Super Quarterbacks Produced by HBCUs - Brief Article

ATLANTA -- Although Steve McNair came up just short in his attempt to lead the Tennessee Titans to the National Football League Championship last month, the second African American to quarterback a team in the Super Bowl will go down in the records books nonetheless.

McNair guided a heart-stopping comeback by the Titans that almost forced the first overtime in Super Bowl history. His team came up 1 yard short when the St. Louis Rams kept Kevin Dyson out of the end zone on the final play. The Rams won, 23-16.

McNair's 64-yard rushing performance set a Super Bowl record for quarterbacks. He scrambled 23 yards to set up the Titans' first touchdown and on the final drive, he completed six passes for 48 yards and ran twice for 14 yards.

Interestingly, the only two Black quarterbacks to start a Super Bowl -- McNair and Doug Williams, who led the Washington Redskins to a 42-10 victory over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXII -- attended historically Black colleges and universities. Williams graduated from Grambling, where he replaced the legendary Eddie Robinson as the university's head football coach. McNair attended Alcorn State.

Anthony Woolfolk was an assistant football coach under Carter L. Jones when McNair attended Alcorn State. Woolfolk says poise and comeback heroics are nothing new for McNair.

"He never got mad at the defense or anything," Woolfolk says of McNair, pointing to a game against Texas Southern. "We were down 41-36 with 15 seconds left. We needed 60 yards for a touchdown. The first pass was an up and out that netted 30-something yards; the second pass was a `Hail Mary.' Two passes and we won the game."

And Woolfolk maintains that the success of McNair and Williams "says a lot for historically Black colleges and universities. We do produce good players and we can produce quality quarterbacks as well as wide receivers, linemen and everything else."

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