If an old NFL coach had pulled a Rip Van Winkle in the late 1950s, he'd wake up today and barely recognize the game. From the safety to the center, players have gotten stronger, faster, more athletic -- and the boundaries of race have disappeared.

That is, at every position except one: quarterback. It's as if that position was cast in stone, from Johnny U. to Bradshaw to Montana to Aikman. He's tall, stands straight up, throws from the pocket -- and looks like John Wayne (or Robert Redford). Hardly anyone strayed from the mold. The odd nonconformist, say Fran Tarkenton, was never really accepted as a "true" QB. To be short, a scrambler, lefthanded or, especially, black took too much getting used to. All those not reminiscent of a young, white Adonis in pads, take a step back. That coach could have slept through decades and not seen much of a change at quarterback.

Until now. Overnight a trickle has become a flood. All those 300-pound mashers who are as fast as running backs have changed what a QB has to be. And if the guy who can throw on the move is black or short or whatever, fine. Actually, the pendulum may have swung so far that the guy who combines both running back and quarterback skills could be preferred now. Steve Young, Brett Favre and John Elway -- a lefty, a freelancer and a hybrid of the young Wayne and Tarkenton -- have shown the way. Finally, it appears, it doesn't matter what you look like.

You can be black, alright. The new skills made requisite by Young, Favre and Elway have begotten Akili Smith of Oregon, Donovan McNabb of Syracuse, Daunte Culpepper of Central Florida -- all destined to be first-rounders -- and many more African-American field generals to come. As recently as five years ago it would have been unthinkable that Smith, who started just one full season in college, might vault ahead of the presumed No. 1 choice, Tim Couch. Owners, GMs and coaches used to assume that a black man lacked the intelligence to play quarterback in the NFL -- or that even if he was smart enough, a team would never accept him as a leader. That's why Warren Moon went undrafted after his MVP performance in the '78 Rose Bowl and had to play in Canada. That's why Doug Williams, after winning two division titles for Tampa Bay, had to go to the USFL before he got his shot to win Super Bowl XXII for the Redskins.

But that was then. Today, an NFL decisionmaker would lose his job if he cared too much what a QB looked like. Of the 23 QBs invited to the rookie Combine this February, an unprecedented 10 were minorities. Three black QBs being picked in the first round of the April 17 draft will equal the total chosen in all first rounds in NFL history (Williams in '78, Andre Ware in '90 and Steve McNair in '95).

The torch has been passed slowly, and mainly in single file, from Williams to Moon to Randall Cunningham to Kordell Stewart and McNair (with a few other African-Americans, such as Pittsburgh's Joe Gilliam and Cincinnati's Jeff Blake getting brief shots along the way). But with this year's draft, the door flies off its hinges. "It could be the dawning of a new era," says Chiefs offensive coordinator Jimmy Raye. Ravens running back coach Matt Simon says: "I think people finally realize that leaders don't just come in one flavor anymore."

No one suggests that the pocket passer is becoming extinct; Troy Aikman, Drew Bledsoe, Dan Marino and their offspring will survive because the game puts a premium on a powerful, accurate arm. But when you hand the game to a quarterback who's supposed to make something happen on the fly, with a pack of fast wide-bodies headed in his direction, you've moved outside the pocket and into chaos.

Coaches don't like chaos. They like tendencies, scripted plays and high percentages. You put a player like Favre or McNabb in charge, and you may relinquish at least a little control. But athletes like Favre and McNabb, skilled at making something happen while on the run, offer the promise to restore some order to that chaos. A coach can rest easier with the ball in their hands.

The irony here is that the word "athlete" has, in the past, carried a stigma. Years ago, when a black player got the rare chance to play QB at a Division I-A school, he'd run the option at Oklahoma or Nebraska, a position that required "more athleticism" than "classic quarterbacking." The very attribute that once enticed coaches to turn Tony Dungy and James Harris into defensive backs now would make them ideal quarterbacks.

When Dungy, now coach of the Bucs, talks about the athleticism required today to be a great signal caller in the NFL, he singles out three guys: Elway, Young and Favre. When Harris, the former Bills, Rams and Chargers QB who is now a player personnel executive for the Ravens, talks about playmakers, he calls up the same names. Three white QBs. All great athletes. Elway and Young are probably the two most athletic players to ever take a snap from center. "There are still dropback QBs out there, like Drew Bledsoe," Dungy says. "But everyone prefers a guy with mobility. The critical thing is: Can they make plays outside the design of the offense? You look at McNabb and you see a Steve Young. You look at Culpepper and you see a Steve McNair."

Of course, not all the "athletic" new-generation QBs are black. UCLA's Cade McNown is white, but his game is closer to McNabb's than Marino's. What all these newcomers have in common, black or white, is a style of play: the ability to throw and think on the run, to avoid tacklers, to get outside the pocket and apply pressure by creating something that couldn't possibly have been diagrammed on the sideline or predetermined in the huddle.

With this new kind of quarterback, the game will be less predictable, slowing (at least) a 20-year trend during which coaches have taken more of the play-calling away from the QB. Now, with better athletes under center, the coach will yield back some control -- and that will mean more aggressive, wide-open football. To hell with "Take what the defense gives you." Take what you want.

As accurate a passer as Aikman is, he's a sitting duck for the new prototypical lineman (310 with 4.8 speed). Favre's is the preferred style now, and McNabb may be the next QB prototype. Or Smith. "This is the best quarterback class in a long time," says Dungy. "Maybe since '83. For the black guys, it's the first in a long wave."

Take a look: Of the AP's final regular-season Top 25 for 1998, 11 teams started black quarterbacks. Six of those 11 were proud sons of the South, from schools that until 1970 would rather have given up their charters than play a black running back, much less a black quarterback. One of those schools, Tennessee, won the national title with a black QB, Tee Martin. Next year as many as six of nine starting QBs in the ACC could be black.

Dungy is particularly struck by the fact that almost none of these are the one-dimensional QBs of the old days. "This might be the first time so many black quarterbacks are in predominantly passing offenses," he says. "I saw guys who were playing well in pro-style offenses. You can't look and say, 'He's not done what we're looking for. He's just a great athlete.' "

Where once it seemed necessary that the QB look, think and act just like the coach, today's coach is finding himself comfortable with a man who looks different, but still reflects his philosophies on the field. The culture has changed -- and so, finally, has the game. Competition is too desperate for any coach to embrace traditional football values and hope they'll see him through another 6–10 season. Does any of this sound familiar? Think basketball, the 1960s. The essential qualities of that sport's "quarterback" -- the point guard -- changed when Oscar Robertson, Lenny Wilkens and Walt Frazier displayed a new kind of improvisational athleticism, and the game changed with them. Football has been a much harder sell for African-Americans. Allen Iverson said before his rookie season in the NBA that he thought he was a better high school quarterback than point guard. Why would Iverson, or Charlie Ward for that matter, choose quarterback over point guard, given football's sorry relationship with men who looked like them? Had the relationship between football and black college quarterbacks evolved faster, we might be looking at a dramatically different NFL today.

Sure, college football and the NFL have had exceptions: a Super Bowl winner (Williams, 1988), a Heisman Trophy winner (Ware, '89), an all-purpose QB (Kordell Stewart, 1995). But each of these players achieved his success as a curiosity labeled "black quarterback," as if that assured truth in advertising, like "white heavyweight."

It's a little early to suggest the NFL has entered an era of total equality, but what encourages Harris most is the entirely new type of talent pool. "It used to be, if there were 10 great black quarterbacks coming out of high school, six would be switched, two weren't good enough and the two others would play in option offenses. They didn't get four years of making decisions in a pro-style offense. They hadn't developed their skills because the systems they were in didn't call on those skills. But the colleges are developing more prospects now."

There may not be a man in America who appreciates what will happen in this draft as much as Harris. Thirty years ago, his coach at Grambling State, Eddie Robinson, told him, "Don't expect the NFL to be fair. You've got to be better." That's what Harris told Moon nearly 10 years later, before Moon went undrafted and began an absurd six-year NFL audition in Canada. Harris almost said, "To hell with this." But Robinson made him understand that if he allowed someone to switch his position, "the process," Harris says, "would have been further delayed."

As upstart schools challenged the traditional Southern powers, as younger coaches with fewer outdated notions of race came of age, as black athletes in other sports became icons to kids everywhere, the color of the quarterback stopped being as important. Tee Martin doesn't have to endure the filthy taunts that Gene Washington, now the NFL's director of football development, did as a quarterback at Stanford when he played in the mid-'60s.

Of course, insults from the fans didn't cut as deep as insults from NFL people who would call and say, "We'll draft you if you switch to defensive back." Harris may be too busy on draft day to reminisce much. But it will have been 30 years since several teams made that request of him. He managed to hold onto his position and his dignity.

He was finally selected on the second day of the draft, by Buffalo in the eighth round. He went on to beat five other QBs for playing time. "The position I played," Harris says, "was black quarterback. I never played quarterback, only black quarterback. Same for Doug, too. That disappeared some with Moon and Cunningham. Now, there are guys ready to play. Maybe this won't be an issue. I'm excited about the possibility of that."

This article appears in the April 19, 1999 issue of ESPN The Magazine.