Great Football History Story

While this has been my most poorly blogged season to date, I did give some time to the University of Buffalo when they were about to play Missouri for the championship. In my last post I referenced gettign to go to a Nebraska Oklahoma game, Turner Gill was the quarterback for Nebraska in that game. So I have a bit of an affinity for the Buffalo football program now that he's coaching them.

I loved seeing Buffalo get the MAC championship. Prior to Gill's arrival, Buffalo had won something like 5 games in 3 years. In 3 years he's turned that team into conference champion that gets their first bowl invitation in 50 years.

But this is where the story is so great. Because if I have my facts correct, Buffalo has never been to a bowl game. In 1958 they were invited to the Tangerine Bowl. But being in the deep south like it is, the Tangerine Bowl ever so kindly informed Buffalo that their African American players were not welcome, so if they wanted to play, they had to leave some of their team behind.

The team voted to decline the invitation. To me, that took an incredible amount of character, because the honor of playing in a Bowl like that for a very small school like Buffalo was huge, especially since back in the day there weren't 30 odd bowl games. That had to be an incredibly hard decision. I'd be proud to be a fan of a team like that.

So fast forward 50 years. Our nation has made a lot of progress. And yet, one sign that we still have a ways to go is the fact that the number of black coaches in division 1A is rediculously small in ratio to the number of black players. I still think something is terribly out of whack.

And yet, one of the wonderful ironies of today is the fact that one of the three remaining African Americans coaching division 1A football is Turner Gill, coach of this year's Buffalo Bulls. Coach Gill will be leading his team to the International Bowl this year, and the 1958 team will be going as special guests.

To me it's a great story, and a sad one all the same. I'm thrilled to see the team do so well, and I love seeing the recognition being given to those great young men of the 1958 team. And I'm ashamed at the same time that it ever happened and that that kind of thing was even accepted in our country at the time.

All that said, the International Bowl, minor bowl game that it is, will probably rank third this year on my list of bowlgame priorities, right behind the BCS championship of course, and the Gator Bowl. Go Bulls!