A professional football career was unlikely for Willis when he graduated from Ohio State in 1945. While the exclusion of black players was not a written rule, no African-American had played in the National Football League since 1933. The gentlemen's agreement had been in effect ever since segregationist George Preston Marshall entered the league as owner of the Boston Redskins. In his physical prime but with no real prospect of playing professionally, Willis took a job as the head football coach at Kentucky State College in the fall of 1945. Kentucky State, an historically black school, played against other small black schools near its campus in Frankfort.