to say that most black quarterbacks wanted the option to play quarterback and it was no longer an option just to go into the NFL [at another position]," he says.

"And I think that movement that happened in the early 1970s [to Canada] created another option to make a very positive choice about who they were and what they could do."

And what they could do was play and win.