The majority of the Harlem Globetrotters left San Antonio this weekend after a fun time at the AT&T Center, but another one seems to be arriving a few days late.
Bill Cosby is in town Sunday for his performance at the Majestic Theater on January 29, 2012.
What? You didn’t know Cosby is Harlem Globetrotter?
Cosby became the first ever honorary Harlem Globetrotter in 1972.
Since then Henry Kissinger (1976), Bob Hope (1977), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1989), Whoopi Goldberg (1990), Nelson Mandela (1996), Jackie Joyner-Kersee (1999), Pope John Paul II (2000), and Jesse Jackson (2001) have been officially named Globetrotters.
The Pope was ordained in front of 50,000 in Saint Peter’s Square in a moving ceremony.
Only Cosby, in 1972, and Magic Johnson, in 2003, have the distinction of being signed to life time contracts with the Globetrotters, for $1 a year.
Cosby has bragging rights, because in 1986, his pay was increased to $1.05.
In 2009, the Globetrotters drafted Tim Howard, the goalkeeper for the U.S. national soccer team and a former basketball player, as an ambassador for their club.
Globetrotter coach Jimmy Blacklock has an interesting history too.
Blacklock, a star player at Houston Yates High School, went on to play his freshman year in 1970 at Tyler Junior College. University of Texas at Austin basketball coach Leon Black was scouting for their first ever black play that could make an impact for the team.
It was only six years after the University of Texas in Austin allowed integration of blacks into dormitories that Coach Black was able to recruit Blacklock to come to UT at start of 1971 school term.
Bias was ingrained into our society and culture when Blacklock arrived. America watched to see if racial progress would occur in Texas collegiate sports.
Blacklock went to work for the Globetrotters in 1974. He was astandout point guard and dribbler playing in over 2,500 games for the Ambassadors of Goodwill. Along the way he visited 62 countries in his career and became a player-coach for the Globetrotters for one season in 1997. Last fall he was named their new coach.
In 1983, Blacklock was in Los Angeles for a Globetrotter game, when he and team members Ovie Dotson and Lou Dunbar went shopping in Santa Barbara. A few minutes after getting into a taxi, the three suddenly found themselves surrounded by a dozen armed policemen who forced them out and onto the ground.
The trio was handcuffed behind their backs; while they were forced to lay flat faced down and spread-eagled.
Definitely an extreme case of racial profiling, the suspects had been describe as 5’6” to 5’8”, while the Globetrotters were way over six feet. After about 30 minutes, a local jewelry-store owner arrived to tell the cops that had the wrong men who had robbed him of $400,000 in merchandise.
Cosby, besides being a fellow Globetrotter with Blacklock, also joins the coach in first. Blacklock was the first ever black student to be elected as a captain to any Texas athletic team. Cosby was the first black entertainer to star in a television show. Remember I Spy with Robert Culp?
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