Part VII: DUFFY’S 70TH AND 60TH ANIVERSARIES
PART VII:
“We tend to resort to conventional, superficial understandings. We tie things up in nice bows.”
— Ken Burns, award-winning historian and filmmaker on accepted myths and research to find overriding facts.
By TOM SHANAHAN
Duffy Daugherty’s Michigan State football teams are a singular story. That is the primary historical context that belongs to the Spartans. No school impacted college football integration more profoundly — and that’s above and below the Mason-Dixon Line.
If you don’t want to believe me, listen to Barry Switzer, who teamed with Oklahoma head coach Chuck Fairbanks (1967-72), a Duffy Daugherty Disciple, to fully integrate Oklahoma’s program. Switzer was Fairbanks’ offensive coordinator and upon succeeding him as head coach led the Sooners to national titles in 1974, 1975 and 1985.
“Duffy did more for integration than any other coach in college football,” said Switzer on Page 1 of THE RIGHT THING TO DO. “He had players from all over the South. There were excellent Black players in Texas who bypassed Oklahoma to play for Duffy. He had all those players from the Houston area. Duffy was also the first to recruit Samoan players.”
Daugherty’s Hawaiian Pipeline included Bob Apisa, the first Samoan All-American player, 1965 and 1966.
In 2024, Daugherty’s influence is marked by two significant anniversaries.
This the 70th of Daugherty’s first staff as Michigan State’s new head coach, in 1954. His assistants, upon becoming head coaches, followed his blueprint of ignoring quota limitations. The 1954 assistants included Dan Devine (Arizona State, Missouri, and Notre Dame), Bob Devaney (Wyoming, Nebraska), Bill Yeoman (Houston), and Sonny Grandelius (Colorado). Three more Daugherty Disciples from that era were Frank Kush (who succeeded Devine at ASU), Chuck Fairbanks (Oklahoma), and Earle Edwards (NC State). They spread Daugherty’s fingerprints coast to coast.
This season also is the 60th anniversary of Michigan State as the first fully integrated team to play in the South with a game on September 26, 1964, against North Carolina in Chapel Hill. But that’s not all. MSU halfback Clinton Jones, making his varsity debut in a College Football Hall of Fame career, scored on a 42-yard touchdown run to “integrate” Kenan Stadium’s end zone.
In two more years, Michigan State and Notre Dame will mark the 60th anniversary of their Game of the Century, a seminal game despite the 10-10 tie played on November 19, 1966. The nation saw the contrast in the Michigan State and Notre Dame rosters.
Michigan State was the future with 20 Black players, 11 Black starters, two Black team captains – George Webster and Clinton Jones — and Raye as a ground-breaking quarterback from the South. The past was Notre Dame with one Black player, Alan Page.
Jerry Barca, an author and filmmaker, addressed the significance of the 1966 “Game of the Century” in a 2019 ESPN feature:
“There’s not a singular thing you can point to that says, ‘Hey, college football is integrated.’ But what Duffy Daugherty did with the 1966 team is a tremendous part of the evolution of race in college football. What makes a real ‘Game of the Century’ stand out is when it has greater meaning or context—maybe even beyond football. Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty…he had 20 African American players, and he had Jimmy Raye as an African American quarterback.”
As I researched Michigan State’s history in the past dozen years, I realized milestones were overlooked. It didn’t take Woodward and Bernstein. I relayed my Raye research that Raye was the South’s first Black quarterback to win a national title to the National Football Foundation, which confirmed my conclusion in a newsletter. I also relayed MSU’s 1964 game in Chapel Hill and Jones’ TD information to North Carolina, and communications director Steve Kirschner acknowledged it.
College football lore also fails to understand the Daugherty/Michigan State leadership dates to the Spartans winning the 1954 and 1956 Rose Bowl games with Black stars, including All-American Ellis Duckett and Leroy Bolden. Southern Black high school coaches began contacting Daugherty about their players. This was the genesis of Daugherty’s Underground Railroad, which totaled 44 passengers from 1959 through Daugherty’s final season in 1972.
“Obviously, Duffy Daugherty was a very successful coach, but I have more respect for him as a human being,” said Dr. Dennis Thomas, a College Football Hall of Famer from his playing days at Alcorn State in Mississippi, who later became a head coach at South Carolina State and an athletic director at Hampton University and commissioner of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. “He didn’t see color. He saw performance. He saw character. He was doing it before it was fashionable.”
So, why isn’t Michigan State’s role under Daugherty leading college football integration more widely understood and appreciated in college football lore?
The answer takes us back full circle to how Bob Grant, Butch Henry and Warren McVea got written out of history. The 1960s sports media avoided race, leaving Black milestones unrecorded. The vacuum was filled with misinformation, and the 1970 USC-Alabama myths overtook the national narrative the past 30-some years.
So, why isn’t Michigan State’s role under Daugherty leading college football integration more widely understood and appreciated in college football lore? The answer takes us back full circle to how Bob Grant, Butch Henry, Warren McVea, Jerry LeVias, Wilbur Hackett, Lester McClain, Jackie Walker, James Owens and others got written out of history.
The 1960s sports media avoided race, leaving Black milestones unrecorded. The vacuum was filled with misinformation, and the 1970 USC-Alabama myths overtook the national narrative the past 30-some years.
The true 1960s pioneers remain lost in the shadows of history.
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Follow me on Twitter @shanny4055
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I invite you to follow me on Twitter @shanny4055
Click here for the Kirkus Book Reviews of THE RIGHT THING TO DO
Click here for the Kirkus Book Review of BUBBA’S DAD
The Right Thing To Do was also endorsed by the Vanderbilt Sports and Society Initiative.
Below are links to click on to purchase my books focused.
My books tell the true story of college football integration in the 1960s and address the myths and fiction that allowed a false narrative surrounding the 1970 USC-Alabama game to usurp the credit from the true pioneers. As I said when I spoke at the National Sports Media Association book festival, no two books provide an accurate portrayal more than RAYE OF LIGHT and THE RIGHT THING TO DO.
I’ll put my facts up against anybody, anytime, anywhere. Watch here.
Click here for my story on the 1962 Rose Bowl and Segregation awarded first place by the Football Writers Association of America. I tell untold stories on Michigan State’s leading role and the true pioneers of college football integration. Click here to read the summary as a first-place story.
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Click here to purchase The Right Thing To Do
THE RIGHT THING TO DO
The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s
Foreword by Ruffin McNeill
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Click here to purchase Raye of Light.
RAYE OF LIGHT
Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the 1ntegration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans
Foreword by Tony Dungy
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Click here to purchase my children’s book, Bubba’s Dad, Duffy and College Football’s Underground Railroad
The book for now is only a Kindle version on Amazon. Print and audio platforms available soon.
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My next children’s book coming soon: How Duffy Put Hawaii on the Football Map
