A Sports Writer of 46 Years Corrects The Historical Record; Unsung College Gridiron Integration Heroes, In A Breakthrough Book, Honored As True Pioneers

“It’s a fascinating read that helps contextualize college football within the wider Civil Rights Movement, demonstrating the often-sporadic nature of institutional change. A compelling and essential story of one of the most significant evaluations in sports.”

–Kirkus Reviews

“The author gives the readers a true history lesson in this book….The author names real heroes who chose to defy the norm and take a different approach in an era of racial discrimination and segregation. The courage of these men produced the results that we are seeing today. History has been unfair to some of these men for not telling their story as it should be told, while others have been made out to be heroes by the media while they are not. The author divides fact from fiction and myth, making the truth plain to the readers.” —OnlineBookClub.org 5 Stars

The Right Thing to Do: The True Pioneers of College Football Integration, by award-winning sportswriter Tom Shanahan, meticulously details how college football was integrated in the 1960s and sets the record straight on how the sport broke beyond the limits of a whites-only enclave. Shanahan unearths the untold stories of college football’s pioneers — both in the North and the South. Shanahan documents how college football integration spanned the tumultuous 1960s while blending with the Civil Rights Movement. As the football world grapples with issues of equality and opportunity to this day, The Right Thing to Do, documents the past as a blueprint to what should be done in the future.

“I write about true 1960s college football integration pioneers, starting with Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty’s Underground Railroad teams and players who broke barriers in the SEC, SWC and ACC,” says Shanahan. “The stories also explain how the 1970 USC-Alabama game is made up of myths and fiction created nearly 20 years after the game to aggrandize USC’s role and obfuscate Alabama coach Bear Bryant dragging his feet.”

The story of college football integration in the 1960s was ignored by sportswriters of the era, and schools saw little upside to trumpet their racial accomplishments. The stories of these groundbreaking college football pioneers and the coaches who fought for integration—led by Michigan State’s Daugherty and his coaching tree, featuring the likes of Dan Devine, Bob Devaney, Chuck Fairbanks and Bill Yeoman—are compiled for the first time in The Right Thing to Do. It also addresses carefully crafted but totally false myths from the era, including the role of Alabama’s Paul “Bear” Bryant in college football integration—a role where Bryant was a laggard, not a leader.

Shanahan is available to discuss the following:

* The historical record on college football integration is missing many pioneers – until now

* How sports media fails to report on the racial gap in college football – and gets the story wrong

* How the unwritten quota for colleges recruiting Black players finally came to an end

* Profiles groundbreaking players and coaches who took brave stands and made bold choices

* Football nostalgia and unsung gridiron heroes are featured in his breakthrough book

* Why mythological assertions that Bear Bryant was a hero of integration live on – and shouldn’t

* Why Alabama makes no apologies for celebrating a man who dragged his feet on integration

* How Southern black high school coaches laid the tracks to the Underground Railroad

* Reveals the nature of sporadic institutional reform in the context of the Civil Rights Movement

The Right Thing to Do focuses on three big stories:

1.His peers considered Michigan State’s Duffy Daugherty a pioneer, but the true extent of his impact on college football integration is still being discovered. Michigan State players represented an overwhelming 41 percent share of Black players throughout the nation to win a 1960s national championship ring, according to the titles voted upon by AP (writers) and United Press International. Daugherty’s coaching tree heavily impacted the college football game, going back to Dan Devine taking the reins at Arizona State, and the mentoring of Duffy’s Disciples, like Jimmy Raye and Sherman Lewis, reverberates today with subsequent generations of college and professional coaches.

2. Student activism was key to progress in the Civil Rights Era, and that trend was reflected on the college football front—even when coaches did not respond well to activism. Sportswriters were unwilling to report on such efforts, such as when Colorado’s 1961 Big Eight champions declined an invitation to the Orange Bowl, wanting assurances that every player—Black and white alike—would be staying at the same hotels and eating at the same restaurants, practices not taking place in the segregated South. Student uprisings also put a halt to Bear Bryant’s backdoor effort to place his segregated Alabama Crimson Tide in the 1962 Rose Bowl, an effort called out by UCLA players and the Los Angeles Times’ Jim Murray—the only sportswriter in the country to cover the ill-fated effort.

3. The groundbreaking players who braved the prejudice and abuse of the era: SMU’s Jerry LeVias, the first Black scholarship player in the Southwest Conference; Houston’s Warren McVea, the first Black player to sign with a major Texas college; Wake Forest’s Bob Grant and Kenneth “Butch” Henry, the first Black scholarship players in a major Southern conference; and Gary Steele, West Point’s first Black football letterman.

“The flood of extraordinary Black athletes in the NCAA and NFL today may seem as inevitable as a river rushing to the sea. But it took singular men digging precarious channels back in the 1960s…and Tom Shanahan’s relentless spadework in The Right Thing to Do six decades later to understand who and what it took to make water run downhill.”

—Gary Smith, Sports Illustrated writer and National Sports Media Hall of Famer

“In order for us to move forward it is important to understand our past. I appreciate Tom Shanahan for helping us frame the past and point us toward the future.”

—Herman Edwards, former Arizona State and NFL head coach 

Media Contact: Brian Feinblum 914-462-2038 brianfeinblum@gmail.com

Tom Shanahan

    Biography

Tom Shanahan is an awarding winning writer with a 46-year career covering sports for the San Diego Union-Tribune, Voice of San Diego, freelance writing and his website, TomShanahan.Report. His three published books include The Right Thing To Do, Raye of Light, and Bubba’s Dad, Duffy and College Football’s Underground Railroad.

Football Writers Association of America recently awarded him first place for his reporting a piece on the 1962 Rose Bowl and segregation. He won multiple San Diego Press Club sports story-of-the-year awards. He also received a distinguished American from the San Diego chapter of the National Football Foundation. He earned a Braven Dyer Award from Southern California Interscholastic Football Coaches Association. He took first place in the Copley News Service Ring of Truth Awards. He was also given a President’s Award from the San Diego chapter of USA Track and Field.

A sampling of where his work has appeared in includes these media outlets: Yahoo News, The Wall Street Journal, Detroit Free Press, MLB, Miami Herald, The Charlotte Observer, The Tennessean, The News & Observer, Times Union (Albany), Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC), and Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 

Media coverage of Raye of Light included: ESPN, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, MSU Alumni Magazine, Dan Daly Pro Football, The State News, radio interviews with Lansing’s Jack Ebling and WKAR’s (East Lansing) Al Martin, and WRAL’s (Raleigh, N.C.) The Adam Gold Show, 102.5 Game’s Robby and Rexrode (Nashville, Tennessee) and other stations.

Samples of his podcast include these: The End Game: Race and Sports – Tom Shanahan Report and Duffy Daugherty’s Underground Railroad – Tom Shanahan Report.

Shanahan was featured in the 2023 Sports Emmy Award-winning The Incredible Legacy of Jimmy Raye. Based on The Right Thing To Do, a four-part docuseries is being created, Game Changers of the Century, and will be produced by Bolder Spartan Media Enterprises.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he was raised in Big Rapids, Michigan. He graduated from Michigan State University, with a BA in Journalism. He now resides in Morrisville, N.C.

For more information, please see his website, www.tomshahanan.report

    Testimonials

“Tom Shanahan looks beyond the myths and half-truths to tell the story of how this truly American sport slowly came closer to inclusion of our entire population.”

—Steve Wiseman, Raleigh News & Observer Duke beat writer

“I truly appreciate Tom’s unique ability to see more than just the surface of a sports story and to write about the real people and emotions. It is refreshing to have someone recognize the achievements of Black male coaches who opened doors for me, a Black female coach. After 25 years of knowing Tom, his writings still inspire and enlighten me, and it is always a pleasure to read his work.

—Monique Henderson, two-time Olympic gold medalist & NCAA 400-meter record holder

“In the long run this world cannot be a good place for anybody or anything until it is a good place for everybody and everything. Tom Shanahan’s book, The Right Thing to Do, underscores the history and truth of this statement in the world of college football.”

—Joe Romig, College Football Hall of Famer and Rhodes Scholar

“Such an important chapter of American sports history, one that was in grave danger of being lost forever if not for Tom Shanahan’s dogged reporting and insightful analysis.”

—Mike Jensen, Philadelphia Inquirer

“This is such an essential story in sports and society, a story that hasn’t been fleshed out and put into proper context until now. Tom Shanahan sets the record straight on a lot of things.”

—Joe Rexrode, senior writer and columnist, The Athletic

“The Right Thing to Do has the heart of a good sports story and the journalistic backbone to finally set the historical record straight, shedding light on a chapter of college football that has shamelessly been long left in the dark.”

–John Glionna, author and former Los Angeles Times feature writer

“The right thing for all of us to do – immediately – is to read Tom Shanahan’s newest epic tome, The Right Thing To Do. This riveting saga of the struggle to triumph with innate and powerful goodness, embodies the best of humanity’s efforts to right the wrongs of an immoral history. Shanahan shines the most power of lights on tragically bleak past and then find the bright side of our human highway. We cannot, or will not, be able to move forward to a better tomorrow unless we know and learn from what went down. Failing to engage on this important topic will only eternally mire us in the deepest depth of denial. The Right Thing to Do is a beacon of hope that makes us believe that a world as it can, could and should be is attainable. And the efforts to make it so are, are essential, and totally worthwhile. Read on. Learon on. Know on. Act on. It’s the right thing to do.”

— Bill Walton, BillWalton.com, in 2023.

“One of the great beauties of The Right Thing To Do is author Tom Shanahan unflinchingly names names. He shows us the good people and hidden figures who did the important of work of integrating college football and calls out the obstructions who were on the wrong side of history. The glory and shame of it is here, researched in painstaking detail.”

— Johnette Howard, sportswriter and author of The Rivals and co-author of All In: An Autobiography by Billie Jean King.

“Shanahan masterfully spotlights the zeitgeist that made East Lansing the epicenter of an evolving college football landscape in the decades that followed and would push the sport forward to its more racially inclusive present form.”

—Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press Michigan State beat writer

“This book researches the history of the when, where, who and why college football broke down racial barriers. It’s about the people who gave African-American athletes and coaches opportunities. The pioneers made personal decisions, commitments and huge sacrifices for diversity. The athletes took advantage of their opportunities in the academic arena and as major contributors in athletics and, in particular, the world of major college football.”

—Ruffin McNeill, College Football Coach for 40+ years

 Tom Shanahan

        Q & A

                        The Right Thing To Do

1. What is your book, The Right Thing To Do, about? Michigan State is a singular story. Michigan State stands apart from other schools that cleared roads to college football integration through coach Duffy Daugherty’s leadership. His influence opened doors for more true pioneers to blaze trails in the face of racism, but their milestones were ignored by a 1960s sports media custom that avoided race. If the stories aren’t properly told, they’re at risk of being lost forever considering the age of pioneers still with us. One example of a lost milestone discovered decades later was Michigan State’s Jimmy Raye of segregated Fayetteville, N.C., as the South’s first Black quarterback to win a national title. I wrote that based on my research in my 2014 book, “RAYE OF LIGHT, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans.” The National Football Foundation validated and included the fact in a newsletter, but many1960s milestones told in THE RIGHT THING TO DO remain missing from college football lore. No two books capture the true stories of the 1960s better than mine. Other books are influenced by Bear Bryant hagiography burnishing myths about the 1970 USC-Alabama game.

• Kirkus Reviews praised your book for contextualizing college football within the wider Civil Rights Movement. What inspired you to pen this story? The injustice of the untold stories leaving the true pioneers in the shadows. I grew up loving history and sports. I benefitted from teachers who nurtured those passions throughout elementary school, middle school and high school. At Michigan State, I was particularly proud of the 4.0 grade I received on a lengthy paper from Madison Kuhn, a distinguished history professor. He would be proud of my books. I also grew up in a family conscious of America’s equality ideals. In high school, I read Dr. Harry Edwards’ book, “Sociology of Sport.” It was published after he led the 1968 Olympic Project of Human Rights that resulted in the medal stand protest of American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos. It has influenced me to this day.

• You say that Bear Bryant, the legendary coach at Alabama, was not the hero he has been made out to be. You state he resisted integration. Why did he? Bear Bryant, born in 1913, grew up with generations of southerners accepting Jim Crow, and he didn’t speak up against it. In my book, I tell a story about 1947 Kentucky game when Michigan State ignored the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” that required northern schools to bench their Black athletes against southern schools. Bryant may have delayed the game’s kickoff as a protest. In 1961, Bryant gave a callous “no comment” to Los Angeles Times sports columnist Jim Murray when confronted about UCLA’s eight Black players threatening to boycott the Rose Bowl if Bryant’s backroom maneuvering successfully replaced the traditional Big Ten entry. Alabama’s campus desegregated in 1963, but Bryant maintained an all-White roster until 1970.

• Why do you say that the national sports media remains comfortable with myths surrounding a 1970 USC-Alabama game with Bear Bryant and Sam Cunningham?

They don’t properly research the myths. They regurgitate without vetting. A misconception worked its way into national folklore with the aid of poorly researched sports writing. The myths weren’t crafted and spread until 20 years after the game was played. The premise that Bryant scheduled the game to lose to embarrass his bigoted fans into allowing him to recruit Black players doesn’t add up. Overlooked was in 1969, Tennessee’s Jackie Walker, the South’s first Black All-American, led a 41-14 rout to shock Alabama’s bigots at Legion Field. Ignored was Bryant signed his first Black player months before USC arrived. My research shows when USC returned to Legion Field in 1978, no retrospective stories or mentions of a transformative 1970 game were part of the print or TV coverage, even though ABC-TV broadcast it as the national game of the week with the famed Keith Jackson behind the microphone.

• So, who are the true pioneers of college football integration in the 1960s? They begin with Duffy Daugherty, and his fingerprints extend coast to coast. The roll call extends from his first staff in 1954 to the first Black players at southern schools in the 1960s. Daugherty ignored the unwritten quota in college football limiting Black players to a half-dozen or through the 1960s. His 1954 assistants were Dan Devine at Arizona State, Missouri and Notre Dame; Bob Devaney at Wyoming and Nebraska; Bill Yeoman at Houston; and Sonny Grandelius at Colorado. They all expanded opportunities for Black athletes beyond the roster they inherited. Three others from Daugherty’s coaching tree were Frank Kush, Arizona State; Chuck Fairbanks, Oklahoma; and Earle Edwards, NC State. Yeoman and Edwards desegregated their programs.

If you don’t want to believe me, listen to Barry Switzer, whose 1970s teams were a model meritocracy: “Duffy did more for integration than any other coach in college football. He had players from all over the South. There were Black players from the state of Texas that were passing over Oklahoma to play for Duffy. He had all those players from the Houston area. And Duffy was the first one to recruit Samoan players.”

• Do you feel the football world still grapples with issues of equality and opportunity to this day? Race, as historian and filmmaker Ken Burns says, will always be an issue in America as long as people don’t want to hear about it or talk about it. Consider Caitlin Clark and the WNBA soap opera. Equality football issues don’t exist as in the past, but it can raise its ugly head drafting QBs. In 2017, the Chicago Bears took Mitch Trubisky, a White quarterback who was an NFL bust, as the second pick over two Black quarterbacks with more successful college careers, Patrick Mahomes (10th) and Deshaun Watson (12^th). Maybe we cleared that hurdle in 2024 with Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels, two Black QBs, taken as the top two picks ahead of the first White QB, Drake Maye, the third pick.

• Who are some of your favorite football players of the past 60 years? Jim Brown was my first favorite player as a young kid in Cleveland. I’ll limit my list of Michigan State players to the five two-time All-Americans in 1965 and 1966 – Clinton Jones, Bob Apisa, Bubba Smith, Gene Washington and George Webster – quarterback Jimmy Raye and linebacker Brad Van Pelt. My Detroit Lions favorite was Alex Karras. From my days covering the Chargers, my favorite receiver was John Jefferson, dubbed The Touchdown Man by Sports Illustrated. If not for contract holdout that got him traded away, JJ would be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Sad. From the post-Coryell days, Antonio Gates belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

• In your opinion, did Michigan State head coach Duffy Daugherty contribute greatly to desegregating not just the clubhouses, but the coaching offices as well? Why? Duffy Daugherty’s coaching equality fingerprints are still found 50 years after he retired at the end of the 1972 season. He provided coaching opportunities to former Underground Railroad players Jimmy Raye and Sherman Lewis, and they carried their chance into the NFL. The Pro Football Hall of Fame honored Raye in its inaugural class of NFL Awards of Excellence in 2022 and Lewis in its second class in 2023. Daugherty hired Lewis in 1969 and when he added Raye to his 1972 staff, the Spartans numbered two Black assistant coaches at a time many schools were getting around to hiring their first African American assistant.

• How would you describe your writing style as an author? My editors from my newspaper days praised my narrative style, especially in regard to longer, takeout pieces. I suppose that comes from my love of history, especially preferring biographies. Truth is stranger than fiction, so novels don’t interest me. President John F. Kennedy once asked, “Why do we like biographies?” He provided his own answer: “We want to know, what was he like?” That foundation to reading has been helpful writing books that explain the complicated true stories of college football integration. The true stories have many stops and starts that need to be untangled. It took persistence from the pioneers to continue and a careful narration to piece together the moving parts.

1. Why do you say the 1967 NFL draft changed the face of the league? College football integration progress in the 1960s made its first significant mark with the number of Black players selected in the 1967 draft’s first round. Remarkably, four Black Michigan State players were taken among the first eight: 1. Bubba Smith, Baltimore Colts; 2. Clinton Jones, Minnesota Vikings; 5. George Webster, Houston Oilers; 8. Gene Washington, Minnesota Vikings. A year earlier there were only four Black players taken among 26 first-rounders. But that’s not all. The 1967 draft included two other Black athletes taken among the top eight: Syracuse’s Floyd Little, sixth by the Denver Broncos, and UCLA’s Mel Farr, seventh by the Detroit Lions. The jump from four to 10 first-rounders in 1967 sounds modest by today’s standards, it was a sign of the future.

1. Who were the true pioneers of southern schools in the 1960s? Maryland’s Darryl Hill was the first Black player in a major southern conference in 1963 when Maryland was an ACC member, but he was a senior transfer from Navy. The most prominent pioneers were those making a four-year imprint. They included Wake Forest’s Bob Grant, a freshman in 1964; Houston’s Warren McVea, 1964; Southern Methodist’s Jerry LeVias, 1965; Kentucky’s Nat Northington and Greg Page in 1966 followed by Wilbur Hackett and Houston Hogg in 1967; Tennessee’s Lester McClain in 1967; and Auburn’s James Owens in 1969. The shame of the 1970 USC-Alabama myth’s successful spread has been Sam Cunningham unjustly receives credit for college football integration at the expense of the players who stood in the face racial abuse. They remain lost to history in the shadows.

College football author and historian Lane Demas, a Ph.D professor at Central Michigan University, explains it this way: “Alabama football integrated because an organized, sustained movement of Black Americans nationwide forced it to, against its will. That’s the only answer that makes sense if you study the broader historical context.”

1. Did football help change race relations in America – or was it the other way around?

That question is answered every April 15, Jackie Robinson Day in Major League Baseball. Robinson broke the color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, and the date has been grandly honored since the 50^th anniversary in 1997. However, the historic date also serves to remind us Americans don’t change their racial attitudes overnight. The game wasn’t a sellout. The next-day stories mentioned Robinson but without blanket coverage. Robinson continued to suffer abuse from fans and opponents. It wasn’t until his third season Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey allowed him to respond to abuse. Similarly, Sam Cunningham’s one game didn’t change America or the South overnight.

1. You won first-place for a piece you wrote on segregation and the 1962 Rose Bowl, from Football Writers Association of America. Will race always be a story line in sports?

I’d like to think it would be less of a story in the 21^st century, but our society’s response to progress predictably results in racial backlashes. President Barack Obama said it’s two steps forward, one step back. The 1962 Rose Bowl story grabbed the judges’ attention as a remarkable story brought to light 60 years later. That void allowed for Bryant to twist the facts in his 1974 autobiography, “Bear.” The media, true to form, accepted the icon’s version without fact-checking. In Bryant’s version, the LA Times Jim Murray was the heavy, and UCLA’s players don’t receive a mention – let alone credit for their courage. What if the story had been properly covered by a sports media that avoided race?

1. One of your earlier books, Bubba’s Dad, Duffy, and College Football’s Underground, is a children’s book. What was it about? Upon completing THE RIGHT THING TO DO, I thought the Underground Railroad was ideal for a children’s book. Kids love trains. In this case, it’s a reading educational tool combined with history. Children can learn a true Civil Rights story through reading the book over having it read to them. Bubba’s Dad is Willie Ray Smith Sr., the chief engineer and father of Bubba Smith. He provided the narration as the train winds through the South to pick up passengers to escape segregation to play for an open-minded coach, Duffy Daugherty. The pages featuring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking at Michigan State in 1965 provides history the kids are familiar with that is part of the overall storyline.

1. Another book by you, Raye of Light, included a foreword by Pro Football Hall of Fame Coach Tom Dungy. That also covered integration. How does it differ from The Right Thing To Do? RAYE OF LIGHT focused on Michigan State’s 1965 and 1966 teams leading college football integration with the 1966 Game of the Century the tipping point. A record TV audience of 33 million saw the contrast in rosters. Michigan State lined up 20 Black players, 11 Black starters, two Black team captains, voted by a predominantly White roster, 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, NC. On the other side of the field Notre Dame lined up one Black player on its entire roster, Alan Page. Michigan State was the future and Notre Dame was the past.

1. You have won numerous awards, covered major events, from Super Bowls and Rose Bowls to World Series and NBA Finals. What are some of your fondest memories as a long-time sports writer? A moment my senior year as sports editor of Michigan State’s college newspaper, The State News, remains on a pedestal. In the 1978-79 basketball season, Michigan State featured a freshman named Earvin “Magic” Johnson. For his first varsity game, I planned a special magazine-style story on him. I went to practice and afterward introduced myself. We agreed to meet the next day 30 minutes before practice. He was right on time. He treated me as a senior, even though I was the one in the presence of greatness. Ironically, such a scenario would never take place today. You can’t watch practice and schools don’t allow unsupervised access to athletes – let alone a player of Johnson’s stature. They only permit interviews with them from a dais before an audience of reporters.

1. You grew up in BIG RAPIDS, MI, but spent the bulk of your writing career in San Diego. What are those two very different sports towns like? Big Rapids is a small town and San Diego a large city, but sports fans share a slice of Americana: A passion for supporting the local team. In addition to high school sports, Big Rapids was home to Ferris State University. The town provides passionate support for the lower-level programs, and the Bulldogs produce their share of nationally successful teams and pro athletes. In San Diego, there was a sense of community not easily captured in a bigger city like Los Angeles. In 1984, when the San Diego Padres beat the Chicago Cubs to advance to their first World Series, famed baseball writer Roger Kahn said he had never heard a louder crowd than the San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium fans.

1. Do you enjoy writing books more than writing columns or covering sporting events? Why? I loved my newspaper career and stay active as a freelance writer for the Raleigh News & Observer, but I’m having more fun writing books. The history is more fascinating than I expected when I began my research. My best compliment from the pioneers, who lived the experiences, has been when I came up with something they said they did not know. I take inspiration from a quote I read long ago from Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Maraniss: “History writes people out of the story. It’s our job to write them back in.” Straightening out history can be an endless task, but I take comfort I’ve got my conclusions about Bear Bryant myths correct based on a quote from David Halberstam, another Pulitzer Prize winner: “But the Bear was very late to the dance, especially because people are always talking about football coaches as a leader. In this case, he did not lead very well.”

1. How did you tackle the stories that you write about? Are you merely reporting what has taken place – or providing context, color, and meaning to them? An ear for history and the Sociology of Sports requires context, color and meaning added to who, what, where, when and how. One of my proudest story compliments from an athlete was from Olympic gold medalist and NCAA record-holder Monique Henderson. She once told me she doesn’t like reading about herself, but my stories were different. She appreciated them. She’s now a women’s college track coach at Golden West College, so I asked her to write a blurb endorsing THE RIGHT THING TO DO as a book that explains Jimmy Raye’s role opening doors. “It’s refreshing to have someone recognize the achievement of Black male coaches who opened doors for me, a Black female coach.” The legacy of the true pioneers continues.

• How is or will sports betting alter the college football scene? I don’t bet on games, but it seems clear the NCAA and state agencies will be playing a constant game of catchup with ramifications. In North Carolina, where I live, betting online wasn’t approved by state law until March 11, 2024. But with only the NCAA Tournament games remaining, that was enough time for players to hear complaints in arenas and on social media from gamblers losing bets on game results and player statistics.

• How will paying student athletes transform the landscape for college football? It’s the wild, wild west and easy to predict doomsday, but college sports have always recovered and thrived after drastic changes. In 1978, the NCAA trimmed football scholarships on a roster from 105 to 95. Elite coaches cried it would mark the end of college football. And that was only five years after they complained about a new limit of 105 to help share funds with women’s sports with the advent of Title IX. The 105 limit was established because coaches such as Bear Bryant signed 140 to 150 players in part so talented prospects wouldn’t play for rival schools. So, paying student athletes is another transformative stage, but the college game will likely find a way to adapt.

 Selected Excerpts

CRT Is Necessary

Let’s be clear: Black Historiography and Critical Race Theory are necessary instructional tools to understand American history. That includes recognizing that college football integration successfully spanned the tumultuous 1960s while blending with the civil rights movement.

Black Historiography, put simply, is what was and wasn’t recorded. In football, the gaps were a consequence of the 1960s media avoiding race in sports stories. CRT helps us understand past perceptions compared to previously overlooked Black milestones and filling in the holes.

Unappreciated Integration Milestones In College Football

Each chapter of this book covers previously unappreciated milestones. They range from the 1961 UCLA and Colorado football teams threatening boycotts of major bowl games to increasing the number of Black players in college football in the late 1960s. By 1970, 33 of the 37 major college football programs had recruited their first Black football player. You could win bar bets on that trivia question. Each chapter in Parts 1, Il and III address a row of dominoes that were tumbled. The dominoes started falling separately, but undercurrents connected them. By the end of the decade the tributaries flowed together with force of the mighty Mississippi spilling into modern football’s predominantly Black rosters. Michigan State represented rows of tumbled dominoes as a fully integrated program and the unprecedented leadership positions of African Americans. Michigan State assistant coaches from Daugherty’s 1950s coaching tree tumbled more rows spanning the continent. As new head coaches, they followed Daugherty’s blueprint that ignored the quota limitations.

The Alabama Myth

America doesn’t solve racial problems overnight. MLK successfully launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, but it wasn’t until 1964 and 1965 that President Lyndon Johnson signed two Civil Rights acts. Nevertheless, the national sports media fell for the 1970 USC-Alabama myth hook, line and sinker and has regurgitated it for 30-plus years. A media flaw is one writer following another when they think they’ve latched onto a good story. Worse, a cottage industry of books and films based on myths and fiction profited at the expense of the true 1960s pioneers.

The media has continued to sell the myth, even though USC fullback Sam Cunningham, RIP, punched a major hole in the story as early as 2003.

He has repeatedly said he was never taken into the Alabama locker room by Bryant to show his players what a football player looked like. That fictional scene is the lynchpin to the tale spreading rapidly. Good ole boys chuckle about the big, bad Black man overpowering the skinny white guys.

The Media’s Role

The glaring contrast between Daugherty’s role in college football integration and inaction from other schools has been largely unrecognized. Historical memory was lost to the 1960s media custom of avoiding race in sports stories. The practice went back to the 1930s and the “Conspiracy of Silence,” a term used by Black sportswriters. They claimed the mainstream media was complicit maintaining Major League’s Baseball’s color line by failing to write about segregation in the National Pastime.

Influencing The College World

Daugherty’s role pushing college football integration began to influence integrated programs and trickle down to the South, where there were likeminded coaches. Maryland’s Tom Nugent recruited the first Black player in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Darryl Hill, a transfer from Navy, 1962; Southern Methodist’s Hayden Fry the first Black player in the Southwest Conference, Jerry LeVias, 1965; and Kentucky’s Charlie Bradshaw, who recruited the first two Black players in the Southeastern Conference, Nate Nothington and Greg Page, in 1966. Wake Forest’s Bill Tate recruited the ACC’s first three Black players out of high school, 1964; Baylor’s walk-on John Westbrook made his varsity debut as the SWC’s second Black player, 1966; and Tennessee was the second SEC school to recruit a Black player, Lester McClain, 1967. The ACC’s last holdout teams with a Black athlete on the varsity were Clemson and Virginia’s 1971. The Southwest’s last holdouts were Texas and Arkansas, 1970. The SEC’s last three were Georgia, LSU and Mississippi, 1972. They followed Alabama (1971) by one year. A popular myth about Bryant: he once said he might not be the first in the SEC, but he wouldn’t be the third. That’s true. He was the seventh out of what was then a 10-team league, trailing Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, Mississippi State, Auburn and Vanderbilt. However, many progressive moments continued to be overlooked by the 1960s sports media’s failure to properly record Black Historiography.

The Bear Bryant Fiction

Bryant was profiled as a man who lived life as a 19th-century Jim Crow Southerner, yet magnanimously adapted to the social issue of the 20th century. Time’s misleading premise perpetuated an age-old media flaw. One story from a national outlet gathers attention. Other writers regurgitate the storyline….

Bear Bryant, in addition to his Rickey comment, made a second deceptive quote in the Time 1980 article about his Kentucky coaching days, 1946-53. He claimed if he couldn’t recruit Black players, he’d find a home for them. “They told me no. So, for years, I used to recommend all these great Black players to schools up North.” There are no names to validate Bryant’s claim. None. That’s considerably fewer than “all these great Black players.” The fiction Bryant steered players to Michigan State has been another example of an age-old media flaw. Print and electronic reporters read what someone else wrote about Bryant sending players and took turns spreading the legend of Bear Bryant as a benevolent segregationist. They didn’t check the facts.

More On Critical Race Theory

The 1962 Rose Bowl, when studied chronologically in the archives of the Los Angeles Times, provided an example of Critical Race Theory through football-without, hopefully, the political football. CRT’s purpose is to teach stories that haven’t been fully told. Sometimes those stories include exposing painful truths—a revered coach who was a segregationist, in this case

                      5-Star Amazon Book Reviews

The 1970 USC -Alabama Myth Dispelled

It provided many interesting facts about college football that I was unaware of such as Dan Devine being only major college coach to beat Paul ‘Bear” Bryant all three times they coached against each other but it also dispels the myth that the 1970 USC- Alabama game which USC won 42 -21 opened the flood gates for the integration of college football in Dixie. In fact, many southern schools had started the process before 1970 and Tom Shanahan makes a compelling case that this game wasn’t a “game changer” in struggle to integrate college football.

— Pat Gallinagh MSU 1967

A Must-Read, Even for Non-Sports Fans

Tom Shanahan’s “The Right Thing to Do” completely captivated me. The book delves into a fascinating and under-reported chapter in college football history: integration in the 1960s.
Shanahan shines a light on the courageous players who broke barriers, the coaches who championed them, and the student activists who pushed for equality. Even without a deep knowledge of sports, the stories of resilience and perseverance are truly inspiring….”The Right Thing to Do” is a powerful read.

An Absolute Masterwork

In The Right Thing to Do, award-winning sportswriter Tom Shanahan has gone where no writer has dared go before. Certainly not in the way Shanahan has unflinchingly and thoroughly documented Coach Duffy Daughterty and Michigan State University’s role in integrating college football in the 1960s and beyond.

The beauty of Shanahan’s work is that it presents 30 stand-alone chapters and vignettes of much-needed, in-depth stories of how college football recruitment and team building changed in that crucial decade of the 1960s. The colorful stories, many of which are profiles of courage and justice, vary. They include the Colorado Buffaloes team—coached by Daugherty acolyte Sonny Grandelius—refusing to go to the 1961 Orange Bowl unless their Black teammates were accorded the same lodging and meal accommodations as the white players. They include the legendary Jimmy Raye, one of only two Black quarterbacks in the country at the time, who quarterbacked Michigan State to a 10-10 tie against Notre Dame in the 1966 Game of the Century. They include a cast of Michigan State assistant coaches and players who went on to establish legacies of equality and justice in their own football programs, including Bob Devaney (Wyoming, Nebraska), Dan Devine (Green Bay Packers, Notre Dame), Earle Edwards (North Carolina State), Chuck Fairbanks (Oklahoma), and Bill Yeoman (Houston).

I believe Shanahan’s masterwork will become the definitive work on the story of American college integration. Tom Shanahan stands without peer in covering this crucial piece of Americana and race relations. I cannot wait to see the documentaries and movies that result from it.
— Ralph R. “Rick” Steinke; author, Jake Fortina novel series

About Tom Shanahan/s Other Books

Michigan State’s Underground Railroad led college football integration in the 1960s. The chief engineer was Willie Ray Smith Sr., a Texas high school coach and father of Bubba Smith, Michigan State’s College Football Hall of Fame player. Willie Ray Smith drives the Underground Railroad, winding through the segregated South as he picks up players for Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty.

When Jimmy Raye enrolled at Michigan State University in 1964, he did more than just enroll in a university hundreds of miles from his native Fayetteville, N.C.: he was part of a groundbreaking movement that changed college football forever.

His story, as well as his Spartan teammates and coach Duffy Daugherty, is told in Raye of Light: the first book to fully explain Duffy Daugherty’s Underground Railroad and its impact on college football. History has not accorded Daugherty, Raye, and the Spartans proper credit for their roles in the integration of college football.

Too many view Daugherty as recruiting a couple of All-American players from the South, winning a bunch of games with his 1965-66 teams and then having it all come to an end. But, that ignores the history made by Raye and the Spartans.

In his junior season in 1966, Raye was Michigan State’s first black starting quarterback and the first black quarterback from the South to win a national title. The Michigan State team with a progressive head coach, a pioneer black quarterback, and the first fully integrated roster in college football is the subject of this engrossing book by award-winning author Tom Shanahan. Shanahan tells the story of how Daugherty integrated his Spartan teams in a time when leading college programs like the University of Alabama were still segregated, when it was unusual to see black athletes at skill positions like quarterback, and when choices for outstanding Southern black athletes were either traditionally black colleges or northern colleges opening their doors to nationwide recruits.

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om Shanahan is an award-winning sportswriter and frequent contributor to Spartanamag.com. His new book on Michigan State leading college football integration is, “THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s.” His first book was “RAYE OF LIGHT, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans.”

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @shanny4055

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