Why profile Williams:
His career in football has never stopped taking interesting twists and turns. Most recently the former Super Bowl MVP (and first black starter in that game) made a successful return to his alma mater, Grambling State University. In his second stint as the school’s head coach (in his first he replaced the legendary Eddie Robinson), he led the Tigers to the Southwestern Athletic Conference championship and was named the league’s 2011 Coach of the Year.
While this is an obvious career highlight, it came after serving in football’s outback as the general manager of the Virginia Destroyers in the little-known United Football League. He landed there after leaving his job as director of scouting for the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Williams' time with the Bucs was a second tour with Tampa Bay, the franchise where he began his NFL career as the team’s top draft choice in 1978 and also as the league’s lowest paid starting quarterback. When the team wouldn’t give him the raise he felt he deserved, he left and went to the Oklahoma Outlaws of the United States Football League. When the USFL folded in 1986, the Washington Redskins picked him up. A year later, at the end of the strike-marred 1987 season, Williams made history as the only black quarterback to guide his team to a Super Bowl victory, with a 42-10 rout of the John Elway-led Denver Broncos.
