Yes, he did. Which is why former Redskins quarterback Doug Williams, on a very, very small level, can appreciate what happened yesterday. Barack Obama became the first African-American president, which is far more important than Williams becoming the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl.
But, perhaps, Obama’s victory does not happen without the steps of many others such as Williams. Not that Williams views it the same way.
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“We’re talking about the President of the United States,” said the Tampa Bay personnel executive by phone from the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala., late Monday.
“Yeah, being the first black QB to play and win the Super Bowl is a huge deal. But this is a whole new level. You can multiply it by tens of tens of times now. The implications of this impacts every country in the world.”
True, but Williams still is reminded almost on a daily basis of his triumph after the 1987 season. Not just Redskins fans, either.
“Mostly the older guys,” he said. “I’ve had guys come tell me they have the tape and when they’re having a bad day they pop it in. That’s a good feeling.”
On the night Obama was elected, Williams was in a Memphis hotel; he cried, he said, for his deceased dad. And he cried on the phone with his older and then his younger brother.
“What I did 21 years ago in my world was just as big to me at that time as this probably is to him,” Williams said. “He’s living his dream. He’s a politician and now he’s the president. I was a football player who wanted to go to the Super Bowl and I won it. I reached the mountaintop. We both reached the mountain of what we wanted to do.”
And they carved a path for others to follow.
“It wasn’t about being a black quarterback as much as it was about having the opportunity to get it done,” Williams said. “That’s what we’re talking about. ‘Yes We Can’ explains it. … To see it happen and to think about what took place, not only with myself but also Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson and Jesse Owens and Wilma Rudolph and people like that. Tony Dungy. It was something that had never happened. And we had an opportunity to make it happen.”
