The First Famous Prison Football Team
The games at Dixon Correctional Institute are not open to the general public. In the 1930s, a prison football team was so successful that New York State legislation was enacted to curtail their appeal to fans outside the prison, a concept that may have percolated into other states. On November 15, 1931, the Sing Sing Black Sheep drew a crowd of over 2,000 incarcerated individuals and 500 spectators in their debut win (33-0) over the Ossining Naval Militia. The Black Sheep would go on to post a 5-1 record that year, losing their sole game to the Port Jervis Police Department 13-0 in front of a crowd of 7,000 attendees. However, as reported in the New York Times, the Black Sheep were cheated out of the victory because the Port Jervis team, “slipped thirteen ‘ringers’ in against the convict eleven at the prison field… and won a victory, by proxy.” With two fewer players, the Black Sheep team were bound to lose. Apparently, the police department fielded a team of local athletes instead of suiting up police officers for the game.
The Black Sheep football team was active from 1931 to 1936 and posted winning seasons every year. Tim Mara, the founder and then-owner of the New York Giants, coached and partially funded the 1931 inaugural team. The Black Sheep were not only unique as one of the nation’s first prison football teams, but also because the team was racially integrated during a time when were there was an unspoken agreement that there were to be no Black players in organized professional football. In the Journal of Social History, Michael E. Lomax points out that from 1934 to 1946, “blacks were excluded from the labor force only to reemerge when the NFL faced a rival challenge from a new league.” Tim Mara’s New York Giants would not sign their first Black player until safety Emlen Tunnell joined the team in 1948.
Sing Sing and Football as Reformist Rehabilitation
The history of Sing Sing Correctional Facility is infamous, with almost all the death penalty executions in New York State (1914-1963) conducted at the prison. Perhaps less well-known is that Sing Sing was also the site of prison reform in the early 20th century and a place where the Mutual Welfare League flourished, a self-governed committee of incarcerated individuals that encouraged accountability and created committees for athletics, education, and entertainment.