Now think about how crazy this was. This Black man, in the first year of his dream job, was supposed to convince his bosses to draft a Black player from a tiny college they'd never heard of. There was also another detail: KC had the FIRST pick in the draft.
On Dec. 1, 1963, based SOLELY on Eddie Robinson's word, Buck Buchanan became the first Black player in pro football player to be drafted number 1. He's also the 1st of 4 Grambling players in the NFL the Hall of Fame now. The AFL wasn't just faster and more EXCITING.
It was becoming obvious that the NFL championship game was for the WHITE championship. NFL Owners upped the quotas but it was too late. The AFL already had the systems in place, the scouts and the Black players. So in 1966, the NFL decided to have an AFL vs NFL game every year.
The Kansas City Chiefs faced off against the Green Bay Packers. Kansas City lost. The NFL won the next year, too. But even though they were called "Super Bowl I" & Super Bowl II, its not true. The FIRST year they called it the SUper Bowl was at the end of the 1968 season.
The NY Jets, representing the AFL won the "first" Super Bowl. The next year, the Kansas City Chiefs made the SUper Bowl. Buck Buchanan was there and so was Otis Taylor a wide receiver from Prarie View A&M The story goes that the Cowboys wanted to draft Taylor so bad...
That they put armed guards outside Taylor's door. So Judge Wells gets Eddie Robinson to find the address they're keeping Taylor. He drives down, but they won't let him in. They've literally kidnapped Taylor. Wells parks outside and screams that Robinson knows he's there'e
Taylor climbs out of the window and signs with KC. In the 3rd quarter, KC's leading 13-7 when Taylor catches a 46-yard pass and strolls down the sideline. He's crying. No one knows why. He's already the AFC champ. The Super Bowl isn't really a big thing yet.
But the players know. See, that wasn't the first super bowl. It wasn't the biggest. But the KC Chiefs was one of the first in ANY LEAGUE or ANY era who started a majority Black team They said they wanted to beat "the white boys," or, as writers more politely put it...
"They were proud of their diversity" Now, the AFL didn't hire UNQUALIFIED Black players, they just just gave Black players the opportunity to succeeed because they WERE AWARE OF the NFL's PAST RACISM
But if you ask ANY of the previous NFL champions, even though they only played against white boys on teams that enforced quotas, they'd tell you they won on MERIT. In reality, they won bc of white affirmative action AND here's what happened
After pro football's FIRST real Black team trounced the white boys on National TV, the NFL merged with the AFL. And that's why the Super Bowl is actually a DEI project. Happy Black History Month!
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