Back in the late-1960s, legendary jazz tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and vocalist Leon Thomas collaborated on the classic album “Spirits Known and Unknown.” In essence, it was their melodic ode to past accomplishments, present achievements and future expectations.
Few would argue but that the most revered name, the Ursa Major, if you will, in the Black College football galaxy is that of Grambling’s Eddie Robinson. With his every achievement chronicled and circulated by the journalistic genius of publicist Collie J. Nicholson, the gospel of Grambling grabbed attention both nationally and internationally. The victories, which at one time made him the winningest coach of all time, and the more than 200 athletes he shepherded to the National Football League, are now committed to history. The thousands of others he sent successfully into society to make positive contributions also belong on his extensive, impressive resume.
If it can be said that Robinson provided the training ground and the fundamentals for legends, it can also be argued that Bill Nunn Jr. provided the opportunity for these legends-in-waiting to achieve heroic status. The arrival of Grambling’s Paul (Tank) Younger to the NFL in 1949, a mere two years after Jackie Robinson obliterated baseball’s despicable color barrier, signaled a seminal moment in the history of the sport in America. Call it an “athletic lunar landing” of sorts: i.e., one giant step for the National Football League, one gargantuan leap for Black college football.
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