1969 Wyoming Cowboys football team

1969 Wyoming Cowboys football
Conference Western Athletic Conference
1969 record 6–4 (4–3 WAC)
Head coach Lloyd Eaton (8th season)
Home stadium War Memorial Stadium
1969 WAC football standings
Conf  Overall
TeamW L T  W L T
Arizona State $ 6 –1 –0  8 –2 –0
Utah 5 –1 –0  8 –2 –0
BYU 4 –3 –0  6 –4 –0
Wyoming 4 –3 –0  6 –4 –0
Arizona 3 –3 –0  3 –7 –0
UTEP 2 –5 –0  4 –6 –0
New Mexico 1 –5 –0  4 –6 –0
Colorado State 0 –4 –0  4 –6 –0
  • $ – Conference champion
Rankings from AP Poll

The 1969 Wyoming Cowboys football team represented the University of Wyoming in the 1969 NCAA college football season. The Cowboys offense scored 242 points while the defense allowed 118 points. Led by head coach Lloyd Eaton, the Cowboys won six games in a season tainted by a racial controversy.

"Black 14" controversy

During the season, Coach Eaton dismissed 14 black Wyoming players from the team for asking to wear black armbands during a game against the Brigham Young University (BYU) Cougars. At a victory against BYU the previous year, players from the Cougars had subjected them to racial epithets.[1] A week before the upcoming game, the team's black members were reminded of the incident and also informed about the racial policies of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which owns and operates BYU, and which at that time excluded black people from the priesthood of the LDS Church) by Willie Black, leader of Wyoming's Black Student Alliance, and challenged them to do something about it.[1] The day before the game, the players donned black armbands on their civilian clothes and went to Eaton's office to discuss how they might show solidarity with the BSA protest. Upon seeing them with the armbands the coach immediately dismissed them from the team.[1][2] According to Joe Williams, a team co-captain before he was suspended from the team, "We wanted to see if we could wear black armbands in the game, or black socks, or black X's on our helmets. And if he had said no we had already agreed that we would be willing to protest with nothing but our black skins."[2]

Eaton took them to the bleachers in Memorial Fieldhouse.[1] Eaton says he listened to their suggestions for ten minutes before deciding to fire them.[2] Williams gives a very different account: "He [Eaton] came in, sneered at us and yelled that we were off the squad. He said our very presence defied him. He said he has had some good Neeegro boys. Just like that."[2] Defensive end Tony McGee said that Eaton "said we could go to Grambling State or Morgan State ... We could go back to colored relief. If anyone said anything, he told us to shut up. We were really protesting policies we thought were racist."[1] John Griffin, a flanker, corroborates McGee's memory.[1]

The names of the Black 14: Earl Lee, John Griffin, Willie Hysaw, Don Meadows, Ivie Moore, Tony Gibson, Jerome Berry, Joe Williams, Mel Hamilton, Jim Issac, Tony McGee, Ted Williams, Lionel Grimes, and Ron Hill. [3]

At San Jose State University, the team voted to wear multicolored armbands against Wyoming in support of the 14 during Wyoming's Homecoming game, and groups at other Western Athletic Conference schools demanded that Wyoming be dropped from their schedules.[4] At the time of the incident, the team was undefeated (4-0) and ranked 12th in the nation. Even though Wyoming beat BYU 40-7 and San Jose State (the next game) without the players, it would lose its last four games of 1969 and went 1-9 the next year, which prompted the school to fire Eaton.[5] The team had only one winning season in the 70s.

The "Black 14" incident spurred the court case Williams v. Eaton, with the issue of free speech against the principle of separation of church and state. Litigation was lengthy for this case and ended on October 31, 1972.[6]

Schedule

DateOpponentSiteResult
September 20Arizona
W 23–7
September 27at Air Force*
W 27–25
October 4Colorado State
  • War Memorial Stadium
  • Laramie, WY (rivalry)
W 39–3
October 11UTEP
  • War Memorial Stadium
  • Laramie, WY
W 37–9
October 18BYU
  • War Memorial Stadium
  • Laramie, WY
W 40–7
October 25San Jose State*
  • War Memorial Stadium
  • Laramie, WY
W 16–7
November 1at Arizona State
L 14–30
November 8at Utah
L 10–34
November 15at New Mexico
L 12–24
November 22at Houston*
L 14–41
  • *Non-conference game

1969 team players in the NFL

The following were selected in the 1970 NFL Draft.[8]

PlayerPositionRoundOverallNFL Team
Vic WashingtonWide Receiver487San Francisco 49ers
Larry NelsDefensive Lineman12298New York Giants
Joe Williams Back12309Dallas Cowboys

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Henderson, John (November 8, 2009). "Spirit of the Black 14 In 1969, 14 black Wyoming football players were kicked off the team for wanting to protest BYU's racist taunts and a discriminatory policy of the Mormon Church by wearing black armbands in a game". The Denver Post. Retrieved 15 November 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Putnam, Pat (November 3, 1969). "No Defeats, Loads of Trouble". Sports Illustrated. Retrieved 14 November 2015.
  3. ↑ "The Black 14: Race, Politics, Religion and Wyoming Football". WyoHistory.org. The Wyoming State Historical Society. Retrieved 2017-07-23.
  4. ↑ http://si.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1082992/2/index.htm
  5. ↑ https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19820514&id=gdtaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=l20DAAAAIBAJ&pg=7143,3141541
  6. ↑ "Introduction". The Black 14. University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center. Archived from the original on 2015-12-23. Retrieved 2015-11-12.
  7. ↑ DeLassus, David. "Coaching Records Game-by-game: Lloyd W. Eaton, 1969". College Football Data Warehouse. Retrieved November 9, 2013.
  8. ↑ "1970 NFL Draft". Pro-Football-Reference.com. Retrieved November 9, 2013.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.