Warren Moon, Who Helped Clear Way for Black Quarterbacks, Recalls His Struggles

Michael Powell

New York Times, February 5, 2015

SAN FRANCISCO — Warren Moon sits there in the hotel lobby with his black beret and black shirt, recounting, at my request, tales of his days as one of the great and dominant quarterbacks of his time.

In his Hall of Fame career, he set so many records, piled up so many yards, that his place in the history of this game is assured. And yet there is that gap, like a rib ripped from his handsome frame.

After Moon left college in 1978, a Rose Bowl champion and Pacific-8 player of the year, he headed not to stardom in the N.F.L. but to Edmonton, on the cold western prairies of Canada. His northern-lights exile would stretch six years.

Why?

He is black. And he wanted to play quarterback. And for most great black athletes in the 1970s and ’80s, that was an N.F.L. impossibility.

“Reading defenses, understanding schemes, being the face of a franchise: There were just a lot of people in pro football who didn’t think we could do that,” Moon says.

Moon is a personable man who punctuates such thoughts with a soft chuckle, where I, a white guy, might be more inclined to curse. The racial strictures and mysteries of the N.F.L. were confounding and long-lasting, and not just reserved for the quarterback position. The center on offense, the middle linebacker on defense: These, too, were largely apartheid positions into the 1980s. Moon leans forward and puts his index fingers to his temples.

“These were the ‘thinking positions,’ ” he says, and offers that chuckle again. “We were good for the athletic, reaction positions: run, jump, block.”

Cam Newton, that marvelously shrewd and gifted Carolina Panthers quarterback, will take snaps Sunday in the Super Bowl, the fourth in a row to feature at least one African-American quarterback, and so we might desire to process tales like Moon’s as ancient history, an archaeological dig. Except that this dishonorable period stretches into very living memory.

“Football has done an immaculate job in surpassing baseball as the pastime, cutting across all demographics,” noted Charles K. Ross, a history professor at the University of Mississippi and the author of “Outside the Lines: African-Americans and the Integration of the National Football League.” “Business was enmeshed in it: Who was going to be the face of your franchise and your product? A white man.

“Football was not ready to move into the 21st century.”

Pro football’s Jim Crow-like era was striking for the depth and persistence of its resistance to change. By the 1970s, pro basketball had great black point guards: Lenny Wilkens, Walt Frazier, Nate Archibald. Baseball had dominant black pitchers like Bob Gibson, Vida Blue and Ferguson Jenkins.

Not football, not at its marquee position.

“I choose to think it’s more people being captive to stereotype than racism,” Moon says.

Moon grew up in Los Angeles, a top athlete in a city of great athletes. His father, a laborer, died when Moon was 7, so he worked from an early age. He had time for a single sport: He chose football. He could throw a ball 80 yards and put it on the numbers. He could run a bit, throw a lot. He studied the game, this offense and that one. And at every pass, coaches tried to get him to play a different position — running back, wide receiver.

“When I was coming out of high school, I was all-city and all-state, and they wanted me to switch to receiver,” he says. (His friend James Lofton also was a talented all-city quarterback in Los Angeles. At Stanford University, coaches switched him to wide receiver, and he went on to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.)

Moon refused and went to junior college instead, where he dominated. He became an entrepreneur of his own career. He read Jackie Robinson’s biography, worked in the film library and sneaked out films, shipping montages to major colleges. The University of Washington came calling. The offense there was unimaginative, but no matter.

After his senior season, 1977, Moon led his team to a Rose Bowl victory, throwing a 28-yard touchdown strike and running for two more scores.

He was ready for the N.F.L. It was not ready for him. A scout told him to consider trying receiver. He didn’t have the speed for that.

“I refused; I will go to Siberia to play quarterback, but I will not switch positions,” he says.

The best quarterback in one of the best conferences in college football did not get invited to the N.F.L.’s draft combine. He signed with the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League.

“Nobody had given me a private workout,” Moon says. “I was bitter. My own country did not want me, but another country did.”

He dominated Canadian football, helping the Eskimos win five consecutive Grey Cups, and became the first professional quarterback to pass for 5,000 yards in a season by reaching exactly that mark in 1982. (He passed for 5,648 yards the next year.)

Moon finally slipped south of the border in 1984 and became the well-paid quarterback of the Houston Oilers. To join a Southern, struggling team at that time — the Oilers went 3-13 in his first year — was not ideal. The fans grew so abusive that Moon’s young son would appear in tears at his locker after games.

By 1987, the Oilers were 9-6 and embarking on the path of regular playoff contention. But even as the team’s fortune turned around, Moon’s path was not easy.

“There was a game that year, I was playing really well, and these were the positive comments I’d get: ‘Warren, man, you were chucking that ball like you chuck a watermelon,’ ” he says.

“I didn’t know whether to thank the guy or turn around and punch him.”

He offers that chuckle again.

I inquire about the unseen toll. Moon smiles softly. He’s a television broadcaster, a wealthy man, a monument to hard work. Over so many years, the mask does not fall away quickly.

“I never wanted anyone to think this stuff bothered me,” he says. “Everyone in the freaking place is booing you, and you got 10 guys in the huddle who are watching your eyes to see if it’s bothering you. So you do your best De Niro, even if inside it’s killing you.

“I internalized a lot of stuff I had to deal with in therapy later in my career.”

Even today, change is slow coming. Perhaps all those years of discouraging blacks from playing quarterback has taken a toll. Just six of 32 teams regularly started an African-American quarterback this season.

The game is nearly 70 percent black, but African-Americans remain strikingly underrepresented in the coaching ranks.

After he finished playing, Moon and other former black quarterbacks formed a General’s Club, to counsel and offer an ear to young black quarterbacks. When he retired, even with those missing Canadian years, he ranked in the top five in passing yards and touchdowns. He played in nine Pro Bowls. But he speaks of his regret that he did not revel in the fun of it more.

“I felt like I was going out there half the time representing my race as opposed to representing my team and teammates,” Moon says. “I wonder how much better I might have been if I’d had more fun.

“Cam Newton heard me say that. He said that wasn’t going to happen to him.”

Moon smiles, gets up to shake my hand and says, “That makes me happy.”

Email: powellm@nytimes.com