OL/DL Bill Willis (official thread)

[BB73]

official site


Bill Willis
Lineman 1942-44

Considered one of the all-time great athletes ever to play for Ohio State, Bill Willis, has the unique distinction of belonging to the Ohio High School, the College and the Professional Football halls of fame. He also is a member of The Ohio State University Athletics Hall of Fame. Willis was a three-year starter for the Buckeyes between 1942 and 1944, playing both offense and defense. A willowy 6-2 and 215 pounds, he was a devastating blocker on offense and a punishing, relentless tackler on defense. Willis earned All-America honors in 1943 and 1944, becoming Ohio State’s first African-American All-American. He went on to a distinguished career with the Cleveland Browns following college. A native of Columbus, he is generally considered the first African-American starter in professional football. After his pro career ended, he returned home and served as director of the Ohio Youth Commission.



link

Former Browns honored by Senate
By Jeff Walcoff, Staff Writer
July 20, 2006


Bill Willis played for the Browns from 1946-53.


Two former Browns and members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame were honored by the U.S. Senate due to their pioneering contributions to professional football.
Passed by Unanimous Consent, Senate Resolution 533 commemorates the 60th anniversary of the permanent racial integration of professional football in 1946 by four players, two of whom were members of the Cleveland Browns.

Bill Willis, an All-America tackle at Ohio State, was a three-time All-AAFC and four-time All-NFL middle guard for the Browns from 1946-53. He earned a spot on the roster after he baffled coaches with his speed, power and agility at his first tryout practice. The Columbus, Ohio native was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1977.
Marion Motley joined the team shortly after Willis, continuing the integration of the sport pioneered by the Browns. The three-time All-AAFC selection and one-time All-NFL selection racked up 4,720 yards on 828 carries (5.7 avg.) in nine professional seasons. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968.

The other two players, Kenny Washington and Woody Strode, signed with the Los Angeles Rams the same year as Motley and Willis joined the Browns.
The integration of Willis, Motley, Washington and Strode took place a full year before Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers as the first African-American in professional baseball.

Willis is the only surviving member of the four. The NFL will commemorate him and the anniversary during the 2006 Pro Football Hall of Fame Game on Sunday, August 6, 2006 at Fawcett Stadium in Canton. Ohio Senator George Voinovich, a co-sponsor of the resolution, will honor Willis during a halftime ceremony.


bengals.com (from 2003)


6:15 a.m.

For Bill Willis, still as dignified as the day he broke pro football’s color line in Paul Brown’s training camp, it sounded pretty familiar.

Mike Brown hired the Bengals’ first African-American head coach last week, and 110 miles away in Columbus, Ohio, and 57 seasons after revolutionizing defensive line play with his hair-trigger quickness, Willis knew what had happened.

Marvin Lewis had not been hired by the NFL office, or pressure groups, or $250-per-hour lawyers. From what Willis could see, Lewis had been hired by the same motivation that spurred Paul Brown to call Willis in the summer of 1946 and convince his All-American nose tackle from their Ohio State days together to put off taking that job coaching the line at Kentucky State and come play both sides of the line for the inaugural Cleveland Browns.

Paul Brown then needed no convincing to present Willis into the Hall of Fame on the steps of Canton some 30 years later.

“Paul thought I was one of the best players and Mike Brown is a lot like his father in many ways,” Willis said Monday. “He’s going to do what he wants to do. Nobody is going to tell Mike Brown what he’s going to do. He found a guy he wanted to lead his program and he hired him because he thought he was the most qualified guy just like his father did.”

Willis is 81 now and not as quick, but his mind is still jagged-edge sharp. The hiring of Lewis, the eighth African-American to ever coach in the NFL, left Willis ecstatic.

“Frankly, I feel like there should be more Black head coaches,” Willis said.
“Look at how many are assistants who come up through the ranks and pay their dues. I think this is great because Marvin is the guy who can turn this around. He will really do this team proud. Marvin is a top-flight guy and
I think it’s going to be a turning point for the Bengals.”

Lewis might have paid his dues, but it was guys like Willis who came through with the down payment of some memories you’d rather not have.

“You call them the good old days, but sometimes the old days weren’t that good,” Willis said. “You tend to remember just the good times and forget the bad times. I’d rather not get into any of that stuff.”

But he does remember traveling out of town with the Ohio State track team once and not being allowed to stay with his teammates in a hotel. Instead, he and the other African-American runner had to spend the night in a boarding house where rooms were rented by the hour.

“I was in a bad situation,” is all Willis will say. “You could say you always call a person that can help you in a situation like that. I called Paul Brown.”

In 2003, all this is hard for us to believe. Lewis sits in Paul Brown Stadium now planning for the season ahead that includes a training camp in Georgetown, Ky., and the only race factor is the 40-yard dash.

“I had some embarrassing moments, but never when I was on a team with Paul Brown,” Willis said. “You hear about what a great organizer he was.

You have to know what situations you might have to face if you brought your football team out of town. You would have to scout the situation and anticipate the embarrassment that might be caused and I never saw any of that.”

Willis never heard Brown talk about Black and White. There was no Great Experiment as in baseball with Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey.

In the summer of ’46, Brown slyly and quietly arranged through a third party for Willis to swing by the Browns’ training camp on his way to a tryout in Canada. When Willis showed up near the end of practice, he heard Brown holler across the field, “Do you still think you can play?” and the next thing he knew he was in uniform. And it didn’t even dawn on him that he was the only Black guy.

“You could be talking with Paul Brown,” Willis said, “and he just didn’t see guys as white guys or black guys. That’s just the way he was. Could you help his team was all he wanted to know.”

Willis’ high school coach back in Columbus had played at the University of Illinois and urged him to go there. But he had second thoughts with Brown the coach at Ohio State in Willis’ hometown.

“He thought playing for Paul at home would be better for me,” Willis said. “I think now it was because he knew of Paul’s reputation for being fair (with Black players) and playing the best players. I think that had something to do with it.”

Of course, Willis had something to do with it, too. He had as much to do with integrating the game as Brown with his immense dignity and All-Pro talent. But he knows he and Brown are from another era. They are just two guys who didn’t make a big deal about it.

But Willis thinks the hiring of Lewis is a big deal. Along with Ohio State winning the national championship, this has been one of his best months ever.

Willis has never met Lewis. But he knows people who do and he has read the newspapers and the internet about him.

“Marvin is the kind of guy that can talk to the modern player,” Willis said. “And they do speak a different language than we did.”

But Willis knows what Paul Brown would say to him would be understood in any locker room in any era.

“He would tell Marvin he had faith in him doing the job and he was 100 percent behind him,” Willis said. “He knew that he has gone through the ranks and Paul would tell him he was the best qualified guy for the job.” Kind of like the day on a practice field 57 seasons ago. Sometimes, the biggest changes aren’t really changes at all.

[HineyBuck]

I'm one of the BuckeyePlanet old farts--born in 1950. So Bill Willis was before even my time. But when I talk to my dad about the Buckeye greats of old, Bill Willis is invariably one of the first names he mentions, even before Cassady, Janowicz, and Harley. He is a legend among legends.

[Bucklion]

He still goes to the Hall, and does the autograph circuit once in a while...more the last couple of years. He's very nice, and was certainly a fantasic player.

[Steve19]

Originally Posted by HineyBuck

I'm one of the BuckeyePlanet old farts--born in 1950. So Bill Willis was before even my time. But when I talk to my dad about the Buckeye greats of old, Bill Willis is invariably one of the first names he mentions, even before Cassady, Janowicz, and Harley. He is a legend among legends.

As for old fart, you go down that road alone HB

But, as for that memory, it was the same with my father. Jim Parker, Bill Willis, Hopalong Cassady -- they stood as Buckeye legends in his mind.

[OSUBasketballJunkie]

Canton

7/30/06

Color him bronze

Sunday, July 30, 2006


By Joe Frollo Jr. Repository assistant sports editor


The shouts came from the most unusual places.
Buffalo, Chicago, Brooklyn. Willis heard it everywhere from everyone.
Men and women, young and old, heaped verbal abuse on Willis and Cleveland Browns teammate Marion Motley in 1946, the year both helped to break pro football’s color barrier.
Aug. 7 marks the 60th anniversary of Willis signing his first Browns contract.
An All-America tackle under Paul Brown at Ohio State, Willis turned down a guaranteed contract with Montreal of the Canadian Football League to try out with the Browns.
“When I got to (training) camp, Paul saw me, walked up to me and asked if I thought I could still play football,” Willis said. “I nodded, and he said, ‘Go get dressed.’ ”
His first assignment was lining up opposite Mo Scarry, a veteran NFL center brought over to the All-America Football Conference startup team.
“As he centered the ball, I watched his hands,” Willis said. “As soon as he flexed his fingers, I charged. I was fortunate to get to Mo at the same time he snapped the ball.”
Willis drove Scarry into quarterback Otto Graham, knocking both down.
“Bill was 6-foot-2, but he came in so low on me, he beat the hell out of me,” Scarry said. “When I moved my fingers, he hit me and I landed on top of Otto.
“I thought he was offside, so we lined up again and told the coaches to check for it. Bango, he hit me again back into Otto.”
Willis pushed Scarry into Graham two more times before Brown yelled, “Enough.” The rest of the Browns had seen enough, too, to know they had something special.
“That incident broke the ice,” said Bill Lund, a backup defensive back on the 1946 Browns. “Paul just ignored all the stuff that came after (because of race), so all the guys did, too. Everyone saw what (Willis) could do on the field, that he was as good as everyone and better than most.”
fighting back his own way
Willis grew up with racism in Columbus, and he experienced it in college. While running at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia, Willis and another black member of the Ohio State track team had to stay with family after being turned away from the team hotel.
He knows, though, that things could have been much worse if it weren’t for Brown.
“The atmosphere around a football camp is reflective of the coach,” Willis said. “Everybody knew that Paul treated me the same as any other player. I never had any problems at all with my teammates, and that was a relief.”
Players on other teams — that was a different story.
Football is a rough enough game, but Willis took extra elbows and knees after the whistle had blown.
“I learned that the play was never over until the next play started,” he said. “You might be walking back to the huddle, and somebody would come past you and give you a shot. That first year was a little rough in the sense that some players would call you names. Some just to rile you up. Some because they truly meant it.”
As the season progressed and teams found out about Cleveland’s middle guard, Willis received fewer and fewer dirty shots. The racial slurs from opposing players also slowed as time went on, though it often was Willis’ teammates who lost their cool more than Willis himself.
“We’d start in on them, but Bill would say he’d take care of his own,” Scarry said. “The second time around, nobody said anything. People had too much respect for how he played.”
No control over the crowd
Off the field was a different matter. Though the AAFC included almost exclusively northern cities, Willis heard things from fans he still refuses to repeat.
“In Buffalo, where you would expect it to be like Cleveland, some of the fans were ... ,’ Willis said. “Let’s just say in order to get off the field, you had to walk real close to the stands. Close enough to hear everything being said. You’d be surprised who was yelling what.”
During Week 15, the 1946 Browns were scheduled to play in Miami, their only scheduled trip south of the Mason-Dixon line. Some players heard about violence planned against Willis and Motley. The coaches received death threats.
Brown kept Willis and Motley home. Cleveland won, 34-0.
“Paul did not want to, but he decided it was best to make other arrangements for Bill and Marion,” said Brown’s widow, Mary. “Paul always felt a coach was reflected in the type of players he chose to sign. By keeping Marion and Bill in the forefront for their skills instead of their skin color, Paul opened the door for these men to be recognized for their athletic ability.”
not about the headlines
A year before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, Willis and Motley joined Kenny Washington and Woody Strode of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams in doing the same for pro football — though with not nearly as much fanfare.
That was fine with Willis.
“I never thought about publicity while I was playing,” he said. “I felt I could show I was a better football player than the other guy without calling out names or getting into slugfests. Paul used to say the worst thing you could do to a man is beat him in a way he knew you were a better man than he was.
“The thing foremost on my mind was being the best player I could be. Paul was looking for that in me, too. Think about anything else, and you get hurt.”
On a team with seven future Hall of Famers, former middle linebacker Lou Saban said nobody could outwork Willis.
“Playing right there in front of me, I always walked away thinking I just saw something special,” said Saban, who went on to become a college and NFL head coach. “I don’t think there was a weak sister on the whole defensive line, but Bill was one of the most outstanding athletes I’ve ever seen.”
Scarry loves to tell the story about how Willis beat him up that first day in training camp. Scarry credits Willis with making him a better player than he thought imaginable.
Scarry also loved it when Willis made other centers feel miserable.
“Everyone had the same problem with Bill,” Scarry said. “I’d never run into a guy that big, that strong and that fast before, so I learned to put the ball further out to give me some room. Other guys had to learn that every week. There were weeks teams didn’t have a good snap all game.”
‘a fortunate man’
Willis played eight seasons with the Browns, helping Cleveland win all four AAFC titles and the 1950 NFL championship. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1967, a year before Motley.
But Willis knows how easy it would have been for his career to never have happened.
“When I first went to college, I never dreamed of playing pro ball,” Willis said. “There were no blacks playing pro ball that I knew of. I wanted to be a coach. ... When I look back on my career, all I can say is I was a more fortunate man than many at that time.”
Willis was deciding between a coaching position at Kentucky State and heading to Canada when he heard Brown was interested in bringing him to Cleveland.
It was because of Brown that Willis landed at Ohio State. It also was because of Brown again that Willis decided to give professional football in the states a try.
“Paul understood the culture of the day,” Willis said. So did Willis. He lived it, and in the end helped to change it. Reach Repository Assistant Sports Editor Joe Frollo Jr. at (330) 580-8564 or e-mail: joe.frollo@cantonrep.com