The Cost, Carried
Fourteen Lives
They were never just a headline. Tony McGee and Joe Williams would go on to win Super Bowls. John Griffin's shot at the pros disappeared. Jim Isaac would later be murdered. Some carried the anger for the rest of their lives. Fourteen men — and fourteen different ways of living with the same October morning.
They were never just a headline. They were fourteen men, and the dismissal bent every one of their lives. Some never played football again. Two — Tony McGee and Joe Williams — went on to win Super Bowls. One, Jim Isaac, was later murdered. Many carried anger and grief for decades.
For some, the price was a career. John Griffin’s path to the pros closed. Tony McGee’s draft stock collapsed from a possible top pick to the third round after Wyoming labeled him a troublemaker — a burden he carried in silence for years.
For some, the price was paid quietly, over a lifetime — in stigma, in anger, in the ways men cope when the world takes something it can never give back. Behind the words “the Black 14” are fourteen individual people. Meet them.
John Griffin looked like a sure NFL talent. The incident took his shot. He spent the next fifty years fighting for reconciliation instead.