For the first fifty years of my life, I was a sports fanatic. I’ve now slowed down to a sports enthusiast, but sports have always been meaningful to me. In high school, I played football, basketball, baseball, and track. Those were whittled down to basketball and track when I left Minneapolis and went to Fisk University in Nashville. For those curious, I threw the discus and shot put on the track team. I will forever hold the discus school record in the discus, as Marshall University High closed a few years after I graduated, and nobody will come along to beat me.
Marshall-U High Cardinals, I’m the tallest Black kid. The second tallest is Garry “Jellybean” Johnson of The Time
As a kid, I would walk to Crown Barbershop on 38th and 4th Avenue to get haircuts. There was always a wait, and I would grab a Jet Magazine off the table to read. Yes, I opened it up to the swimsuit picture in the center, and followed the celebrities. But I also followed the National Black College Football Rankings provided by the Sheridan Broadcasting Network. I became familiar with Grambling, Texas Southern, Jackson State, Southern University, Tennessee State, and North Carolina A&T, among others, though they were far from my Minnesota existence.
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From grades 7–12, I attended school two blocks from the University of Minnesota campus. I grew up a fan of the Gophers and was accustomed to seeing Black athletes. A friend’s brother had played quarterback for the University of Minnesota. The basketball team featured several Black athletes, and we’d sneak into Williams Arena to watch them play. Dave Winfield starred for the baseball team. The wrestling team only had one Black person, but I didn’t watch them anyway. While I expected to see Black athletes at Minnesota, I barely noticed that the University of Alabama didn’t sign its first football player until I was a high school sophomore…