Super Quarterbacks Produced by HBCUs
ATLANTA — Although Steve McNair came up just short in his attempt to lead the Tennessee Titans to the National Football League Championship last month, the second African American to quarterback a team in the Super Bowl will go down in the records books nonetheless.
McNair guided a heart-stopping comeback by the Titans that almost forced the first overtime in Super Bowl history. His team came up 1 yard short when the St. Louis Rams kept Kevin Dyson out of the end zone on the final play. The Rams won, 23-16.
McNair's 64-yard rushing performance set a Super Bowl record for quarterbacks. He scrambled 23 yards to set up the Titans' first touchdown and on the final drive, he completed six passes for 48 yards and ran twice for 14 yards.
Interestingly, the only two Black quarterbacks to start a Super Bowl — McNair and Doug Williams, who led the Washington Redskins  to a 42-10 victory over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXII — attended historically Black colleges and universities. Williams graduated from Grambling, where he replaced the legendary Eddie Robinson as the university's head football coach. McNair attended Alcorn State.
Anthony Woolfolk was an assistant football coach under Carter L. Jones when McNair attended Alcorn State. Woolfolk says poise and comeback heroics are nothing new for McNair.
"He never got mad at the defense or anything," Woolfolk says of McNair, pointing to a game against Texas Southern. "We were down 41-36 with 15 seconds left. We needed 60 yards for a touchdown. The first pass was an up and out that netted 30-something yards; the second pass was a ‘Hail Mary.' Two passes and we won the game."
And Woolfolk maintains that the success of McNair and Williams "says a lot for historically Black colleges and universities. We do produce good players and we can produce quality quarterbacks as well as wide receivers, linemen and everything else."

Storm Closes Schools; Lincoln Sends Students Home
OXFORD, Pa. — Problems with the electrical and heating systems at Lincoln University forced officials to close the campus last month and send some 1,400 students home. Those problems appeared to be related to the snowstorm of Jan. 26, which closed colleges and universities all along the East Coast.
With no heat in any of Lincoln's 15 dormitories, students were advised to leave the campus, according to university Communications Director Sam Presley.
Trouble started shortly after midnight, Presley says, when smoke in the student union building was traced to the building's main electrical transformer, which was overheating. Soon after that, a fire was discovered outside the boiler for the Frederick Douglass Dormitory.
PEPCO Energy Co. was called and determined that the entire electrical system for the campus would have to be shut down, Presley says. Emergency generators were turned on, but the loss of power meant that the oil-fired steam boilers for campus buildings would not be workable.
University officials believe that the systems were strained by heavy use during the storms of the past two days, Presley says.
No injuries were reported because of the emergency, and the university reopened the following week.
The problems weren't as severe on other campuses; however, the vast majority of institutions postponed classes for a day or two.