HBCU football has finally recognized Edward Hurt’s legacy, and it is now time for the College Football Hall of Fame to do the same. The long-time Morgan State football and track coach has been re-nominated for the College Football Hall of Fame. He is one of numerous HBCU icons on this year’s ballot, and probably the most overdue.
Hurt’s Morgan State teams from the 1930s and 1940s were among the most dominant in collegiate football history. From 1931 to 1938, his Bears did not lose a game, going 54 games without one. Overall, his Morgan teams went undefeated for 11 seasons, including one in 1943 that did not allow an opponent to score. He guided the program to 14 CIAA football championships from 1929, when he returned from a brief stint teaching and coaching at Virginia University of Lynchburg, until his retirement in 1959.
And that was exactly what he did on the football field. He also transformed Morgan State into one of the first HBCU track powerhouses. His squad has won 13 CIAA championships, eight NCAA titles, three NCAA relay championships, and one Olympic gold medalist, George Rhoden. He also coached the basketball team to four CIAA visitation basketball championships. His resume is quite spectacular, to say the least. So, why isn’t he in the College Football Hall of Fame already?
Unfortunately, coaches like Hurt and Hampton’s Gideon Smith (who is also nominated again) are routinely underappreciated for their accomplishments. HBCU coaches who spent the majority, if not all, of their careers before the NFL’s integration in 1946 are often overlooked. Not only in the mainstream, but also within the HBCU community. Eddie Hurt was just inducted into the Black College Football Hall of Fame on Saturday. Gideon Smith is still waiting.
For the first twenty years of Hurt’s career, his greatest players were denied the chance to play in the NFL. Coaches such as Eddie Robinson, Jake Gaither, and John Merritt have all received recognition for their teams’ on-field performance and ability to produce professionals. However, if those men were around today, they would tell you that they stand on the shoulders of greats such as Hurt and Gideon.
Hurt produced two Pro Football Hall of Famers. Len Ford and Rosevelt Brown are also members of the hallowed hall. However, it is impossible to say how many more he would have had in the 1930s and 1940s if he had been allowed to play in the NFL. Thomas “Tank” Conrad, Brutus Wilson, and Otis Troupe could have played football at the highest level if they had been allowed to, but that was not an option.
Morgan State was loaded with talent under Edward Hurt. With no SEC or ACC recruiting black athletes, he essentially had his pick of athletes east of the Mississippi River. Hurt was also praised as a brilliant tactician and strategist. The Howard alumni was a math prodigy who employed both sides of his brain while planning plays. “It’s all a matter of timing,” he told the Associated Press in 1937 as his squad maintained its dominance. “In science, you will not be satisfied with anything less than precision. Coaching a football game requires the same level of accuracy. “You see, football is just applied math.”
Had Hurt had a different hue and the same coaching resume at Maryland or Penn during the same era, he would have been one of the founding members of the College Football Hall of Fame. Or if he had four or five Pro Football Hall of Famers, he’d likely be in there as well. But unfortunately, because he did it at a black college with nothing on film, his accomplishments seemingly don’t quite measure up. Coaches like Edward Hurt and his contemporaries don’t have many advocates in these Hall of Fame discussions. I don’t have a vote on any of them. But it’s beyond time to do the right thing and get Edward P. Hurt in the College Football Hall of Fame.
The post College Football Hall of Fame should induct iconic HBCU coach ASAP appeared first on HBCU Gameday.
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