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Reviews
Taliaferro
Breaking Barriers from the NFL Draft to the Ivory Tower
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By Dawn Knight
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(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 169. Illustrations, bibliography. $24.95.)
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| Books about sport stars are commonplace these days. Most tell familiar stories about the successes of these men and women. Some give inspirational accounts of their strivings. Others tell a story of fame and famine. Occasionally a few will inspire and tell of greatness in a way that is not familiar at all. |
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Dawn Knight's short biography of Indiana University football star George Taliaferro is one of those books that crosses over into unfamiliar territory and is a pleasure to read. In just under 200 pages Knight relates the wonderful story of a man who in the 1940s and 1950s attended a predominantly white institution of higher learning, was drafted into the U.S. Army, and then returned to Indiana to play several outstanding seasons and win a national championship. To top it all off, Taliaferro was then drafted into the National Football League. |
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Organized around timeframes beginning with Taliaferro's early life in Gary, Indiana, and ending with his return to Indiana University first as an assistant to President John Ryan and finally as an instructor in the IU School of Social Work, Knight demonstrates that breaking barriers and overcoming the odds became a way of life for Taliaferro. He used his gifts of athleticism to fight racism and social segregation. He made choices for himself that in the end paid huge dividends. |
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What intrigued me about the book was its straightforward and honest approach. Knight, a high school English teacher, brings a style to the text that makes this a highly recommended read for young men and women interested not just in sports but in life. |
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Knight also presents an excellent discussion of professional football's inability to recognize the talents of African American quarterbacks until well into the 1980s. Most players with prior quarterbacking experience were instead moved to other positions once they reached the NFL, and Knight captures their frustrations. That Tony Dungy, head coach of the Indianapolis Colts and the first African American to coach the winning team in a Super Bowl (XLI), wrote the foreword is ironic. Dungy was himself a star quarterback at the University of Minnesota who, like so many talented African American quarterbacks, was switched to defense after he made it to the pros. |
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As a scientist I would have liked to see more analysis of the tribulations Knight recounts. While she chronicles many of the racial antagonisms Taliaferro and others endured as they struggled to integrate professional football, she fails to contextualize these issues and their impact on the life chances of all African Americans, including the men she writes about. |
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The institution of sport—like its related institutions such as coaching, marketing and the media—mirrors the society we live in and reflects its ills. Connecting these interrelated phenomena would have been important. |
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Earl Smith is currently the Arnold A. Sio Visiting Professor of Diversity and Community in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Colgate University, Hamilton, New York. He is the author of Race, Sport, and the American Dream (2007) and coauthor of African American Families (2007), Women & Minorities in American Professions (1996), and the forthcoming Interracial Intimacies across the Color Line.
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