Pollard, "Fritz" (Frederick D.)
Football
b. Jan. 27, 1894, Chicago, IL
d. May 11, 1986
Pollard in 1921 became the first black to coach an NFL team, and the only one until Art Shell took charge of the Oakland Raiders in 1989. Five years earlier, Pollard had been the second black named to the college football All-American team.
A halfback at Brown University, the 5-foot-8, 150-pound Pollard was a fast, elusive runner who had touchdown runs of 55 and 60 yards against Yale in 1916, leading Brown to an upset 21-6 victory, Yale's only loss of the season. He also had runs of 22, 42, and 47 yards and scored two touchdowns in a 21-0 win over Harvard that season.
After serving in World War I, Pollard briefly studied dentistry before joining the Akron Indians professional football team in 1919. The team entered the American Professional Football Association (now the NFL) and became known as the Akron Pros in 1921.
Although Pollard was a star performer and co-coach of the team with Elgie Tobin, he had to cope with severe racial prejudice in Akron. He later recalled, "The fans booed and called me all kinds of names, because they had a lot of Southerners up there working. You couldn't eat in the restaurants or stay in the hotels. Hammond and Milwaukee were bad, then, too, but never as bad as Akron was."
Pollard played for the NFL's Milwaukee Badgers in 1922, then joined the Hammond, IN, Pros as player-coach for two seasons and part of a third. During the 1925 season, he left Hammond to play for the Providence Steam Roller, then returned to Akron to finish the season. He played for Akron in 1926.
In 1927, Pollard went back to his native Chicago to organize an independent black team, the Chicago Brown Bombers, which he coached through the 1933 season. He also worked in show business as a movie producer and agent. One of his clients was Paul Robeson, the black singer-actor who had played football at Rutgers and was a teammate of Pollard's at Akron in 1920.