For years, Tom Flores – the first quarterback in Latin professional football and head coach – doubted that he would be elected to the Professional Football Hall of Fame. But his fans were sure he deserved the honor and helped him get there.
Flores, 83, who is Mexican-American, was elected to the Hall of Fame this weekend, an acknowledgment that many fans said he was due years ago.
“Congratulations to former Sanger student Tom Flores. It was about time,” said a comment on a Twitter account dedicated to the Apaches at Sanger Union High School in California. Flores attended school, where the football stadium takes its name.
Flores was the first Latin defender in professional football when he played for the Oakland Raiders in the Football League in 1960. He went to the fourth Super Bowl in 1970 as a reserve defender for the Kansas City Chiefs.
He was a technical assistant to the Oakland Raiders when they won Super Bowl 11 after the 1976 season, and was the head coach when the Raiders won Super Bowl 15 after the 1980 season and when the Los Angeles Raiders won Super Bowl 18 after 1983 season. As a coach and as a player, they were the first for a Latino.
He and Mike Ditka are the only men who have won Super Bowls as a player, assistant coach and head coach.
Even so, Flores was often not nominated for the Hall of Fame, or he only made it to the semifinalist, a fact that did not go unnoticed; Flores mentioned his disappointment at being passed over in interviews in recent years.
The absence of Flores from the stadium was seen as a major omission by his fans, Latinos and other sports personalities, given the breaking of his barrier in football. Some have publicly called it “racism”.
After getting tired of it, fans launched social media campaigns and storms on Twitter and picked up some hometown meeting.
Alfredo Arteaga started using his Twitter profile last year to defend Flores: “Tom Flores won a Super Bowl as a player, won 2 as a coach and as an assistant 4 Super Bowls and is not in #HOF”, the top of him Twitter profile reads.
He was also on a list of fans who would write information about Flores regularly and send tweets to him at the Hall of Fame. Tweets used to be attributed to Hall of Fame voters, football writers and other journalists.
“I grew up a fan of the Raiders in the Bay Area, so he was the first coach that the Raiders had when I was probably 5 or 6, when I really knew what football was. He should have been nominated a long time ago. It’s long overdue, “said Arteaga, 47, of Orange County, California.
The Raiders’ website reported that Pablo Mora, who paints the grounds of the Tom Flores Stadium in Sanger, applied for a spot in the Hall of Fame for Flores with an appeal he painted on the stadium’s pitch two weeks ago.
A fan-inspired Coors Light commercial launched this year also entered the lobby, using Flores’ nickname, “Iceman”, which he won for his easygoing demeanor. The commercial showed Flores shrugging his shoulders when the narrator asked, “Why isn’t he in the hall yet?”
“It’s been a long time,” said Domingo García, national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, the Latin American group on civil rights and education, which passed a resolution in 2018 calling for the inclusion of Flores.
In 2017, LULAC honored Flores with his award for all of his work for his support for comprehensive immigration reform legislation and his work for inclusion and diversity in the government. He also gave him the Trailblazer award for his Latin representation in the NFL.
At the ceremony, Flores expressed hope that he would end up in Canton, Ohio, the site of the Hall of Fame.
‘A proud chican’
In a 2016 interview with NBC News, Flores said it was the fans who helped him understand its impact on the Latin community.
“The fact that I was on national television as a defender was a big influence for many Hispanic children and their families. You don’t think like that when you’re doing this,” said Flores.
“I asked people to come and say they were proud of me – someone told me that their father cried when I won the Super Bowl. I didn’t know who he was, but the fact that he achieved that as a Hispanic was a proud moment in his life. It makes me feel better. That’s where my ethnic origin comes into play, “said Flores, who calls himself a” proud Chican. “
Flores’ father, originally from Mexico, immigrated to California as a guest worker on the Bracero Program. His mother was born in California. He said at the LULAC ceremony that his father worked tirelessly to buy a house to replace the shed where the family initially lived and, eventually, to open a business, a small convenience store.
“It happened. This is really happening. Think about it. I’m sorry, I’m getting tears in my eyes again,” Flores said in an interview with Raiders.com.
In the interview, he said that being inducted into the Hall of Fame was “my last dream”.
The inauguration ceremony is in July.
When Flores trained the Raiders for the Super Bowl 15 championship – the first Super Bowl win by a wild card team – and the Super Bowl 18, Jim Plunkett was the starting quarterback. Plunkett, who is also Mexican-American, was the first Latino and the first minority defender to lead a team to victory in the Super Bowl.
Flores’ fans want Plunkett to join him in the Hall of Fame.
Flores’ election follows last year’s racial calculation of George Floyd’s death and during a coronavirus pandemic that highlighted racial inequalities across the country.
“I hope you did it because it’s the right thing to do,” said LULAC’s García, “but I’m sure – the national climate changed drastically just two years ago, when there was this anti-Latin, anti-immigrant, anti- emanating from the White House. “
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