NFL ‘Not For Latinos’ in snub of Tom Flores for Hall of Fame
SAN DIEGO >> How do you get to Canton, Ohio? Well, if you’re Latino, it’s exceedingly difficult.
In fact, it sometimes appears that “NFL” stands for “Not for Latinos.”
What other conclusion can fair-minded football fans draw now that the National Football League has once again snubbed, for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, one of the most deserving people to ever hit the gridiron or coach?
Tom Flores, now 82, performed both roles with distinction, and he deserves more respect than he’s been given.
For his entire career, the Mexican American has had to be twice as good to get half the credit. Often, Flores doesn’t even receive that.
He spent his whole life achieving on the merits. Only to learn that sometimes, it’s not about merit. Sometimes, the game is rigged.
He was “Tommy” in the 1940s when he played in the neighborhood, when the Flores family lived a few doors from my father’s family in Sanger, a small farm town in Central California.
Flores’ family didn’t have much money. No one in that community did back then.
But Tommy had a gift: throwing a football — at Sanger High School, Fresno City College, University of the Pacific and, later, the NFL.
Flores grew up in a country town where they raise everything except high expectations for those with brown skin, at a time when — for many Mexican Americans — life’s greatest ambition was to simply get out of the fields.
Flores chose to stay in the field — the football field. And his talent took him into the history books. In 1960, he became the first Hispanic starting quarterback in professional football as he led the Oakland Raiders in the American Football League. Later, he became the first Hispanic to serve as an NFL head coach.
It’s no wonder that, as far as Mexican Americans are concerned, Flores is the Jackie Robinson of pro football.
Flores’ win-loss record as head coach was an impressive 83-53 in the regular season and 8-3 in the playoffs. Other coaches who didn’t fare as well have been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
As both a player and a coach, Flores has collected a combined four Super Bowl rings. He picked up his first one as a backup quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs in the 1960s, another as an assistant coach for the Raiders in the 1970s, and two more as head coach for the Raiders in the 1980s — first in Oakland, then in Los Angeles.
The team’s controversial owner, the late Al Davis, defied the NFL by moving the franchise to the No. 2 market in the country.
Davis put Flores on the map when he hired him as the Raiders’ head coach. And now, some say, it’s Davis who’s keeping Flores out of the Hall of Fame. The theory goes that many connected to Davis are persona non grata with the league’s pooh-bahs. Davis died in 2011. But, legend has it, his ghost still haunts Flores.
Back in Sanger, now that Flores has again missed the bus to Canton, there’s anger over how a favorite son was done wrong. Life stories like this are almost unheard of. People don’t start where Flores started and wind up where he did.
Maybe the snub is about Davis. Maybe it’s about ethnicity. We don’t know.
I’ll tell you what this isn’t about, and that’s football. Tommy mastered football. And Tommy should be honored for his achievements.
Those who grew up with Flores insist he’s never been spiteful or prejudiced. The NFL could learn from that example.