This February, Sports Illustrated is celebrating Black History Month by spotlighting a different iconic athlete every day. Today, SI looks back on the legacy of Fritz Pollard.
Fritz Pollard, the NFL's first African-American head coach, was a true pioneer of the sport.
Along with becoming the league's first African-American head coach, he also was its first African-American quarterback (1923) and first African-American to play on a championship team (1920).
A standout athlete at Brown University, Pollard also qualified for the 1916 Olympics in Berlin for the low hurdles, but the games were cancelled after the outbreak of World War I.