Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles and Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs will make historical past Sunday when two Black quarterbacks face one another in a Tremendous Bowl for the primary time. If Hurts leads his group to victory, he would be the fourth Black quarterback to take action, following Washington’s Doug Williams in 1988, Mahomes in 2020 and the Seattle Seahawks’ Russell Wilson in 2013.
Solely eight Black quarterbacks have began a Tremendous Bowl — with racial stigmas against Black quarterbacks relationship to the Fifties that instructed they lacked the intelligence or the abilities to efficiently play the place.
The league has additionally needed to grapple with the shortage of Black coaches and figures in management positions, and its failure to institute insurance policies to interrupt these limitations. Final 12 months former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores filed a lawsuit in opposition to the NFL, the New York Giants and different groups alleging racial discrimination in hiring coaches. In line with a 2022 Washington Submit sequence known as “Black Out” that examined the shortage of Black head coaches within the NFL, whereas roughly 70% of gamers within the NFL have been Black, solely 11% of full-time head coaches since 1990 have been Black. The report additionally discovered that Black coaches have been almost definitely to function interim coaches, with these groups normally being a bit disorganized earlier than they be part of.
Right here’s a timeline of historic Black firsts within the Tremendous Bowl:
