First Black Quarterback of the NFL

1945 is remembered for the demise and Fall of Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire, their surrender to the Allies, signifying the end of World War II. It is a year in American culture almost as important and honored as the year of her founding. September 10 was a Monday. A chicken that was decapitated on that day would become famous after going on to live another eighteen months without a head, and Marlin Briscoe, the first black quarterback of the Super Bowl era to start in the NFL, was born.

He and his mother moved from Oakland, California to Omaha, Nebraska and she took work as a packer in a mill.

Growing up, Briscoe told writer Kevin Warneke in an article written for Briscoe’s alma mater, the University of Nebraska Omaha, that he lived near a 35-acre water park known to be the biggest and greatest of its kind in all of Nebraska, complete with a nearly 200,000 square foot pool beside a sanded beach, a waterslide, and countless amusement rides, and it would have been the place for all the kids to spend their summers but Briscoe was not allowed admittance because of segregation laws, and under the wisdom given to him by his mother at a young age, when he turned to football he knew he’d have to be three times better than the next man, for being just twice as good wouldn’t prove to be good enough.

He grew up throwing a football against a tree all day long, over and over, until night, scrambling in the yard and rolling out in every direction, taking his drops and checking off the progression of imagined receivers, before slinging the ball, imagining that he was Johnny Unitas playing in the NFL.

After breaking records, seemingly every Friday night while playing running back and quarterback for the Omaha South high school football team, he waited for the letters and offers from the University of Nebraska, Kansas or Oklahoma, but they never came. Not a single Division I school recruited him and only Omaha University (later University of Nebraska Omaha) gave him the chance to keep playing quarterback at the next level.

As important as his scholarship to play football and basketball, he’s said of his college experience, would be the degree he earned and his learning and understanding the concept and value of never giving up.

From 1963-67 for the Omaha Mavericks, he wore jersey number 27 and won 27 out of 38 games, three league championships and threw 52 touchdowns and eclipsed nearly 5,000 passing yards, and with his legs collected another 1200 yards rushing, and his play on the field was so unbelievable and incomprehensible that it earned him his nickname, the Magician.

One highlight in particular shows him faking a handoff to his right and then rolling out against his throwing arm before dropping back into a passer’s stance. Part of the defense chases the running back and part of the defense blitzes him, and before they can even realize what just occurred, Briscoe slings his arm forward and the ball rifles down the middle of the field, perfectly as it were tied by a string, forty yards into the back of the endzone and just out of reach for the defensive back, right into the hands of his receiver. Even when the tape is played in slow motion, Briscoe’s swift and blazing feet appear moving at an immeasurable rate, while everybody else on the field struggles to just keep an eye on him. It does almost resemble a magic trick.

***

1968 endured the heart of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, it bore witness to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy within two months of each other. Barack Obama would turn seven. Doug Williams was thirteen years old and Warren Moon was twelve. Michael Vick and Lamar Jackson would be born twelve and twenty-nine years later respectively.

In January of that year, Briscoe was selected by the Denver Broncos as a defensive back in the 14th round of the NFL Draft held at the Belmont Plaza Hotel in New York City. Out of the 462 players drafted that year, only fourteen would ever go on to earn First Team All-Pro accolades in their careers as one of the league’s greatest and top performers, Briscoe being among that short list. But his contribution to the sport would ascend the game itself. He’s yet to be inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame, and this feels like a great shame.

He entered camp that rookie season convincing the coaching staff to give him a look at quarterback, and as his mother told him when he was a child, he’d have to be three times better than his competition, and during try-outs he wasn’t given half as many reps as the other quarterbacks and by the start of the season he remained on the roster as a defensive back.

***

The first team quarterback for the Broncos, Steve Tensi, broke his collar bone in a preseason game and the back-ups, John McCormick and Jim LeClair shared snaps through the first game before McCormick was released in the days following, and then retired shortly thereafter.

After an 0-2 start to the season, being outscored in both games for a combined thirty-two points, the Broncos hosted the Boston Patriots. Jim LeClair was officially the lone quarterback on the depth chart, and he struggled all day long with two interceptions before being benched late in the game, and number 15, Marlin Briscoe, stood up from the cold metal bench and put on his helmet, and breathed in the oxygen of Mile High Stadium, at an altitude of over 5000 feet, with the snow-packed mountain slopes of the Rockies behind the stadium, and he trotted onto the field with the play call from his coach and then broke from the huddle and walked up to the line of scrimmage and took his stance under center, calling out the signals and reading the defense.

He took the snap and took to the position with tremendous grace, doing things never before seen by a quarterback. Rolling out to his right with miraculous speed, appearing to be running a designed sweep, the defense sprinting up against him as they were bulls, and then like a magician making somebody disappear in plain sight before a stunned crowd, Briscoe in the same instant as it looked certain he was going to tuck the ball take off, instead threw it 25 yards down field, on the move and without planting his feet, the ball threading through the air toward the sideline and placed perfectly along the boundary where only his receiver, an extremely well-covered Eric Crabtree, could catch it.

In Patriot territory, Briscoe rolled out again and with all the receivers covered, he struck up through the defensive line, with cleats blazing across the mudded field, tearing up the grass and clearing a path behind him, and changed his direction twice in the middle of the field without losing a beat, dodging a tackler each time before diving into the endzone, knocking the Patriots lead to three points with little time on the clock before the Patriots got the ball back, ran out the clock and barely hung on for the win.

Even in the loss, as he walked off the field his teammates nodded in approval of his heroics and shook his hand and congratulated him on the performance he gave, and the fans went wild, screaming like they had just won, and tried to touch his jersey and helmet as he jogged off the field and went down the tunnel.

***

The next week, starting quarterback Steve Tensi’s collar bone was healed and he was cleared to play, and he started the week following, too, at Shea Stadium in New York City against Joe Namath and the New York Jets.

By the year’s end Joe Namath would win and become the Super Bowl MVP. Throughout the 1968 season, he’d throw for 15 touchdowns, just one more than Marlin Briscoe, who’d start in nine less games than Namath that year.

The week after playing the Jets, Steve Tensi refractured his collar bone and again Briscoe was called to command the Broncos offense.

One can almost hear as a soundtrack to Briscoe’s highlights that year—against the Chargers, Dolphins, Oilers, Bills and eventually the Raiders, the horns and funk from the music of James Brown.

Dropping back five steps deep in his own territory against the Chargers in San Diego, before blazing up field and kicking up spurts of dirt behind his cleats, juking a defender and ramming into a herd of three others for a twenty-yard gain. And later, a play almost identical to it, where he slipped around diving defenders, and turned toward the sideline before gaiting up field, outrunning the angle of two defenders, then cut back inside while breaking a tackle for over thirty yards.

Rolling out toward his left, trailed by two defenders gaining ground on him and another pursuing him from the sideline, taking one giant leap forward and turning his body miraculously fast, launching the ball in the same motion sixty yards down field, like it was nothing, and it sailed down the sideline, dropping in stride with Jim Jones who caught it while trotting into the end zone.

Throwing the ball against his body on the run, like a bullet blazing from a rifle, toward the sideline where Eric Crabtree halted his route, losing the defender on his tail, and turned to the flight of the ball, away from the oncoming safety who dove as Crabtree caught the pass just before being shoved and tackled out of bounds.

And rolling out again, the opposite side of his throwing arm and whipping his body 180 degrees, then just as fluently delivering a thirty-yard strike right down the middle of the field between two imposing defensive backs, the ball placed directly into the hands of receiver Billy Van Heusen just as he crossed the end zone.

***

Against the Dolphins he’d drive the Broncos down the length of the field with under two minutes left in the game, with the score tied 14-14, with his signature rollout pass, leading a receiver away from the defender and toward the sideline to move the chains and stop the clock. Taking a snap under center, and driving his heels into the grass and churning his thighs, blazing upfield right through the defensive line, rumbling between linebackers, for ten yards before taking on a hit and was hurled to the grass where he used the momentum to dive past the endzone and win the game. The referees raised their arms in the air and the cheerleaders did backflips and summersaults onto the field. After Briscoe raised himself up and began trotting to the sideline, Broncos running back Fran Lynch nearly tackled him again in ecstatic celebration.

***

In the middle of the season he sat on the bench and watched, when starting quarterback Steve Tensi returned yet again, for their first of two meetings against the Oakland Raiders and the Raiders steamrolled past the Broncos in a 43-7 victory.

Against the Houston Oilers in the Astrodome, Tensi got injured for a third time that season and Briscoe came into the game down 24-7, and as soon as he got the snap and dropped back, a defensive lineman had thrown down a blocker and came screaming for Briscoe, five yards behind the line of scrimmage. Briscoe pivoted and spun outside, and the defender dove at Briscoe with an amazing leap and grabbed his jersey and Briscoe’s legs blazed out of his grasp. Then he kept rolling and ran up field, past another defender at his back, stepped up into a throwing stance and launched the ball across the field just before being tackled. The ball threaded under the lights sixty yards to the opposite sideline where Crabtree caught it and was then tackled inside Houston territory.

After stepping back in the pocket on another series, with a pack of defenders swarming him, he sailed a pass with a rainbow arc thirty yards, right before being sacked, into the back corner of the endzone for receiver Al Denson to catch it in bounds, placed just out reach for the defender, putting the Broncos back in the game.

The next week against the Bills, Briscoe dropped back, and within three seconds he had released the ball toward the pylon that appeared to be a terrible pass with no receiver in the area. But it was led in the exact right spot for Eric Crabtree’s route where he caught it and dove into the endzone. In the fourth quarter of the same game, he threw the ball almost in the exact same spot for Al Denson, in between three defenders that was out of reach for each of them almost as it were a magic trick.

Late in the game the Broncos running back Floyd Little fumbled the ball, and the Bills recovered and returned it, to then take the lead with thirty seconds left in the game. The Broncos got the ball back and Briscoe, in his own territory, stepped away from pressure, scrambled from tacklers, and took a giant leap forward into his throw and fired the ball like a cannon through the air, for Floyd Little, seventy yards down the opposite sideline and Little dove for it at the ten yard line, where the Broncos kicked a game winning field goal as time ran expired. Floyd Little said later, that Marlin Briscoe saved his NFL career that day, that the Broncos were going to release him after that fumble and then Briscoe threw it right back to him again the next series to win the game.

***

Down 31-3 in their second meeting against the Chargers, Briscoe showed his toughness and grit and the blood and iron of his heart, in a game where the sky bled orange, hovering a crisp Autumn breeze, and one could smell a cool fire burning in the atmosphere, beginning with a three step drop and then whipped a pass down the sideline in stride for Al Denson who might have scored if he hadn’t slipped on the grass. Then under pressure Briscoe threw a ball in the air that floated down into the stretched hands of Mike Haffner just as he was tackled by three defenders and shoved down on his face out of bounds. The ensuing play began with his famous rollout against his body and he delivered a spiral into the back of the endzone over two defenders that a falling down Eric Crabtree grabbed for the touchdown.

And Briscoe led his team toward an unbelievable comeback, with one pass where he deceived the safety in running one way, looking another, and then throwing almost blindly to his tight end Tom Beer back down the middle of the field for a thirty yard gain, and a touchdown pass just afterwards when he rolled deep in the back field and toward his throwing arm, then stopped when he had the defense sprinting that way, and threw the ball to the other side of the field for Ron Lamb as he broke in his route toward the pylon, catching it in stride as though Briscoe’s pass had led him to the Promised Land. The Broncos fans roared and the rise in their unified voice screeched while Briscoe, smiling and the linemen smacking his helmet in congratulations, trotted back toward the sideline. When they got the ball again, he skated out of pressure and scrambled and just before being tackled, slung the ball through the hands of a linebacker, that looked to be broken up by the defender covering Crabtree, and as the defender fell to the ground in his tremendous effort it became apparent he hadn’t touched the ball at all. The ball had been thrown perfectly to Crabtree and once he had it, he turned up field for an easy touchdown.

Down 31-23 in the fourth quarter, two Broncos players fumbled, and a perfect pass by Briscoe delivered right into the palms of his receiver and in perfect stride, was dropped in the endzone, and the game was lost, but Briscoe had proved to his teammates that day, that he can lead the team in any given game against any team, and that they could believe in him to work and deliver what appears to be a certain magic that he possesses in commanding the offense down the field.

***

By the end of the season, Briscoe’s 14 touchdown passes etched into history a Broncos rookie record that is still yet to be broken, and he earned runner-up for Rookie of the Year after only starting five games, but would still wind up as a defensive back on the depth chart.

At camp going into his second season, he asked for a chance to try out at quarterback again and the Broncos head coach didn’t think he was right for the position, leaving Briscoe to then ask for his release from the team, which annoyed and angered his head coach tremendously but was ultimately granted, and so Briscoe left on bad terms with the organization. The Broncos coach called up the head coaches of other teams across the league and successfully, according to Briscoe himself, had Briscoe blackballed from almost every organization in the NFL.

He looked to be out of professional football for life, just after one season, and after a season that showcased his phenomenal talents. But it was over now, and giving up seemed as the most logical conclusion and maybe the only one, but that idea never once crossed Briscoe’s mind. He thought about who he might call for another chance to compete, and considered the Canadian Football League.

***

The Raiders the previous year had a 12-2 record before losing in the AFL Championship Game to the Super Bowl winning New York Jets, and on December 8th during the season, when the Raiders played Briscoe and the Broncos, Briscoe and the Broncos took it to them, matching them drive for drive, with Briscoe marching his team up and down the field through the entire game, keeping his composure under pressure and throwing perfect passes before being thrown down on the field, then burning All-Star safety George Atkinson deep with a laser pass down the field to Al Denson for a sixty yard touchdown, another drive where he was hurled to the turf and kept his balance by smashing his fist into the grass, and then rose and ran and threw a pass in the back of the end zone for Al Denson again who ran under it just as it fell from the sky for the touchdown, before losing the game finally in the final minutes. Out of the Raiders twelve victories, only two were competitive, and the Broncos gave them their closest game. Briscoe displayed his majesty in cleats that day, and it didn’t go unnoticed by the Raiders coaching staff.

In 1968, before becoming head coach of the Buffalo Bills the following year in 1969, John Rauch was the head coach for the Raiders and he was in all likelihood greatly informed by his boss, Al Davis—a man who forever held a reputation in the league for being a Captain of Renegades, known especially as an outlaw to the NFL commissioner, and was one of the first influential owners in the sport to draft black players without prejudice. His famous motto being, ‘Just win, Baby.’

Under this influence, Rauch, after being hired by the Buffalo Bills, drafted James ‘Shack’ Harris to try out at quarterback, making Shack Harris the second black quarterback in the Super Bowl era to start in the NFL. Briscoe had proven that it could be done, and black quarterbacks, for the first time, were drafted out of college with the opportunity to continue playing the position in the Pro’s, beginning the year after Briscoe laid down the path.

After being denied a tryout for most teams throughout the league—due to the influence of his former coach at the Broncos, Briscoe then called Bills coach John Rauch and said he played against Rauch’s Raiders the past year and was looking for a new team in the coming season. Coach Rauch said something along the lines of, ‘I remember you. You wore our asses out. We’ll find a spot for you.’

Because the Bills already had seven-time pro bowler Jack Kemp and had just drafted Shack Harris out of Grambling State as their future quarterback, Briscoe made the team as a receiver. He was disappointed, and even angry but learned the new position he had never played before, and caught 32 passes for 500 yards and 5 touchdowns that year, earning MVP of the team, over O.J. Simpson, and in 1970 he earned a spot on the All-Pro team as one of the best receivers in the entire game with 57 catches for 1000 yards and 8 touchdowns.

The next season, the only game the Bills won was against the eventual Super Bowl runner-up Miami Dolphins, and even though statistically Briscoe had just 2 catches for 30 yards that day, he still impressed the opposing coaching staff, finding a way to lose defenders and get wide open in almost every route he ran.

That spring, the Miami Dolphins called.

Just three years earlier, Briscoe’s value in the NFL began as a 14th round draft pick, and the following off-season somehow dropped to almost nothing at all, where only one other team in the league gave him an opportunity, and at the end of the 1971 season, Don Shula—arguably the greatest coach of all time—wanted Marlin Briscoe so bad that he traded away a first round draft pick to get him in a Dolphins uniform.

Briscoe noticed the pursuit of perfection immediately when he arrived in Miami. In an article for National Football Post written by Ken Crippen, Briscoe said that when he first reported to camp, he saw fellow receiver, number 42 Paul Warfield, counting out loud through his breaths as he ran his routes, seeming like a crazy person. What he was doing, was securing the timing of every single step he took for every single play, so that for each route he ran in a game, by the time he looked up, there’d be the ball—ensuring no chance for confusion, mistake or failure.

On their way to an undefeated 17-0 record and Super Bowl victory, Briscoe battled injury and caught 4 touchdowns for the Dolphins, and his talent and esteem forced defenders to scheme against him which opened up Paul Warfield for 600 yards and 3 touchdowns. The Dolphins receivers would become renegades of sorts as hardnose blockers, practicing the technique with grit during drills day-in and day-out, which Briscoe, as he said to writer Ken Crippen, had never learned or ever done before when playing on other teams. All season, Briscoe blocked the cornerbacks lined up opposite him and the safeties down field, coming across the middle to take on linebackers, helping to clear a path for running backs Larry Csonka and Mercury Morris who rushed for a combined 2100 yards on the ground and scored 18 touchdowns.

And in a game against Briscoe’s childhood hero, Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore Colts, Dolphins quarterback Earl Morrell threw Briscoe a wobbly screen-type pass behind the line of scrimmage, and as soon as Briscoe caught the pass, he appeared to be posing for a portrait of the greatest throw of all time, in natural and perfect form, turning his body and winding back his arm with the ball in his hand, cocked above his helmet, spearing his other arm forward and straight, and then rifled the ball thirty yards down the field for a touchdown.

***

The 1972 Super Bowl rings are made from 14 karat gold with a shimmering and silver carat diamond in the center, representing their Super Bowl victory, on top of plated aqua blue stone, and surrounded by a circle of sixteen smaller silver diamonds each illustrating their other sixteen victories throughout the season. They are the only rings in NFL history that have engraved into them, the words, Perfect Season. Defensive lineman Manny Fernandez has said that it’s something that can’t be taken away, that the ring is something to last forever in eternal glory as a symbol of their perfection.

The next season, the dolphins repeated their reign as Super Bowl champions, giving the team and Briscoe a second ring and he played for Miami one more year after that. From 1975 until 1977 Briscoe continued his status as a journeyman in the NFL, playing wide receiver for the San Diego Chargers and Detroit Lions and the New England Patriots before hanging up the cleats in 1977.

After retiring, he lived in L.A. and bought a house with a pool, got married and they had a daughter, and was working as a financial broker in the district of Century City—just on the outskirts of the Twentieth Century Fox lot, and home of the Playboy Club as well as both of Ronald Reagan’s celebratory parties for winning the presidential election, and CBS Records and the esteemed Century Plaza Hotel which was the hotel of choice for both celebrities and world leaders, and right beside Century City was the Los Angeles Country Club. It would have been the era and place for living high, living what is called the good life.

Between 1978 and 1988, the Super Bowl would be played in Tampa Bay, Houston and Detroit, twice in each Miami and New Orleans, and three times in Los Angeles. In these ten years, Michael Vick was born and by the time he was three, he began learning how to throw a football, and would grow up as a young child learning how to fish just as a means to get away from the constant drug dealers and drive by shootings he experienced in his neighborhood; and after leading the Washington Huskies to a Pac-8 championship and Rose Bowl victory, quarterback Warren Moon went unselected in the twelve round NFL draft, won five straight Canadian League championships, then signed with the Houston Oilers and four years later won his first NFL playoff game at the age of thirty-two; and Doug Williams was a first round draft pick and had the lowest salary of any quarterback in the NFL, and after proving to be one the best in the league and his request for a raise went rejected by ownership, he played in the USFL for two years before it collapsed, and then signed with the Redskins as a back-up, and was considered washed up by scouts and coaches and the media, and throughout the season he came in to command the offense late in the game for the injured starter on three different occasions to lead the Redskins to victory, before finally earning the starting job by the time they were in the playoffs and then became the first black quarterback to play in a Super Bowl.

In these ten years, Briscoe would hardly take a breath of sobriety, as a cocaine addiction cloaked his lifestyle. He said it started out casual and recreational, which would have been occasionally during the days with coworkers, or snorting a bump in the bathroom, or a couple lines off the desk in his office, then getting high for a meeting, before and after lunch, then probably skipping lunch altogether, at the end of the day and at the beginning of the day, and then it became like coffee, then a serious issue, snorting it religiously and after coming home from work, in the night clubs, and kept using all night until going to bed, all day every day, and every night. For a decade.

It wouldn’t have taken a long time for the addiction to take hold completely, and he lost his job. Then he lost his wife, and she took their child with her when she left, then he lost his house and was living on the street.

He moved back to Omaha briefly where his mother had raised him, hoping it might influence him to get clean, get a job and a house, recover and try to begin anew. He’s said that it hit him awful hard, coming back to his hometown—he was supposed to be the kid that got out and made good, supposed to be a hero of Omaha, a man the younger generation could look up to and aspire to become. Now, he was around forty years old, unemployed and homeless and struggling in a fight for his life with a cocaine addiction. He underwent a burden of shame and failure he had never before let himself endure. While in Omaha he received a loan from a bank and put up his Super Bowl rings as collateral, and as a result, lost them both.

In early 1988 Briscoe was arrested and incarcerated in San Diego for possession. Before receiving a cell, inmates are stripped down to total nakedness and searched throughout their entire bodies, then given a jumpsuit and a pair of shower shoes. It is not uncommon in jails for the shoes to be used or to be the wrong size, or to not be given at all.

When withdrawing from cocaine, migraines from Hell wreck the mind like a freight train and suicidal incentives prosper. Nightmares manifest out of slumber until they appear as reality, nothing in life reveals any worth or value, and one undergoes a sickness similar to a never ending flu and it feels as you have come upon the doors of death, sweating through the flesh while all the blood in the body feels to have become frozen, shaking with awful chills when all the blood within feels like lava. The bones become so sore and weakened it is almost impossible to stand and walk. There is a total decay of energy among the spirit.

On January 31, the inmates were allowed to eat their dinner in a common room where there was a small television with a fuzzy and blurred screen, and they watched Doug Williams become the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl that night, twenty years to the date after Briscoe was drafted into the NFL. Williams threw 4 touchdowns, played through injury and when the stadium announcer called out his name for MVP, he shook his coach’s hand on the sideline and his teammates gathered around him and hung their palms on top his helmet. He held up the silver Lombardi Trophy and confetti fell down upon the field. Williams has said that Marlin Briscoe did so much for him and others like him, that Briscoe was the one who carved the path.

The dinner in jail that night was bland and in the appearance of slop, like canned mush made for dogs. Prisoners likely put a wager on the game in the currency of stale flour cakes and milk cartons.

Briscoe’s eyes were red and moist, tears stained upon his cheek. He tasted salt on his lip. After the game, the prisoners were ordered back to their cells, and Biscoe served out a ninety-day sentence where in almost a spiritual type of vision he decided with his heart and his soul that he’d not use again as long as he lived.

After he was released from jail, a friend loaned him $500 to help him get back on his feet, and he walked down the streets, and across the alleyways where his drug dealers operated and he saw them in the shadows and they would have flashed a bag of beautiful white cocaine like a Christmas globe full of snow in front of him, and he might have scratched his face and cursed under his breath with twitching fingers, and been shaking and he thought about getting just one fix—thought about all the money he had and he could buy some coke and still have plenty of money left over, and then he walked on, past the alleyways where he used to dwell and use. He’s said if he stopped that day then he’d be dead, no doubt.

***

Marlin Briscoe has been clean ever since. He began coaching high school football and eventually started a football camp in Long Beach that cost zero dollars to attend and so every summer he’d coach about 400 young kids without salary, and he volunteered at the Boys and Girls Club before working his way up to assistant project manager.

He’s remarried and together they’ve raised a family. He lives near the ocean and enjoys the sun and playing golf.

One of the best and funniest commercial campaigns that Nike ever ran featured Briscoe in it as the Quarterbacks Coach for a fictional high school football team, that is as prestigious in academics as it is in athletics, and the school is named in Briscoe’s honor. The commercial stars, among others, Michael Vick, Deion Sanders, Brian Urlacher, LaDainian Tomlinson, and Don Shula as head coach, with Jimmy Johnson as a history teacher, Jillian Barberie as head cheerleader, Steve Young as the town’s paper boy and Lee Corso as the school mascot doing back flips on the field.

Briscoe has said that without football, he wouldn’t have gotten a degree, and maybe would have gotten a job where his mother was employed and then worked his whole life as a packer in a mill, instead of paving out a way for those after him to follow his tracks, that without college he wouldn’t have learned the value of never quitting and might have given up on himself long before his time was due.

When the undefeated Dolphins were invited to the White House after the 40th anniversary of their 1972 Super Bowl, Briscoe was still mostly an unknown player in NFL history, and incredibly underrated, not to mention he wouldn’t have been the most popular or recognizable name on that championship team that includes Hall of Famers Don Shula, Larry Csonka, Bob Griese, Paul Warfield, Nick Buoniconti, Larry Little, Jim Langer, and also Mercury Morris. When Briscoe shook President Obama’s hand he felt proud that there’s a black President in this country that we all share, that somewhere deep down in his heart, in his soul, in the dust of American past, he had helped contribute to the opportunity for a black man to be elected, and while shaking Obama’s hand, and before Briscoe nodded and smiled and moved on, the President said to him, “I know you. You’re a trailblazer.”

Later that day, President Obama gave a press conference from behind a podium on a national broadcast with the 1972 Dolphins standing in three rows behind him. He said, “They’re a little harder to recognize these days. They don’t have the afro’s or the mutton chops, the fu manchu’s.” He smiled and everybody there was laughing and then he said in response to why he’s invited the 1972 Dolphins to the White House after all this time, that the answer is simple: He wanted to be the young guy up here for once, and after he spoke this line, he turned around and looked directly at Marlin Briscoe.

When Briscoe was asked in an article written for his alma mater, about what he wants for the legacy of his life and career, he said he’d like to be remembered as a person who stood up to the challenge, as someone that didn’t quit no matter what, a man that tried with everything he had inside him, every time.