Extra Points/HBCU Tribute: Pioneers

The color barrier officially fell for Carolina's varsity football team in 1968 with quarterback Ricky Lanier taking his place on the roster wearing jersey No. 14. The next year, linebacker James Webster and defensive end Judge Mattocks joined the squad. By 1974, the Tar Heel roster included six black players out of 83 players—Charles Waddell as a senior co-captain along with senior defensive tackle Ronnie Robinson, junior halfback James Betterson, sophomore defensive back Russ Conley, sophomore defensive tackle Rod Broadway and sophomore defensive back Early Jones, a walk-on from the baseball team.

Webster, now 71 and living in retirement in his hometown of Winston-Salem, peruses the list of the first 10 black scholarship football players whose Tar Heel careers spanned 1968-76.

"Every one of us got our degree," he says. "The thing I am most proud of is we did not get caught up in football, did not get caught up in other things. We all graduated. I do not know of any other predominantly white institution who can say that about their early black athletes."

Broadway, 67, retired and living in Myrtle Beach, reflects on how he and Conley, roommates in Ehringhaus Dorm at Carolina and lifelong friends, have had conversations in recent years with Waddell, a longtime sports administrator and now special assistant to the athletics director at the University of South Carolina, about organizing an event of some sort around those first 10 players.

"If we had issues as young, black, growing men, we didn't have anyone to go to but one another," Broadway says. "Charles Waddell was the person we leaned on, who we'd go to for advice. Charles learned from Web and Web learned from Ricky. Then by the time I left, we were getting more and more black players. But for that first group, we had to lean on one another. That core group was very important to us."

Adds Waddell, "We tried to do something in Charlotte a couple of years ago, but we canceled because of Covid. We've since had some Zoom calls. It's been fun to connect. This is an important part of the evolution of North Carolina football. These guys are a huge part of the story of the program."

Broadway, Webster, Waddell, a handful of their teammates and other individuals important in the story of race in ACC football will be present in Kenan Stadium Saturday night when the Tar Heels open the 2022 season against Florida A&M University, one of more than 100 Historically Black Colleges and Universities around the nation.

The Tar Heels announced in December 2020 they were adding the Rattlers to their 2022 schedule, and Tar Heel Coach Mack Brown drew on his longtime friendships with two giants in the HBCU coaching world to develop the idea of using the game to pay tribute to the history of the HBCU.

Brown was in Tallahassee and on the football team at Florida State in the early 1970s and attended a regular Bible study run by Jake Gaither, the Rattlers' head coach for 25 years who won 85 percent of his games. A&M's campus is just a mile southeast of FSU's near downtown Tallahassee.

"If you think of Florida A&M football, you think of Coach Gaither," Brown says. "He was a colorful character. He coined the phrase, 'Agile, mobile and hostile.' In fact, that's the title of his biography."

And during Brown's first run at Carolina from 1988-97, he became good friends with Bill Hayes, the long-time head coach at North Carolina A&T who won two national championships. Brown took a day in May to drive to Winston-Salem and participate in a golf tournament organized by Hayes to raise scholarship and operations money for HBCU institutions in North Carolina.

"When I think of HBCUs, I think of Coach Gaither and Coach Hayes," Brown says. "Two great men and two great coaches. Then you look at two Tar Heels like Rod Broadway and James Webster and their accomplishments in both the ACC and coaching in the HBCU world, it was the perfect opportunity to pay tribute to them."

Broadway was an All-ACC defensive lineman during his 1974-77 playing career and later won three national championships coaching at three HBCUs. He will serve as an honorary captain for the Tar Heels along with Hayes. The honorary captain for the Rattlers will be Rudy Hubbard, who succeeded Gaither, coached the Rattlers to two national titles and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2021. Webster will be recognized as a Kenan Legend, continuing the tradition of highlighting a former Tar Heel for his accomplishments on the field at Kenan Stadium and beyond; he and Broadway were never teammates at Carolina, but they both were on John Bunting's Tar Heel staff from 2001-03 (and Webster remained on the staff one more year).

Waddell will be in attendance as well and invitations have been extended to the other players who were among the first 10 black scholarship players—Lanier, Mattocks, Ike Oglesby, Robinson, Betterson and Conley. James Steele played from 1972-73 but died at the age of 72 in May 2022.

"Russ and I wanted to say thanks all these years later to Web and Ricky and Charles for their guidance and leadership, for showing us how to go to college and do the right things and get degrees," Broadway says. "The 10 of us have a lot of shared experiences in breaking ground in college football."

Hayes and Webster share the mantle for being pioneers in black coaching circles. Hayes was on Chuck Mills' staff at Wake Forest from 1973-75 and was the first black assistant coach in the ACC. Webster was a junior varsity coach on Bill Dooley's staff in 1973 and was definitely the first black coach in the Tar Heel football program and is believed to be the first in the entire Carolina athletic program.

"Being the first black coach at Wake Forest was a pivotal moment in my life," Hayes says. "I was determined I was going to coach at a high level. I took it very seriously because I knew I had a whole race of people and a whole generation of coaches behind me. I was fortunate to work for Chuck Mills. He was ahead of his time in what he expected out of society and of his players and his coaches. He was all about moving forward. He was very progressive in his thinking."

Webster arrived in Chapel Hill in the fall of 1968 motivated by the naysayers close to home who said he'd not be able to cut it academically at Carolina. But he graduated in four years with a degree in history while starting for three years at linebacker and getting in on the ground floor of the Black Student Movement, which was launched in November 1967.

"My focus was to go to Carolina, get a degree and graduate," Webster says. "So many people told me I wouldn't make it. But I proved them wrong. And I loved playing football and I loved standing up and speaking for the rights of black people during that period. It was a time in history, there was so much turmoil in society. It was a social revolution. You didn't think much about it at the time, because you're in the thick of it."

Hayes, Broadway and Webster have each coached in the ACC and each has been a head coach on the HBCU level—Hayes at Winston-Salem State and A&T, Broadway at N.C. Central, Grambling State and A&T, and Webster at Tennessee State. They all understand the differences in facilities, budgets and resources and the demand to be more creative in a conference like the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference than in the ACC.

"For four years at Central, we never bought a single piece of practice equipment," Broadway says. "We didn't have the money. I knew the equipment manager for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I drove two vans down there and loaded them up with stuff they didn't need. I learned as a kid from my mamma, 'Just because you don't have, doesn't mean you can't get.' That's how you operate at the HBCU level."

Hayes adds that most FBS coaches have no idea how to split a scholarship.

"But at A&T, we'd take one scholarship and let four players have a part of it," he says. "Then you file for state and federal financial aid to cover the rest. You had to be very creative in recruiting and day-to-day operations."

But the coaching part? Blocking and tackling and the fundamentals are the same at Carolina and at Florida A&M.

"Hats off to Mack for reaching out and supporting HBCUs," Hayes says. "Mack understands this, but most people don't. We coach, too. We coach hard, real hard. We may be lacking some facilities, but we coach no less."

Chapel Hill writer Lee Pace enters his 33rd year writing features on the Carolina football program under the "Extra Points" banner. He is the author of "Football in a Forest" and reports from the sidelines of Tar Heel Sports Network broadcasts. Follow him at @LeePaceTweet and write him at leepace7@gmail.com

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