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Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod. The show about the past, rediscovered.

Back in 1945, a college student named George Talia Farrow

joined the football team at Indiana University. Nobody was expecting great things from him.

Taliah Fero was black, and this was a time in sports when, like in other areas of life, African Americans were assumed to be inferior to whites.

To say the odds were stacked against him is an understatement.

He faced ongoing discrimination and segregation throughout his college career.

But in 1949, Taliaero shocked the country and himself

by becoming the first black player drafted into the NFL. And then he turned the offer down.

George Tali of Farrow grew up in Gary, Indiana, where his dad worked in steel mills.

He told ESPNs the undefeated that, like many black kids at the time, he wanted to be a boxer.

But after his mother forbid him from the sport, he found another way to blow off steam.

Football.

And he was good.

Really good.

During Calli Affaro's senior year at an all-black high school, the football coach at an all-white high school in nearby Chicago set up a scrimmage to prepare his side for the Illinois State Championship.

The standout on the field wasn't any of the white championship players.

It was Talia Farrow.

The opposing coach was impressed, and he told Indiana University's football

program about the star player. That's how Talia Farrow found himself as a freshman playing for

the Hoosiers in 1945, one of just a few black players on the entire team. In a 2008 documentary, Talia Farrow explained

...