Showing posts with label Doug Williams (Grambling State). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doug Williams (Grambling State). Show all posts

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Florida Tuskers done with Orlando and moving to Norfolk

Norfolk Destroyers General Manager Doug Williams will receive relocation Florida Tuskers

The Florida Tuskers organization announced they were relocating from Orlando to Norfolk Wednesday afternoon. The Tuskers (5-3) advanced their second consecutive UFL championship game this season, where they lost to the Las Vegas Locomotives.

Norfolk was originally announced as an expansion team for the UFL, but will now be treated as a relocation with Orlando being the lucky team.

According to a former spokesperson for the Tuskers, Tuskers coach Jay Gruden will remain the head coach. Gruden doesn’t have to look far for a Florida connection as Norfolk’s general manager is former Tampa Bay Buccaneers pro scouting coordinator Doug Williams. Former Florida Tuskers President and Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann will serve as a consultant to the UFL.


Gruden’s move comes as a result of the UFL ceasing operations in Orlando and the coaching vacancy that was created when JOE MOGLIA was named head coach of the Omaha Nighthawks. Gruden plans to retain the Tusker’s protected players and bring them to Virginia, which became the league’s newest expansion market in 2010.

“We will bring quality entertainment and the basis of a solid roster that has reached the last two Championship Games to excite the fans in Virginia,” said Coach Gruden. “I expect to bring back a lot of the guys who have helped make the team a success and believe we will be competitive again.

“I am excited about going up to Virginia to lead the Destroyers, though there is a bittersweet element as well. We have enjoyed success on the field with the Tuskers and I would like to thank the fans in Florida for their support.”

HBCU Players on Current Team Roster

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Sunday, June 22, 2008

Greatest Sports Accomplishment: Doug Williams' Super Bowl Win

The position of quarterback has been a microcosm of the black man's struggle in America—a door supposedly “open to all”—except for us of a darker hue who continuously knock, kick, and scream until an answer comes.

For 80 years, the black man has fought tooth and nail to lead a professional football franchise to glory. Many came before Doug Williams, and some of them may have even been better skilled. But looking back on the life of Douglas Lee Williams—none were better prepared.

My mother says, “The Lord chooses whom he will.” If you ask Williams about being the Chosen One, he places it at the feet of hard work, opportunity, and determination more than anything.

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Saturday, May 31, 2008

Harris-Williams Foundation gives back; Former GSU stars make donations

(L) James "Shack" Harris, VP of Player Personnel - Jacksonville Jaguars, and (R) Doug Williams, Player Personnel Executive, Tampa Bay Buccaneers are assisting local groups and Grambling State University athletic programs with their foundation charity donations.

Moments before making multiple donations to community organizations on Friday morning, former Grambling State and NFL great Doug Williams recounted how the Shack Harris and Doug Williams Foundation began.

He recalled playing in June Jones' golf tournament for charity in Hawaii. "After we (Williams and Harris) got through playing golf, we were talking and saying, 'Why don't we do this ourselves?" Williams said. They worked with Kevin Kaplan of Coaching Charities to form their foundation. There was one final step — finding a community to serve.

"We were trying to find the best place to hold the golf tournament and raise money to do something for the community," Williams said. "Hands down, the place I thought and James agreed, was Shreveport."

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Friday, February 1, 2008

Super Bowl to salute Doug Williams' feat

Photo: #17 Doug Williams, first African-American to start and win a Super Bowl at Quarterback. The former Grambling State University quarterback is currently employed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a personnel executive.

GLENDALE, Ariz. - We think little of it today, what with Warren Moon in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, with Donovan McNabb and Steve McNair having started in Super Bowls. But there was a time when the words "black" and "quarterback" didn't go so well together.

Doug Williams was the pioneer, at least in regards to the Super Bowl if not in all regards. He wasn't the first black quarterback to start a game in NFL history, but he was the first to become a regular and the first to star on the game's greatest stage.

The NFL will note the 20th anniversary of his MVP performance on Sunday when Williams takes part in the Vince Lombardi Trophy presentation after Super Bowl XLII here between New England and the New York Giants.

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Friday, September 21, 2007

Wilbon and McNabb on target regarding black QB's

If you sports-aholics don't read anything interesting today, the following article published by Michael Wilbon is worth every second of your time. I heard the dumb interviews this morning on ESPN with Vince Young and and Jason Campbell on the McNabb statements. Their response were weak and silly, and shows how they are currently blinded by NFL dollars. Sorry guys, come join the real world and open your eyes and ears after the next loss for the Titans or Redskins, respectively. Then you will know the real deal! Campbell is only one interception away from hearing the wolf cries from the Redskin faithful who are never satisfied unless they are in the Superbowl. It's time the guys learn their history....
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McNabb Displays His Accuracy

By Michael Wilbon, The Washington Post

Thankfully, Donovan McNabb had the guts to stand tall in the pocket with critics trying to knock his head off. Thankfully, McNabb, at 30, has some sense of the NFL beyond his own participation. Most celebrity athletes talk only when paid to talk, and usually about something benign if not downright useless.

McNabb, however, had something very real to say in a conversation with James Brown of HBO. He said black quarterbacks are under more scrutiny and criticized more harshly than white quarterbacks. Why this has become a hot-button topic I have no idea. It's not like McNabb called anybody a racist or a bigot. He said that black quarterbacks face more criticism than white quarterbacks, than Peyton Manning or Carson Palmer, just to name two. And he's right, just as black politicians or entertainers or writers are scrutinized more closely, whether it's professionally or driving home in the middle of the night from work.

Anybody who doubts McNabb needs only to walk around one of the upper-concourse areas of Lincoln Financial Field late in a game when, as several white friends have told me, the frequent use of the word "nigger" preceding McNabb's name during a losing performance is so casual it sickens them. Rex Grossman, just to name one white quarterback who has to deal with daily criticism, doesn't have to be on the wrong end of that kind of hateful venom, even though he'll never be half the quarterback McNabb has been.

All quarterbacks are criticized; it's the nature of the business. Joe Montana, John Elway, Brett Favre . . . they've all faced it, especially in this age of nonstop talk and analysis. Quarterback is the most important position, the most high-profile position in American sports, and nothing else comes close. The praise and criticism are both extreme to the point of absurdity.

McNabb has a $100 million contract and those Chunky Soup commercials for one reason: he's a quarterback. Most NFL players are completely unrecognizable out of their jerseys, but McNabb is so well known his mother has her own commercial success.

Undeniably, this is progress. It was unimaginable 20 years ago when Doug Williams led the Redskins to a Super Bowl victory. Williams might as well have been a Martian that Super Bowl week, as reporters crowded around him to ask how he felt about making history. Remember, Warren Moon is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but no NFL team would draft him out of the University of Washington in 1978, even though he led his team to the Rose Bowl. It wasn't enough. Scouts tried to talk him into changing positions so that some team would draft him, but he wouldn't and went to Canada. He had to leave this country to play quarterback professionally.

Black quarterbacks have come a long, long way. Just seeing James Harris and Williams play in the 1970s brought black folks to tears. I'm elated that I can't even name all the black players who play quarterback these days. The Jacksonville Jaguars ended last season with three. Vince Young, two years ago, was drafted ahead of Matt Leinart, and JaMarcus Russell, this spring, was drafted ahead of Brady Quinn. Leinart and Quinn are prototypical, perhaps even stereotypical, white, in-the-pocket, Golden Boy quarterbacks.

So the days of owners being afraid to draft black quarterbacks or coaches being afraid to play them seems long gone.

But that doesn't mean the criticism or scrutiny is the same on the outside. For the most part, people younger than 30 could not care less, largely because they don't know the history of any sport beyond last week, and sadly this includes sportswriters and players. But there are plenty of people older than 30, people who don't even examine what they're saying.

Is this a huge deal? No, probably not. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and McNabb simply stated that. He didn't say it angrily, he didn't say he wanted to take up arms and attack The Man. He just said black quarterbacks are scrutinized and criticized more than their white frat QB brothers -- in other ways, too. As my friend Tony Kornheiser points out, black franchise quarterbacks also have been criticized by black fans and players for not being "black enough" and being too close to white ownership.

What really annoys me is that some young black quarterbacks don't seem to have any idea of the context of the issue. Don't get me wrong, it was great to hear Tennessee's Young and the Redskins' Jason Campbell (two kids who played quarterback in the South) say they hadn't faced any particularly stinging criticism. It's yet another sign of great progress. But there also was a naivete about their comments, especially Young's, when he said the notion of black quarterbacks dealing with unfair criticism is "not my fight to fight."

Of course, it isn't. Harris, Joe Gilliam, Marlin Briscoe, Moon and Williams, among others, fought it so that Young wouldn't have to. They changed positions and missed out on playing time and left the country so that this wouldn't be an issue in 2007. And for Young to say something that self-absorbed, that ignorant of the history of the men who made it possible for him, is disappointing to the extreme. Young is obliged to those men, the same way Tiger Woods is obliged to Charlie Sifford and Lee Elder and Calvin Peete. Difference is, Tiger says so every chance he gets. Tiger knows who fought the fight for him. Young, sadly, doesn't. Somebody should get in his ear and make sure he understands . . . before he takes the field again.

Vince Young hasn't heard the boos, hasn't heard the ugly and vicious catcalls that address his heritage and color . . . not yet anyway. He led the University of Texas to a national championship and presented himself as everything the position of quarterback demands. He got to the NFL and at Tennessee has in short order been exactly what a team wants in a young franchise quarterback.

But it's not always going to be kisses and candy. It wouldn't be if Young were white, either. Very likely one day, he's going to read something, see something, hear something that lets him know that there's a gap between progress and conditions being the same. And his instinct will be, quite naturally, to pick up the phone and call somebody who's been through what he's going through, somebody like McNabb, whose words might make a little more sense to him then.