DWIGHT FLOYD Weekly Commentary: Black College Football in Perspective

DWIGHT FLOYD
"The Editor"
SportsEdit.Org

TALLAHASSEE, Florida --  Today, I will take my 92 year old father to see the FAMU vs. Savannah State football game. He hasn’t missed more than a handful of games since the late 50s when I would accompany him starting around age four. If you do the math that was fifty something years ago for me and in addition to his reserved seat I now have a reserved seat for me and my grandson along with my own parking spot next to the game entrance.

For the record, the top college football teams on any level at one time included teams like Alcorn State, Grambling, Southern, Florida A&M, and Tennessee State. These teams were not just good they were among the very best. They didn’t get to play Ohio State, Notre Dame or USC, but know that coaches like Woody Hayes not only respected these teams, but visited their football camps and on occasion came to watch them play. These and other black college teams like them would today be considered dynasties. Back then a black college championship meant more because winning it really did mean you were one of the best teams in the country bar none.

Too little is said about FAMU’s former Coach Alonzo S. “Jake” Gather. I grew up down the street from a recreation center named in his honor and among the families of some of the outstanding assistant coaches and players like Bobby Lang, Robert Mungen, Willie Galimore, and Hewett Dixon. I remember as a small boy watching Bob Hayes, Ken Riley, Claude Humphrey and Ed “Too Tall” Jones of Tennessee State. Yes, on a rare occasion in the latter stages of black college football greatness I got to see Eddie Robinson and Doug Williams, Alcorn’s Marino “The Godfather” Casem and Steve McNair, Mississippi Valley State’s David “Deacon” Jones and Jerry Rice, Tennessee State’s Joe Meritt and Joe Gilliam, just to name a few.


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