Michigan State enshrines Duffy’s 1965 and 1966 teams, but they remain overshadowed by myths entrenched in college football lore
PHOTO: Duffy Daugherty with his five All-American in the 1965 and 1966 seasons: L-R, Clinton Jones, Cleveland, Ohio; Bob Apisa, Honolulu, Hawaii; Bubba Smith, Beaumont, Texas; Gene Washington, La Porte, Texas; and George Webster, Anderson, S.C.
By TOM SHANAHAN
Michigan State football is a singular story leading coaching football integration under iconic coach Duffy Daugherty.
The College Football Hall of Famer’s rosters reflected a nation striving toward equality within the Civil Rights movement. His players, Black and White alike, built momentum toward tipping points to the future.
A touchstone moment was MIchigan State as the first fully integrated team to play in the South, in 1964. The Spartans traveled to Chapel Hill to face North Carolina on September 26 at Kenan Stadium.
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The also game marked the debut of four future College Hall of Famers, George Webster, who was inducted into the Hall in 1986; Bubba Smith, 1987; Gene Washington, 2012; and Clinton Jones, 2015. When Jones joined his teammates, they were the first four Black players from the same class enshrined in the Hall and the first four from any school since 1940.
A definitive integration tipping point was the 1966 Game of the Century matching Michigan State with 20 Black athletes and Notre Dame with only one. The contrast in rosters played out before a record TV audience of 33 million fans on November 19 at Spartan Stadium.
In real time, the sports media avoided race and many of these milestones were ignored. The sports journalism failures continue with the media regurgitating folklore about the 1970 USC-Alabama game and Bear Bryant myths.
Michigan State, in a long overdue move, is taking a step toward correcting history.
The school is inducting its 1965 and 1966 national championship teams in the MSU Hall of Fame for winning titles on the field and breaking ground off the field. The dinner/ceremony is September 13 at the Breslin Center. They also will be recognized at halftime of the game on Saturday, September 14 against Prairie View A&M at Spartan Stadium.
Prairie View A&M-Michigan State provides a game and a Duffy history lesson – Tom Shanahan Report
Jimmy Raye, the South’s first Black quarterback to win a national title, and Bob Apisa, college football’s first Samoan All-American, discuss the Hall of Fame weekend in my podcast with co-host Herman Bulls, “The End Game” (scroll down to Episode 27). Raye and Apisa emphasized this is a moment all Spartans to celebrate ranging from the four College Football Hall of Fame to the scout team.
The End Game: Race and Sports – Tom Shanahan Report
In 1965, Michigan State (10-1-0) was declared national champion by United Press International coaches’ poll (now American Football Coaches Association), the National Football Foundation and co-champion by the Football Writers Association with Alabama (9-1-1). The 1966 team (9-0-1) was national co-champion (FWAA) with Notre Dame (9-0-1).
MIchigan State produced this video to recognize enshrining the 1965 and 1966 national title teams in the MSU Hall of Fame. The ceremony was September 13 and the halftime ceremony September 14 at Spartan Stadium.
This is a video titled “Duffy’s Giants” with highlights from the 1965 and 1966 teams that also won back-to-back unbeaten Big Ten titles.
Although the 2024 season is two years shy of the 60th anniversary of the Game of the Century, this season marks two other significant anniversaries. The stories are detailed in my new book, “THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration.”
— This is the 70th anniversary of Duffy’s first staff. Duffy’s assistants upon becoming a head coach followed his blueprint of ignoring unwritten quotas limiting Black athletes to a half dozen or so. Other schools thought too many Black players would disrupt the locker room. Duffy’s 1960s teams proved the racial tropes wrong.
The assistants were Dan Devine (Arizona State, Missouri, Notre Dame), Bob Devaney (Wyoming, Nebraska), Bill Yeoman (desegregated Houston) and Sonny Grandelius (Colorado). Others from that time frame were Frank Kush (succeeded Devine at ASU), Chuck Fairbanks (Oklahoma) and Earle Edwards (desegregated NC State.
Duffy ignoring quota limitations what college football lore and the media doesn’t understand separated Duffy from the rest of college football.
— This is the aforementioned 60th anniversary of Michigan State as the first fully integrated team to play in the South. Clinton Jones was the first Black man to score a touchdown at Kenan when he broke off a 42-yard run. In the words of the great sportswriter Shirley Povich about the NFL’s Jim Brown scoring for Cleveland against all-White Washington, Jones “integrated” Kenan’s end zones.
Clint Jones and his 1964 touchdown at North Carolina that history ignored – Tom Shanahan Report
I’ve researched college football integration the past dozen years since I first began working on “RAYE OF LIGHT, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football Integration and the 1965-1966 Michigan State Spartans.” The foreword was by Tony Dungy.
In the Game of the Century, Michigan State fielded 20 Black players, 11 Black starters, two Black team captains, College Football Hall of Famers George Webster and Clinton Jones, and the South’s first Black quarterback to win a national title, Jimmy Raye of segregated Fayetteville, N.C. Notre Dame lined up only one Black player, Alan Page.
Emmy Award: The Indelible Legacy of Jimmy Raye – Tom Shanahan Report
Michigan State was the future. Notre Dame and the rest of college football that was guided by an unwritten quota limiting Black athletes to a half-dozen or so scholarships was the past. The list included USC, which numbered only five Black players on its 1962 national title team and seven on its 1967 national championship roster despite a campus located in populated and diverse Southern California. In 1962, MSU fielded 17 Black athletes.
USC has been wrongly portrayed in myths about the 1970 USC-Alabama as a model integration program. In the late 1950s, the Los Angeles Sentinel, a Black newspaper, exposed USC for not listing Brice Taylor, the school’s first Black All-American player, in its media guide. The Trojans continued to follow an unwritten quota until the 1969 and 1970 seasons.
But for all Duffy Daugherty set in motion, his teams have been written out of history. The Spartans’ progress running parallel tracks to the Civil Rights movement influenced schools to end their quota limitations and southern programs began desegregate. Among the true pioneers in the South were Wake Forest’s Bob Grant, 1964; Southern Methodist’s Jerry LeVias, 1965; Kentucky’s four players in 1966 and 1967, Tennessee’s Lester McClain, 1967; and Auburn’s James Owens, 1969.
By the 1970 season, six of the Southeastern Conference schools and 33 of the 37 major southern programs were desegregated. The seventh was Alabama and coach Bear Bryant. The same Bear Bryant who was hailed in the mid 1960s he may not be the first SEC school to integrate, but he won’t be the third. He was right. He wasn’t the third. As the seventh out of 10, Bryant was at the back of the line – not a crusader.
The media’s failure to properly report Black milestones in the 1960s and it has continued to fail history by regurgitating unvetted myths. These are among the reasons the true pioneers are lost in history’s haze:
— The 1960s sports media avoided race. Many of MSU’s milestones and the southern players desegregating programs weren’t appreciated or recorded.
— To this day the media doesn’t understand schools followed an unwritten quota limiting Black athletes to a half-dozen or so. Duffy ignored these limitations. The Spartans stand apart from any school, but many in the media think MSU just another Minnesota, Illinois or USC. In 1962, the Associated Press reported Michigan State’s 17 Black athletes was the most in major college football history. That total more than triples the five Black players on Minnesota’s 1960 national title team and USC’s aforementioned 1962 national championship team.
— Misinformation filled the 1960s vacuum with myths and fiction about the 1970 USC-Alabama game. Alabama coach Bear Bryant hagiography kept the myths alive without proper fact-checking. The myths weren’t crafted and spread until two decades after the game, but the media loves spinning Bear Bryant yarns.
The Bryant and 1970 USC-Alabama myths have been entrenched for so long the media has difficulty accepting stories discrediting the folklore, even though no facts support the false narratives. For example (I could cite others, but I won’t for now) I pitched the Michigan State story to Bryant Gumble years ago for his former long-running HBO series, “Real Sports.” Gumble knew about Raye’s career, but he replied to me his “younger audience wouldn’t understand the story.”
Oddly enough, the same night on May 23, 2023, that NFL 360/NFL Network producer director Osahon Tongo won a Sports Emmy for his documentary, “The Indelible Legacy of Jimmy Raye,” which Tongo told me was based largely on RAYE OF LIGHT, Gumble was honored at the Sports Emmy ceremony for lifetime achievement honor.
Straightening out history is an endless task. Here are two stories from my website debunking myths that have been at the expense of the 1960s true pioneers.
Pay particular attention in Parts II and VI.
Pay particular attention to Part II
No school did more for college football integration than Michigan State and Duffy Daugherty. It’s all spelled out in my book: THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s.
I will debate this with anybody, anytime, anywhere as I state at the end of this short clip the was filmed (but not used) for the NFL 360/NFL Network documentary, The Indelible Legacy of Jimmy Raye.
The film by NFL 360’s Osahon Tongo won a 2023 Sports Emmy on the same night in New York Gumble was honored for his ground-breaking career.
My challenge to anyone who wants to debate my research:
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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
