Early Life and Career
Watts was born in Eufaula in McIntosh County, Oklahoma to J. C. "Buddy" Watts, Sr., and Helen Watts (d. 1992). His father was a Baptist minister, cattle trader, the first black police officer in Eufaula, and a member of the Eufaula City Council. His mother was a homemaker. Watts is the fifth of six children and grew up in a poor rural African American neighborhood. He was one of two black children who integrated the Jefferson Davis Elementary School in Eufaula and the first black quarterback at Eufaula High School.
In high school, Watts fathered a daughter with a white female, causing a scandal. Their families decided against an interracial marriage because of contemporary racial attitudes and Watts' family took care of the child until she could be adopted by Watts' uncle, Wade Watts, a Baptist minister, civil rights leader and head of the Oklahoma division of the NAACP.
Watts married Frankie Jones, an African-American with whom he had a second daughter during high school, in 1977. He graduated in 1976 and attended the University of Oklahoma on a football scholarship.
Watts began his college football career as the seventh-string quarterback and left college twice, but his father convinced him to return and Watts became starting quarterback of the Oklahoma Sooners in 1979 and led them to consecutive Orange Bowl victories. Watts graduated in 1981 with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism. Watts sought entrance in the National Football League through the New York Jets, but instead entered the Canadian Football League and played for the Ottawa Rough Riders, whom he helped reach the 1981 Grey Cup game. He stayed with the team from 1981 to 1985 and played a season for the Toronto Argonauts before retiring in 1986.
Read more about this topic: J. C. Watts
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“Some would find fault with the morning red, if they ever got up early enough.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)