PHOTO: East Lansing High’s Jace Clario, a Michigan State legacy, flipped his commitment from the Spartans to Alabama.

By TOM SHANAHAN

I write about college football integration history. I detail in my books and on my website, through research, Michigan State College Football Hall of Fame coach Duffy Daugherty’s role was a singular story leading the way among 1960s pioneers.

A subject I don’t write about are players committing — or “pledging” as Lansing State Journal columnist Graham Couch corrects us all — to schools to cash in on NIL money or favorable College Football Playoffs chances.

So, with that context presented to you, I understand Jace Clarizio, a 4-star running back from East Lansing High, likely flipped from Michigan State to Alabama based simply on NIL money and Alabama’s recent playoff history. And watching MIchigan State struggle to run the ball didn’t help.

I don’t mean to single out Clarizio, but when he’s from a high school located in the same city as Michigan State’s campus and his father, Craig Johnson, played for the Spartans, the spotlight shines on him. History may or may not matter to a high school kid, but a Michigan State-Alabama choice is underscored by yesteryear. How did their coaches address the pivotal decade of Civil Rights?

Daugherty was a color-blind coach at a school that led the way. Alabama is a southern school with a Jim Crow past led by a segregationist coach, Bear Bryant, who wasn’t enlightened until the 1970s. There’s a reason national championship team photos hanging Alabama’s halls don’t include Black faces.

Clarizio may or may not be influenced by history, but my point is he was probably fed more revisionist history about Alabama and Bear Bryant on one weekend recruiting trip than he learned fact-based history on MIchigan State and Daugherty growing up in Spartan Stadium’s shadow.

That’s not first year MIchigan State coach Jonathan Smith’s fault. The blame falls on past MSU presidents, athletic directors and coaches who didn’t understand Duffy’s legacy. They failed to promote his history in a manner Alabama and other schools celebrate their legendary coaches.

At Alabama, recruiting works from a full deck of NIL money and playoff history along with a card up their sleeve. That card is revisionist history presenting Bryant as a John Wayne-like hero to unsuspecting recruits while also obfuscating Bryant dragged his feet on integration.

Recruits attending Alabama home games see a statue of Bryant outside Bryant-Denny Stadium. The Bear Bryant Museum hails Bryant, although it conveniently fails to explain Bryant was behind the times among his southern peers. Alabama was the seventh of 10 SEC schools to recruit its first Black player, in 1970, and by then 33 of the 37 major southern programs were integrated.

But, of course, how can we fault the museum when the media doesn’t report those facts, either.

The gilded Bryant experience is part of the Alabama’s aura.

At Michigan State, though, they lack a full deck of NIL money and playoff history, and it costs them prospects on the recruiting trail as well as players on the roster through the transfer portal. They have a trump card to tell Daugherty’s singular courageous story. if it might work in isolated cases, we don’t know. The Spartans don’t use it.

This is what the College Football Hall of Famer Jerry LeVias — who was recruited by Daugherty but opted to break the color line the Southwest Conference at Southern Methodist, in 1965 — told me in THE RIGHT THING TO DO: “Michigan State should be proud of what they did. Instead of sitting back and waiting for someone to tell their story, if I was a Michigan State recruiter in a living room with a kid’s family, I’d be saying, ‘Do you know the history of Michigan State?”

There is no statue of Daugherty on campus recognizing two national titles in 1965 and 1966 or his sociological leadership. The 1980s Duffy Daugherty Building title has been squeezed between and overshadowed by the Skandalaris Football Center and the Tom Izzo Football Building.

The untold Daugherty experience is lost to history.

Maybe I’m overlooking espousing diversity is no longer politically popular and that Black and White kids alike don’t recognize segregation is recent history, not ancient. Nevertheless, for the record:

— Daugherty assembled the sport’s first fully integrated rosters, in the 1960s. He did this at a time USC, Notre Dame, Minnesota and other Big Ten schools followed an unwritten quota limiting Black athletes to a half-dozen or so.

— In 1962, the Associated Press reported Michigan State’s 17 Black athletes was the most in major college football history. What the report didn’t state was the Spartans broke their own records from the 1961 and 1960s. For the record, USC won the 1962 national title with five Black players and the 1967 national championship with seven. Minnesota won the 1960 national title with five.

— In 1964, Michigan State was the first fully integrated team to play in the South in a September 26 game at North Carolina. If you do the math, that was six years before the 1970 USC-Alabama game that the media touts as the beginning of college football integration.

— When Michigan State played Notre Dame in the 1966 Game of the Century, the Spartans lined up 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. A record TV audience of 33 million saw the contrast, and other schools began to do away with quota limitations.

The media cycle works this way: Alabama promotes Bryant, the local media picks up on it and the national media – print and film — follows. And in the case of Bryant hagiography, it’s a fawning media regurgitating a narrative based on sloppily researched sports writing.

It also works the other way: Michigan State fails to promote Daugherty, the local media consequently doesn’t pick up on his full legacy as a singular story and the national media doesn’t tell the story.

Additionally, Michigan State failing to challenge the media falsely lumping the Spartans as “one of the most integrated programs” along with USC, Minnesota and other Big Ten schools contribute to the misconception living on.

Alabama writer Keith Dunnavant, a Bryant apologist, stated in a 2008 HBO film, “Breaking the Huddle,” that Michigan State was “one of” the most integrated programs in the country. ESPN writer Adam Rittenberg added the same summation in his 2013 Black History Month story. In the same story, Rittenberg erroneously states Duffy owed his Black players from the South to Bear Bryant and Clemson’s Frank Howard sending them to him.

ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap narrated a 2019 ESPN film that claimed the 1970 USC-Alabama game changed college football in the South with a Black fullback, Sam Cunningham. There was no overnight reaction, and the false narrative was crafted and spread 20 years after the game. The fairytale ignores claims Stanford, with an all-minority backfield led by a Black fullback, won at Arkansas on the same night.

Tom Selleck narrates a 2013 Showtime film that erroneously credits Bryant. Sports Illustrated wrote a 2004 story without attribution Bryant sent Charlie Thornhill to Daugherty. Thornhill’s own family says it didn’t happen that way.

They aren’t alone and what they state gets repeated Wikipedia-like in the media down the road.

Here’s another example of Daugherty’s story lost to history.

CBS broadcaster Charles Davis was highlighted in a 2019 ESPN integration film. The film’s narrative celebrated Bryant for recruiting Black players in the 1970s to remain competitive. But in the same film, Davis cyncially says this about Daugherty: “For Duffy Daughtery it wasn’t just about being progressive and being Abraham Lincoln. Duffy was about winning football games.”

The hypocrisy is beyond flabbergasting.

Davis, by the way, is the host of the College Football Hall of Fame induction dinner on December 10 in Las Vegas. No wonder the college football lore misconceptions favoring Bryant and ignoring Daugherty remain entrenched.

Clarizio’s story will remind many that 2009 Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram II, a MIchigan State legacy from Flint Southwestern, chose Alabama over the Spartans. I’ll have more on that in another story.

I’ll debate all of the above with anybody, anytime, anywhere. Note that I don’t get any takers from Alabama. I’m also still waiting for a response from Joe Scarborough at MSNBC.

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Tom 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.