The Catalyst

Gene Washington and the rise of Stanford football

02/18/2021

---

 

WITH SUNLIGHT LOSING ground to the shadows at Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium, Gene Washington caught a pass from Jim Plunkett and turned upfield late in the 1968 Big Game.  

Twenty-two yards later, as Washington rose from a tackle, coach John Ralston knew the time had come, and beckoned his receiver to come off the field. As Washington jogged toward the sideline, Stanford fans began to applaud, with sound growing into an ovation and then a crescendo. Meanwhile, a chant echoed through Strawberry Canyon: 

“We love Washington! We love Washington! … ”

It wasn’t just the Pac-8-record of 71 catches in a 10-game season or Washington’s ownership of just about every school and conference receiving record that led to this level of appreciation. It was a sense of anticipation. Of what, they knew not, only that Stanford was changing and Washington was leading that change. Stanford, its football program and the university, was entering the modern age.   

If Stanford conducted a roll call of its own football history, one of its first thank-yous should be to Washington. Stanford was in need of reinvention as it embarked into the turbulent ‘60s, stuck in a white middle- to upper-class system of education that discouraged diversity and hamstrung its football program. 

“Cactus” Jack Curtice, Stanford’s coach from 1958-62 and so nicknamed for his country upbringing and for the Western outposts he’d coached in, began to dip his toe in the desegregation waters out of necessity, after Stanford sunk to 0-10 in 1960.

Running back Tom Williams walked on in 1958, becoming Stanford’s first Black player of the 20th century. Morrison Warren, brother of current Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren, was Stanford’s first Black recruit and played parts of the 1962 and 1963 seasons at defensive back and linebacker during a career curtailed by injuries. 

Ralston didn’t just dip his toe, he dove in headfirst. Ralston wasn’t afraid to battle the powers of the day, USC and UCLA, in the fertile recruiting grounds of their own backyard. With cooperation from the Stanford admissions department, which began to expand its scope, Ralston began to truly recruit Black players for the first time in the school’s history.

By 1964, Stanford had six Black varsity players and that number was expanding. But Stanford lacked one thing -- the one big-time Black player to give the program credibility in the recruiting wars, attract more talent, and show the country that Stanford football and the university were in lockstep in welcoming Black athletes and students. 

That player was Gene Washington.

Student-body president, straight-A student, No. 1 recruit in Southern California.

“I was the catalyst,” he said.

Washington seemed destined for USC. His cousin, Willie Brown was an All-American and the original tailback in coach John McKay’s ‘Tailback U’ and his high school, powerful Long Beach Poly, was practically a USC farm club. 

However, Washington was his own man, one with 50 scholarship offers. To make sense of them, Gene tapped into a local banking executive, Don Muchmore, a trusted family friend. Muchmore convinced Gene there was more than USC or UCLA. There was Stanford and the Ivy League. 

And there was another issue: Washington was a quarterback. A Black quarterback.

IN 1951, DRAKE University had a Heisman Trophy contender at quarterback named Johnny Bright. Before a midseason game at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State), it was an open secret that Bright, who was Black, was a marked man. 

Over the first seven minutes of the game, Bright was knocked unconscious three times by white A&M defensive tackle Wilbanks Smith. The final blow, which broke Bright’s jaw, occurred while Bright stood alone in the backfield, long after handing the ball off. A six-photograph sequence of the play was so alarming it earned Des Moines Register cameramen John Robinson and Don Ultang a Pulitzer Prize.

In 2005, 22 years after Bright’s death, Oklahoma State president David J. Schmidly wrote a letter to Drake president David Maxwell formally apologizing for the incident. 

Even as many college and pro teams integrated in the 1950s and ‘60s, the quarterback position remained off limits. 

“The quarterback is the titular head of the team, and a lot of people weren’t going to have a Black man as the titular head of the team,” Washington said. “That was the racial situation then. We can’t have a black man leading our team.”

Instead, Black quarterbacks were forced to switch positions. Either that or be benched or cut. 

There was no Black quarterback at a current Pac-12 school until Willie Wood, a future Pro Football Hall of Fame safety, split time for USC in 1957. Wood was greeted with hate mail and excluded from some alumni events. 

Willie Thrower of the Chicago Bears was the first Black quarterback to play in the modern NFL. Seven years after the league’s modern color barrier was broken, Thrower played as a backup in one 1953 contest.

In 1968, Marlin Briscoe was the first in the NFL/AFL to receive more than a spot start. An injury to Denver starter Steve Tensi and ineffectiveness of others convinced coach Lou Saban to bring in Briscoe, during the fourth quarter against the Patriots. Briscoe sparked the team in a close loss and earned five starts to close the season. At the end of the year, he was the American Football League’s Rookie of the Year runner-up, but never played the position again. Expecting a starting shot the following year, Briscoe was inexplicably left out of off-season quarterback meetings. He asked for his release and resumed his eight-year pro career as a wide receiver. 

No Black player started regularly or won a playoff game until James Harris for the Los Angeles Rams from 1974-76. In Super Bowl history, no Black player even appeared at quarterback until 1988, when Doug Williams led Washington to the title and was named as the game’s MVP. 

All this is to say that Gene Washington faced many obstacles to continue to play the only position he had played since third grade, and the least important was ability.

Washington knew he was breaking ground, but he also took solace and inspiration from the few who came before, particularly Sandy Stephens, a Black dropback passer who led the University of Minnesota to Rose Bowls in 1961 and 1962. 

“He was my hero,” Washington said. “He showed that it was possible.”

Stanford already demonstrated that race didn’t matter under Ralston. He started Dave Lewis, a Chukchansi from the Sierra Nevada foothills at quarterback in the last two games of 1964 and the entire 1965 season. 

Ralston recruited Washington as a quarterback. USC didn’t. Ultimately, Washington chose between Stanford and Princeton.

“I wanted to play quarterback,” Washington said. “And the football was better at Stanford. I wanted to go where I had a chance to be a pro football player. You have a better chance coming out of the Pac-8 than the Ivy League.”

With Gene Washington and lineman George Buehler, Southern California’s top two high school recruits stunningly chose Stanford, not USC. 

“They were in an uproar,” Washington said. “McKay was furious. ‘How the hell can you go to Stanford?’ Oh God, it was hilarious.”

STANFORD, LIKE MOST colleges of the day, used the ancient single wing offense. It allowed for some passing, but mostly was designed for sprintouts and rollouts – familiar territory for Washington. 

He was not a dropback QB nor did he have a powerful arm. He did have sprinter’s speed -- he competed on the 1968 Stanford track team -- and great agility. 

From his first Stanford snap, on the 1965 freshman team coached by Dick Vermeil, Washington thrashed opponents with his arms and legs. He averaged 8.9 yards per carry and passed well for a 4-0 team and was named Freshman of the Year by the Stanford Daily. 

A strong spring, including a Red-White Game scrimmage victory over incumbent QB Lewis, put Washington in line to start as a sophomore, and a shoulder injury to Lewis just before the 1966 opener made the decision official. 

Washington wasn’t accurate and threw some interceptions, but offered moments of brilliance and glimpses at his immense ability. He passed for two touchdowns and scored another to rally Stanford past San Jose State 25-21 in his varsity debut. After three games, Washington was second in the conference to UCLA’s Gary Beban in total offense and the team was 2-1. 

In the next game, against Oregon, Washington took a shot to his throwing shoulder in a miserable 7-3 loss in Portland. The injury plagued him all season. Washington barely could throw and turned into an option runner rather than a passer. When he aggravated the injury during a 22-20 last-minute loss to University of Washington in Week 7, Washington’s season at QB was over. Stanford went 3-3 in games he started during a 5-5 season. 

As he approached his junior season, Washington continued to be listed at No. 1. But his hold on the position seemed tenuous. 

A preseason injury to Bill Shoemaker at the thin flanker position was enough to cause Ralston to re-think Washington’s role. Four days before the opener against Oregon State in Portland, Ralston pulled Washington aside.

“Gene, our team would be better with you as a receiver,” Ralston told him. “We have a thrower, but we need the team speed. If you switched to receiver, we would be a better team.”

Washington, rather than fight the position change, knew Ralston was right. Washington took Shoemaker’s spot while strong-armed senior Chuck Williams stepped in at quarterback. 

“I knew that if I was going to play in the pros, I was going to be a receiver anyway,” Washington said. “Here’s what I saw: I wasn’t going to be a pro quality quarterback because I wasn’t a great passer. There weren’t many rollout quarterbacks in the pros.”

For a five-part Sports Illustrated investigative series under the banner “The Black Athlete: A Shameful Story,” Washington told writer Jack Olsen in 1968:

“It was strictly a matter of economics. I knew a Black quarterback would have little chance in pro ball unless he was absolutely superb. What usually happens is that the pro team tells you there’s no place for you at quarterback, but they can use you as a defensive back or flanker. And then they tell you they can’t give you as much money because you’d be learning a new position. So, I decided to beat them to it. Now when I deal with the pros, I will deal for the most money available to me at my position.”

With five catches in his first game, and nine for 99 yards against UCLA, Washington seemed a natural.   

“As a quarterback, you know all of the routes,” Washington said. “All I had to do was go out and run the routes that I’d been working on several years. Going from quarterback to receiver is a very logical process. It makes you a better player, because you know the vision of the quarterback. You know how he’s seeing the field and what he can see, because you’ve experienced it.”

The season ended with a 10-catch, 102-yard performance in a Big Game loss to Cal. Washington, with 48 catches in only eight games, already was the most prolific Stanford receiver since College Football Hall of Famer Bill McColl ’52. Now, all Washington needed was a top-flight quarterback.

Mr. Washington? Meet Mr. Plunkett. 

In an era when a 200-yard passing game was rare and a 300-yard game was unheard of, Jim Plunkett redefined the quarterback position with his size, physical strength and throwing prowess, and big-time numbers. He was the perfect passer for Washington.

Washington’s favorite play was the deep post. Breaking from a three-point stance, Washington shook a cornerback at the line and shot past him on a sprint, angling toward the goalposts as the ball floated into his hands in stride. Plunkett, a sophomore, had the arm to get it there. 

In the season-opener, Washington caught two over-the-shoulder bombs, for 79 and 71 yards in a 68-20 rout of San Jose State. Against USC, Plunkett and Washington connected for a 51-yard score on Stanford’s first play and Washington finished with six catches for 113 yards – not enough to offset O.J. Simpson’s 47-carry, 220-yard rushing performance in a 27-24 Trojan victory. 

Still, Stanford was coming into its own. The Gene Washington Show continued against UCLA when he broke the L.A. Coliseum record for catches, with 13. He followed with nine for 130 yards against Washington State, and 6 for 170 against Washington, including an 80-yard TD. Against Pacific in Week 9, Washington broke five conference and school season and career records. 

“Mercurial feet and glue fingers,” wrote the San Francisco Examiner. 

Stanford went 6-3-1 while building a conference contender in the coming years, and Plunkett would win the Heisman in 1970. Washington and Plunkett was ultimately a fortuitous overlap of talent.

WASHINGTON’S STAR WAS rising, and so was his influence. 

During a November, 1968, panel discussion at Dinkelspiel Auditorium moderated by Black sports radio talk show host Sam Skinner, Washington became a target. Sprinter Tommie Smith, barely a month after his Mexico City raised-fist Olympic medal demonstration, joined Skinner and other panelists in questioning Washington’s Black identity following comments published in a San Francisco Chronicle column. 

“Right now, I would say it would be easy to follow the groove of militancy, but I see it only as a temporary flare,” Washington said in the story. “After the positive outburst, a more positive kind of cooperative activism will emerge. Most black persons are in favor of a sound structure, not a burning one.”

The panelists argued that if a Black athlete was not demonstrative on racial injustice, that player would be “betraying his people.” A shouting match ensued as members of the audience defended Washington, who was not present. 

Reached later by the Stanford Daily, Washington didn’t flinch. 

“I think all Negroes are militant,” Washington told the Daily. “Militancy to a Black is different than militancy to a white. I feel no animosity. I think they’re being narrow-minded. They think their bag is the only way.”

Washington chose to fight inequality differently. He founded Interact, a campus club combining Stanford students and those from East Palo Alto’s mostly-Black Ravenswood High School. The goal was to provide Black mentors and leaders to Black high school students who had few to emulate in their own community, and to raise money for college scholarships. Washington also became a sounding board for young Black athletes considering Stanford.

Washington estimated there were 10 Black students at Stanford in 1964-65. A year later, there were 25 in his freshman class. From 1968 to 1972, Black enrollment doubled, from 226 to 548. 

At the end of his Stanford career, as he soaked in the cheering at the twilight of a crisp fall Berkeley day, with a conference-record 1,117 yards of receptions behind him that season, Washington felt as if he was on top of the world. There’s no way to know how much he impacted Stanford’s program, but it undoubtedly gave it momentum. Players recruited during Washington’s career would win two Rose Bowls and nearly reach another. 

Stanford football’s racial transformation “was going to happen anyway, with or without me,” said Washington, now 74, retired and living in Woodland Hills, California. Though maybe Washington hastened that progress. 

“If I’d gone to USC or UCLA, it wasn’t going to have the impact that it had at a place like Stanford,” he said. 

Washington became Stanford’s first Black NFL player, selected with the 16th pick of the first round by the San Francisco 49ers. He played in two NFC Championship Games, was a three-time first-team All-Pro and made four Pro Bowls in a 10-year NFL career. His diving catches and steady hands remain legendary both at Stanford and in San Francisco. 

A renaissance man of sorts, Washington tried acting -- an episode of the ‘Mod Squad’, and prominent roles in blaxploitation films like “Black Gunn” and “The Black Six” (Promotional poster: “Six Times Tougher Than Shaft!”, “Six Times Rougher Than Superfly!”). He was a color commentator for network football broadcasts, a sports radio host, a local TV sports anchor. He was a Stanford Athletics administrator and NFL Director of Football Operations, and served on boards of companies and service organizations. 

Today, Washington readily adds “Go Cardinal!” to his text messages and phone greetings. 

“I have and always will be proud of Stanford,” he said. “And proud of the way Stanford came through the 60s, moving forward and going their own way.”

Gene Washington ’69 arrived at Stanford with a rare conviction, as a Black man determined to play quarterback in college during a time when it was almost impossible. Though his plans changed, Washington did something else. He made a football program and a university better for his presence.