The Magician

It was 40 years ago yesterday that Broncos QB Marlin Briscoe broke the huddle against the Cincinnati Bengals becoming the first black quarterback to start a National Football League game.

Forty years have passed — a long time, but not a lifetime. What a big moment it was then. Now it’s a weekly occurrence in multiple NFL stadiums.

His hair is gray now, and his receivers the young boys and girls he mentors at a club in Southern California. But 40 years ago, Marlin Briscoe played on the biggest stage there was, at a time when being a quarterback in the pros undoubtedly meant being white.

Theirs is a diverse group of astronauts and athletes, of politicians and performers, but membership requirements are universal and rigid. If you’re persistent enough to overturn 200 years of history and courageous enough to surmount stereotypes, you might have what it takes to become the first African American to achieve a position.

From the Big Time to the Big House and now, for Marlin Briscoe, to the Big Screen. Coming to a theater near you will be “The Magician,” a biopic on the life of Briscoe, the former Bronco who was the first black starting quarterback in pro football history.

The final script of a film documenting the life of Marlin Briscoe, the first African-American quarterback in the NFL, is close to completion. The movie is set for a release sometime next year.

Colorado sports personalities and franchises made a handful of appearances in ESPN’s sixteenth-annual ESPY awards, broadcast on July 20 – not all of them flattering.

“Brian Miller over at our Miami Dolphins Fan-Sided Blog has informed us colleagues of some recent accomplishments that deserve promoting. Although this is an Oakland Raiders blog, as my boss put it, ‘[this] really involves all football fans’.“

“Four decades have passed since Marlin ‘The Magician’ Briscoe became the first African American starting quarterback in the NFL as a rookie for the Denver Broncos in 1968…”

“There has been much discussion in recent years about the ability of an African American to quarterback in the NFL. Prior to the new millennium, the Warren Moon’s and Randall Cunningham’s of the world were more exceptions to the rule rather than a rewriting of the rule.”