George Taliaferro: Army Draftee, and NFL's First Black Draftee and Starting QB

The first NFL draft occurred on February 8, 1936. The draft kept teams with shallower pockets from competing with the deeper-pocketed teams for amateur players. Players either signed with the team that drafted them or could not play in the NFL. The 1936 draft's #1 pick and Heisman winner, Jay Berwanger, chose not to sign a contract, and neither did most draftees since only 24 of the 81 selected players appeared in an NFL game.

There also weren't any Black players selected in the 1936 draft due to an NFL agreement not to sign them. Black athletes weren't eligible for any draft until the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 required all males between 21 and 45 to register for the military. Even then, the military remained segregated until 1948. The military's athletic teams during WWII were also segregated, as discussed in my article, Taking Requests: The 1944 Great Lakes Baseball Team, though some teams integrated by 1945 since Levi Jackson, who became Yale's first Black player in 1946, played for Camp Lee in 1945.

That background takes us to the campus of Indiana University in 1945. Many who might have played college football were still in the Armed Forces, so freshmen were eligible to play varsity at most schools. One such frosh was George Taliaferro, who grew up in Gary and became an instant star for the Indiana Hoosiers that season. As a Single Wing halfback, he became the first Black athlete to lead the conference in rushing with 716 yards in 156 carries, helping Indiana win its first Big Ten football title in 46 years.

Taliaferro leaped over the line as a frosh in 1945. (1946 Indiana yearbook)