George Taliaferro: Ground Breaker

It took the NFL 323 rounds and 3,084 picks to get to George Taliaferro.

In 1949, the three-time IU All-American and member of IU's 1945 unbeaten and Big Ten Championship football team was the first African-American player drafted by an NFL team, selected in the 13^thround by the Chicago Bears.

Taliaferro's selection came 13 years after the NFL adopted the draft as a means to, in many ways, keep the league afloat. Some owners' limited financial resources prevented them from being competitive at attracting the most coveted college players on an open market. So in 1936, the league unanimously approved the draft as a means to distribute players and create competitive balance among the league's 10 teams.
The first player taken in the NFL Draft was 1935 Heisman Trophy winner Jay Berwanger from the University of Chicago, selected by the Philadelphia Eagles on Feb. 8, 1936. But Berwanger passed on the opportunity to play in the NFL, instead opting for the greater security offered by a career as a foam rubber salesman.

Berwanger passed on professional football in 1936, but the NFL passed on an entire race for more than a decade. While a handful of African Americans played in the NFL in the 1920s, an unwritten understanding among league owners resulted in no African-Americans playing in the NFL from 1934-45.

That changed in 1946, when the Los Angeles Rams signed former UCLA star running back Kenny Washington. Integration, though, was slow, as no African-Americans were among the 600 players selected in the 1947 and 1948 drafts.

Then came the 1949 draft. It was a draft littered with eventual legends on the game, including Chuck Bednarik (taken first overall by Philadelphia Eagles), Doak Walker (third overall by Boston Yanks), Norm VanBrocklin (4^thround, Los Angeles Rams) and George Blanda (12^thround, Chicago Bears). For all of the success enjoyed by those future Hall of Famers, the most important decision was the one made by Chicago owner George Halas when he selected Taliaferro in the 13^thround with the 129^thoverall pick.

His NFL selection came as a complete surprise to many – Taliaferro included. He learned about it over lunch in downtown Chicago, when friend and former University of Iowa football standout Earl Banks showed him an edition of the Chicago Defender newspaper, whose headline read, "Taliaferro Drafted by Bears."

A native of Gary, Ind., Taliaferro had followed the Bears his entire life, and considered it a dream come true to play for the neighboring Windy City franchise. He had also considered it an impossibility. After all, no NFL team had ever drafted a black player, and there were only a handful currently playing in the league. Those realties prompted Taliaferro to sign with the Los Angeles Dons of the rival All America Football Conference one week prior to the NFL Draft. The AAFC had welcomed black players since debuting in 1946, and Taliaferro considered it his only avenue to pursue a professional football career.

Taliaferro told the Dayton Daily News in 2017 that after his selection by the Bears, he initially thought about returning his $4,000 signing bonus to the Dons in the hopes they would allow him tear up his contract and pursue his NFL dream. But after discussing the situation with his mother, he remembered a promise he'd made to his since-deceased father, which ended any possibility of walking away from the AAFC.

"She said, 'What did you promise your father?'" Taliaferro told the Dayton Daily News. "I knew right away. I had to be a man of my word, so I never even bothered getting back to George Halas and the Bears."

Taliaferro rushed for 472 yards and five touchdowns and passed for another 790 yards and four scores in his rookie season with the Dons in 1949. His role grew significantly as the year went along, and he accounted for seven touchdowns in the Dons' final four games – four rushing, one receiving, one passing and one on a punt return. His season was highlighted by his performance in a season-ending 17-16 loss to the New York Yankees, when he rushed for 112 yards and 14 carries and scored both of the team's touchdowns – one on a 44-yard run, and the second on a 52-yard punt return.

His opportunity to play in the NFL came the following season. The AAFC – which was founded in 1944 by Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward and began playing games in 1946 – merged with the NFL. The subsequent franchise and player shuffling resulted in Taliaferro joining the short-lived New York Yanks NFL squad for the 1950 season. Taliaferro rushed for 411 yards and four touchdowns and caught another 21 passes for 299 yards and five scores for the Yanks, leading the team in touchdowns and helping them to a 7-5 record.

Taliaferro spent five more years in the NFL and earned Pro Bowl honors in 1951-53. He totaled 2,266 rushing yards and 15 career touchdowns while playing for franchises in New York, Dallas, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Taliaferro's decision to honor his AAFC contract in 1949 negated the possibility that he would be the first African-American to be drafted and play in the NFL. That distinction is forever owned by Wallace Triplett, a 19^thround pick out of Penn State in that same 1949 NFL Draft who was picked and signed by the Detroit Lions. Triplett's portrait hangs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame because of that fact.

The legendary Hoosier also missed out on being the first African-American to play for the Chicago Bears, one of the charter members of the NFL. That honor went to Eddie Macon, a second-round draft pick in 1952 out of the University of Pacific who played for two years in Chicago.

But Taliaferro's 1949 selection in the NFL Draft remains a landmark event in the league's history. It took more than a decade to happen, but George Taliaferro and Indiana University were groundbreakers in the growth of the NFL and the sport of football.

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