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6 Ways Integration Decimated Black College Sports

By | Published on December 12, 2014 | Updated on December 12, 2014 1:41 PM EST
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Talent Fled

Once, Black college sports were all the rage. The players with the most talent and creativity went to historically Black colleges and that was that. Then integration hit in the mid-1960s, and slowly but sadly, the Black athlete began to consider it the thing to do by playing somewhere else. Soon, Black colleges saw a drop in star athletes coming to their schools. Soon, the lure of play at a majority college took over and Black colleges were left, in many cases, stagnant and troubled.

Once integration hit and coaches at major colleges suppressed their biases, they used the freedom they had to recruit the players they had long admired from afar at Black colleges. They used the inducement of having better training facilities, playing in front of much larger crowds and exposure to the NFL as enticements … and the Black athletes gradually began turning away from historically Black colleges and universities.

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