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The Hall Welcomes A Hero
Created: 2/5/2005 12:27:40 PM
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Forty-two times before, the selectors and voters of the inductees to the Pro Football Hall of Fame had gathered and either ignored him or deemed him unworthy.
But just like he was in his time of Earth -- from 1894 to 1986 -- Fritz Pollard is impossible to keep down.
On Saturday at noon, the Hall of Fame's Class of 2005 was announced and this time the voters understood. They understood that he and Jim Thorpe were the two major attractions in the founding years of the NFL. They understood that pioneers don't need stats to justify their impact. They understood that while 16 of Pollard's NFL contemporaries have been in the Hall for four decades, denying him that status was inexplicable.
That's why in Canton on August 7 -- at enshrinement time -- Dan Marino, Steve Young, Benny Friedman and Frederick Douglass Pollard will enter the Hall together.
In the mid-1910s, Pollard may have been the biggest name in all of football. The NFL was still a few years down the road and college football was the biggest drawing card in sports.
Pollard led Brown University to the 1915 Rose Bowl as an All-American running back. East Coast newspapers -- including the New York Times -- sang his praises week-to-week as his Bruins upset the likes of powerful Harvard and Yale. Had there been a Heisman Trophy in his day, Pollard would have been the frontrunner.
He eventually decided to join an upstart Midwest football league after college and his first NFL team, the Akron Pros, did not lose in the first 19 games in which Pollard played (15-0-4), outscoring the opposition, 236 to 7. Entering the 1920 season, not much was expected from the Pros, but Pollard proved to be a serious difference-maker. In his first season, the breakaway back led the team in rushing, receiving, scoring and punt returns and as the Pros were unbeaten (8-0-3). Bruce Copeland of the Rock Island Argus selected an all-pro team and Pollard was a first-team choice.
The next year he was installed as the Pros' head coach and the team won its first seven games (all shutouts), before injuries to the team's stars, including Pollard himself, caused the team to trail off, ending the season at 8-3-1. Pollard led that team in rushing, scoring and punt returns while also serving as the head coach.
The NFL Encyclopedia credits Pollard with coaching the Pros that season, but Pollard himself contended his coaching career was much deeper. What is known about the earliest days of the league is that bench coaching was not allowed. Therefore, players served in that capacity. Because Pollard played in a sophisticated offense at Brown, he was often relied upon for his expertise.
Pollard's contention was that he was the coach at Akron beginning in 1919 and through 1921. He also claimed that he coached the Milwaukee Badgers in 1922 and the Hammond Pros from 1923 to 1925. The NFL Encyclopedia lists no coach of those teams, so Pollard could have been the leader without a title.
What is not in question, as Pollard remembered in a 1978 New York Times interview, is that he faced the hatred of crowds and the indignities of dressing and eating in isolation, away from his teammates. Pollard, who weighed about 150 pounds, was also forced to create a strategy to protect himself after plays -- a move that would prevent piling on. When he was tackled, he'd quickly spin onto his back and stick his cleats and knees into the air above him.
"They had some prejudiced people there," he recalled. "I had to get dressed for games in [team owner] Frank Neid’s cigar factory. The fans booed me and called me all kinds of names. You couldn’t eat in the restaurants or stay in the hotels."
It was said that the struggling league's highest-paid players in those first years were Thorpe, who was a member of the first class of inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963, and Pollard.
After paving a path for other young black players, Pollard watched the numbers of African-Americans in the NFL shrink to eventual extinction.
The League did not have black players from 1934 to 1946. After gaining credibility in the 1930s, the NFL was no longer willing to sign 'name' black players. The Great Depression also turned the hiring of blacks, when so many whites were without jobs, into what was viewed as a bad public relations move.
In response Pollard formed a high-profile team, the Brown Bombers, in New York to showcase black talent to the fans and the NFL. And Pollard's Brown Bombers -- as detailed in a December 2003 Sports Illustrated story -- won much more often than not, beating well-financed all-star teams along the way.
Former Brown Bomber manager Herschel 'Rip' Day wrote in a 1942 letter to the Amsterdam News, "I still say that Fritz Pollard did more to advance the idea of the best-against-the-best-regardless-of-color than any single man in the business."
But the NFL continued its quiet ban of black players. Some NFL insiders of that era claimed that there was a lack of interest among black players in playing in the NFL at that time. The claim was absurd, but it was this attitude that eventually caused Pollard to give up and move onto other projects.
How long has the issue of Fritz Pollard's exclusion from the Hall been raised? About as long as the Hall has existed. Two days before Christmas in 1964, Arthur Daley of the New York Times wrote, "Can the committee continue to skip past such vaunted pioneers from the first-team periods as Paddy Driscoll, Benny Friedman, Joe Guyon, Keith Molesworth and Fritz Pollard, to name only a few?"
In 1978, syndicated columnist Jerry Izenberg wrote of Pollard, "It is a shame and a scandal that more young people do not even know his name. Those number add up to nothing in Canton, Ohio. He is not a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. That is an incredible oversight -- almost as incredible as the chain of events which form Pollard's own personal history."
On Saturday, William C. Rhoden of the New York Times wrote, "If Fritz Pollard isn't selected, there shouldn't be a Hall."
Pollard's daughter Leslie told the Boston Globe's Joe Burris in February 2004, "It's strange. This generation doesn't know anything. Almost all of my younger life, there was mention of my father in his football days almost every time you picked up a newspaper. Now, people have never heard of him."
That's about to change. A few generations will learn about him all at once. Today is the greatest day in the history of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
In The Long Run, Joe Burris, Baltimore Sun
For Pollard, Recognition is Deserved, Don Pierson, Chicago Tribune
Forgotten Pioneer, Jeff Carroll, The Times of Northwest Indiana
Pollard Finally Lauded, Cliff Christl, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
No Way To Pass On These Two, Ira Miller, San Francisco Chronicle
Leader of Akron Pros up for Hall of Fame induction, Tom Reed, Akron Beacon Journal
Without Pollard, Football Hall Is a Sham, William C. Rhoden, New York Times
The Case for Fritz Pollard, Michael David Smith, Football Outsiders
Time Akron Rediscovers Fritz Pollard, David Giffels, Akron Beacon Journal
Fritz Finally Gets His Due, Stephen C. Smith Sr., Times Record News (Wichita Falls, Texas)
Hall Opens to Pioneer, Gary Mihoces, USA Today
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Related Schools: Brown
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Related Sports: Football
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*This Article has been archived.*
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