It was great that the Rams re-integrated professional football. But there are some who believe it was more a PR move than truly integrating football. There's a book called "Hollywood's Team" and according to that author, there was a minority political group in L.A. at that time who was rather influential. Reeves wanted the Rams to play in the Coliseum, but needed approval for that option and so, in order to gain approval for the Coliseum, they promised to integrate.

They also signed Woody Strode and according to him, Kenny Washington rarely saw the field and Strode saw it even less. If you check the statistics from 1946, it shows the Rams ran the ball 405 times and Kenny Washington had 23 carries. There were 7 players with more carries but fortunately for KW, he averaged 5.0 ypc, better than 4 guys ahead of him (in carries). They ran 170 times for 672 yards (3.9). The next two seasons Washington averaged 6.4 YPC on 117 attempts so it must have been hard to keep him on the bench. He led the team in his second season and finished second on the squad his third season. Still, they were the first to integrate and that's something of which to be proud.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2017 06:31PM by PARAM.