Burl Toler
*Burl Toler was born on May 9, 1928. He was a Black American football player, a National Football League (NFL) official, and a teacher.
Burl Abron Toler Sr. was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Despite his physical gifts and strapping size, Toler never even played a down of prep football at Manassas High School in Memphis. However, he quickly emerged as a dominant force once recruited to the Bay Area. While at City College of San Francisco, Toler teamed with the future Don's teammate Ollie Matson to lead the 1948 City College of San Francisco Rams football team to the "mythical" junior college national championship.
He was in the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity (Gamma Alpha chapter) on April 17, 1950. He was a linebacker for the 1951 undefeated Dons football team. Toler earned his degree in science from USF in 1952 and added a master's in 1966. Toler was the Cleveland Browns' 9th-round draft pick (number 105 overall). He injured his knee during a college all-star game that ended his football playing career, so he decided to become an official instead for 25 seasons from 1965 to 1989.
He was a field judge and headlinesman throughout his career and is most notable for being the first Black official in the NFL. He also officiated in one Super Bowl, Super Bowl XIV in 1980. He wore the uniform number 37 for most of his career, except for the 1979–81 period when officials were numbered by position. Toler wore number 18 for those three seasons. After retiring as an NFL official in 1990, he was a game observer for the league, which involved grading officials, for eight years.
Toler also served on the Board of Trustees of his alma mater, the University of San Francisco, from 1987 until 1998. He worked for 17 years as a teacher and as the district's first Black secondary school principal at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in San Francisco. The former Ben Franklin Middle School campus, now the home of two charter schools (Gateway High School and KIPP SF Bay Academy), was renamed in his honor on October 22, 2006.
Toler was married in 1952 and had six children with his wife, Melvia. He has eight grandchildren: two brothers and one sister. On April 21, 2008, Toler Sr. was inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame. He died in Castro Valley, California, on August 16, 2009. Several years after his death, on May 9, 2017, the University of San Francisco renamed one of the campus's student dormitories in his honor.
