Southern Discomfort: Reviewing Results if Blacks Viewed as 1st-Class Citizens

"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." - Martin Luther King Jr.

Cancel-culture considerations resulted in condemning an estimated 100 statues and monuments to white-guilt reparations rubble. Facing reality, such arcane activist analysis could be the only way for self-absorbed progressive outposts to stop superior Southern universities from dominating college football after former Confederacy institutions captured 16 of the last 19 gridiron national crowns (primarily with in-state recruits). After all, shouldn't the SEC and ACC be sanction shamed by self-loathing social scholars, if not disbandment purge, insofar as the first season Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Kentucky and South Carolina featured an African-American on their varsity basketball rosters wasn't until 1970-71 (two years after MLK was assassinated in Memphis)?

Could Auburn, ranked #1 nationally twice in the last three seasons, been atop poll a whopping half century beforehand? Truth be told while entering weekend before MLK Day, racially hung-up SEC and ACC incurred self-imposed performance penalties by failing to recruit regal in-state black prospects until Dixie denizens were finally tired of monumental hardwood horror. Pearl-of-wisdom memo to Auburn: The following droughts describe authentic self-regulation. It seems inconceivable but segregation-shackled Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Clemson, Florida, Georgia, Georgia Tech (posted win in 1960), LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State (W in 1963), Tennessee, Texas A&M (W in 1969) and Virginia combined for a paltry three NCAA playoff victories during 22-year tourney famine from 1954 through 1975. Moreover, Arkansas, Clemson, Florida (1967), Georgia, Georgia Tech (1960), LSU, Ole Miss, Texas Tech (1961) and Virginia Tech collaborated for an anemic total of three final AP Top 20 finishes in 20-season span from 1954-55 through 1973-74. Even colossus UK didn't win an NCAA Tournament title in 19-year span from 1959 through 1977.

For the record, ACC members in North Carolina all included black players on their varsity teams by end of the 1960s. There is a relatively simple explanation for why Auburn, Clemson, Florida and Georgia failed to participate in the NCAA playoffs until the 1980s. Despite excluding much of the ACC, a trip into the what-if world of hoopdom can be fascinating. What might have been for principally football-dominated Southern schools if they weren't so narrow-minded waiting until the early 1970s to treat in-state African-American hoopers as equals?

The biggest culprit was LSU, which wouldn't have been behind the eight ball with eight losing records from 1963-64 through 1975-76 if not missing out on eight in-state recruits who wound up competing at least eight seasons in the NBA and ABA (Don Chaney, Elvin Hayes, Luke Jackson, Bob Love, Robert Parish, Cincy Powell, Willis Reed and James Silas). As a means of comparison, UCLA's dynasty included 13 such long-term NBA players while winning 10 NCAA championships in same 13-year span. HBCU Grambling College LA supplied one of the top 21 NBA draft choices four consecutive years from 1962 through 1965 while LSU provided one top 30 pick (North Carolina product Pete Maravich/3rd overall in 1970) in a 28-year stretch from 1955 through 1982. Grambling accounted for nine NBA and ABA players in the 1960s while LSU's lone representative that decade was Bob Pettit, who retired following 1964-65 campaign. If not judged by color of skin, consider the following possible "started living (in basketball)" promised-land scenarios (Artis Gilmore attended high school in two Southern states):