why would any person of character want to play for a segregated team...
If you are a high school football player being recruited by one of the top 10 programs in the entire nation, are you really going to consider that as a deciding factor when in all probability it (segregation) isn't even going to enter into your mind? Especially in 1969?
I started watching college football in 1966 (famous Notre Dame vs Michigan State game) and I recall Bubba Smith and Gene Washington were on the State team and were idolized stars. But athletes of color were rare even in the north where teams were predominantly white.
Penn State in 1969 had Franco Harris and Lydell Mitchell in the backfield. Apart from them, I do not recall any other black athletes on the team, though I'm sure there were likely at least a couple more.
I was raised with members of my immediate and extended families who thought nothing of declaring their open distrust and bigotry toward blacks. I can't imagine any typical white athlete thinking "Gee, I'm not going to that school. They don't have enough black players. They must be racist."
Now the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that what a person is presumed to be
thinking can be called a crime. And so your open wonderment about cultural mores of the time.
Democracy is the pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. H.L. Mencken
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