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EX-QB McPherson calls signals on social issues

Mark Herrmann

June 22, 2008

Don McPherson felt left out. All through the Democratic primary season, pollsters were asking black women if they felt conflicted about the choice between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, leaving this former quarterback on the sideline.

"Here I am, a black male feminist, and no one's asking me how I feel," McPherson said on the phone from his office in Uniondale.

Then he let out a big laugh.

No kidding about being a feminist; McPherson is on the board for the Ms. Foundation for Women. But he wasn't all that offended. He has devoted his life to social issues that many people wouldn't touch with a 10-foot goalpost. He is a political junkie with lots of opinions, such as this one: "I've said to a few people that I don't think this country is as racist as people think. I do believe it's more sexist than racist."

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That's part of what he has been doing since he retired from pro football in 1994 - trying to make sure no one feels left out. Conflicted? Nah. He is just fine with who he is and where he is.

The one exception was a moment last month when he was at a National Football Foundation banquet, watching video clips. "I'm sitting in the corner, saying, 'Oh my goodness. These are great players. I don't belong here,"' he said.

Sometimes it takes a while to realize you do belong. It is not every day a person can come to grips with the fact that he is a Hall of Famer.

That is what McPherson is and always will be, after his election to the College Football Hall of Fame last month. He never had to do any hard campaigning, either.

It was a matter of the voters scanning his career at Syracuse and seeing he was as much a football standout there as he had been for West Hempstead, winning Newsday's Thorp Award in 1982 as the best high school player in Nassau. It was a lock once they recalled 1987, when he led Syracuse to an undefeated season and finished second to Tim Brown in the Heisman Trophy race.

McPherson will be right where he always was supposed to be Dec. 9, when he is inducted during a ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria. He will belong next summer, when he officially receives a plaque at the Hall in South Bend, Ind.

"Right adjacent to the Notre Dame campus," he said. "I've been out there doing lectures on campus, but I've never been to the Hall of Fame."

Wherever he goes this year, he will talk about playing youth football for the West Hempstead Generals and being such a self-conscious 8-year- old that he ran off the field in fear and embarrassment because he wasn't as good as his older brothers (one of whom, Miles, made the NFL). He will talk about overcoming the fright by saying the heck with other people's expectations and falling in love with the process - practicing, improving, excelling, being part of a group.

"I was blessed with the ability to do something," he said. "I was always humbled by that."

People who know McPherson will spend the next year talking about how he insisted on playing quarterback when teams were intent on moving black players to wide receiver or defensive back (you wonder if he came along too soon to get a real chance at a long pro career).

They will talk about how relieved he was when the Orange did away with the ritual Wednesday night team drinking party (it was the year they went unbeaten).

They will talk about how he walked around the Syracuse campus in a suit with The New York Times under his arm, just to defy stereotypes about athletes.

They surely will talk about how he has used his fame to convince young people not to drink and drive, not to be violent, especially not to be men who commit violence against women.

"He's incredibly gifted as a speaker and communicator. He's somebody I consider a coach without being a coach," said Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, and McPherson's first post-football boss at Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society.

Lapchick, who is white, traveled the country with McPherson. "I saw the awe, literally, that every AfricanAmerican his age or older held him in," said the man who now heads the highly regarded DeVos Sport Management program at the University of Central Florida. "He knows that his success was built on the shoulders of other people and he wants to help other people have success."

So McPherson gives lectures and serves as vice president of the Hopewell Group, a philanthropy consulting firm. He was more encouraged than conflicted about seeing a black man and a woman run for president. He is hopeful about the young people he meets, young people lucky enough to learn from a scared little kid who became a Hall of Famer.