PHOTO: The coach on left dragged his feet on integration, but the media sells myths he was a crusader. The coach on the right was a courageous leader, but he’s been lost in college football lore.

My home page: TomShanahan.Report

More: The media is blinded by Bear Bryant Hagiography.

And more: Tommy Love was a game-changer on college football integration, in 1967

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By TOM SHANAHAN

What if this time around I wrote “The Tommy Love Story” falsely crediting Alabama coach Bear Bryant as Love’s benefactor? I’d portray Bryant as a John Wayne-like hero for the marginalized.

Maybe Bryant hagiography could launch Love into college football lore such as figures in other Bryant myths?

After all, fairytales exist such as the unsubstantiated fable Bryant sent Charlie Thornhill to Daugherty, even though the claim has been rejected by Thornhill’s family. Another is the Sam Cunningham myth centered on the 1970 USC-Alabama game as a tipping point, although the 1960s timeline reveals college football integration was a fait accompli by 1970.

Love, you’re no doubt unaware, earned a significant moment on the 1960s timeline of college football integration. In 1966, he was a Black high school All-American running back from North Carolina’s western mountains.

In those days, Black kids in the segregated South didn’t make high school All-American teams and weren’t recruited by Jim Crow schools. Love might have been the second example after Houston signed Warren McVea in 1964 out of desegregated Breckenridge High in San Antonio.

But both Tennessee and North Carolina decided to desegregate with their respective 1967 recruiting classes. They provided Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty’s Underground Railroad competition, although Love picked Michigan State.

But the backstory and his legacy are lost to history.

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Love’s true story isn’t as sexy at making one up Bryant sent him to Daugherty.

How has the media continued to get stories of Thornhill, Cunningham and others upside down?

An answer to that question crystalized for me while reading — of all books — Al Pacino’s new memoir, “Sonny Boy.” Pacino lamented Hollywood executives rejecting good scripts because they “aren’t fashionable.”

Love’s largely untold story isn’t “fashionable,” but it could have been set up to be distorted through Bryant revisionist history. Bryant sending Thornhill to Duffy is “fashionable” to celebrate Bryant. Never mind it’s not true.

Do facts no longer matter in the misinformation age of Trump, Musk and Fox Propaganda?

WHY IT MATTERS

Mainstream media outlets such as Sports Illustrated, ESPN, New York Times/Athletic, Forbes, HBO, Showtime and others keep the myth alive. They stubbornly clench bulldog jaws around the sloppily researched sports writing regurgitating the tale. They contend I dispute the Thornhill-Bryant myth. No. I thoroughly debunk it.

Bryant, in reality, was a segregationist coach at four schools from 1945 to 1970. He dragged his feet on integration, trailing his southern peers as the seventh of 10 Southeastern Conference football programs to include Black players, in 1970. By then, 33 of 37 major southern programs included Black players.

Bryant was a master media manipulator who covered his dismal track record on integration in a Time magazine cover story published September 29, 1980. He was quoted he had sent players to coaches in the North. He doesn’t cite a player, coach or school, but the reporter, B.J. Phillips, fell for casting him as a benevolent segregationist. After all, it’s apparently enough that the legend said it.

The media has committed a double-edge failure. The 1960s sports media avoided race and was negligent recording progress in real time — primarily led by Daugherty’s 1960s teams. The modern media continues to abandon fact-checking to sell myths pandering to Bryant’s legend.

Example 1: Sports Illustrated published the Bryant urban legend of sending Daugherty players, in 2004. The hallowed magazine, which was then still in its Time Inc. glory days, claimed Thornhill was on his way to Notre Dame until Bryant intervened and sent him to Daugherty. Thornhill turned out to be an All-Big Ten linebacker on the Spartans’ 1965 and 1966 national title teams.

No facts are cited in the story, which I noted in Part II of this story: The Sports Illustrated Fabrication.

Example 2: During Black History Month in 2013, ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg credited Bryant for sending Thornhill to Daugherty. He regurgitated an unverified myth. The same story claimed Clemson’s Frank Howard sent George Webster, a College Football Hall of Famer from Anderson, S.C., to Daugherty.

This was the same Frank Howard who had been urged by Clemson president Robert Cook since the mid-1960s to desegregate his football program (other sports’ coaches had complied). Howard’s answer was to retire following the 1969 season without ever recruiting a Black athlete. In other words, he wasn’t exactly a benevolent segregationist.

Cook, like Daugherty and other true heroes, are left in the shadows.

In Part III of this story, there is an accounting of no backstories involving Bryant (or Howard) with Daugherty’s Underground Railroad passengers.

However, I do have to give Rittenberg a bit of a pass.

Rittenberg correctly noted Willie Raye Smith, the father of College Football Hall of Famer Bubba Smith, sent his son and Washington to Daugherty. Bubba’s father was a Texas high school coaching legend during segregation, a fact the media also ignores.

Sadly, though, the urban legend that Bryant sent players to Daugherty has lived in Michigan State circles. As an unfortunate consequence, Washington heard the myth and repeated it to Rittenberg, and he quoted Washington. Inexplicitly, Michigan State people repeating the myth don’t understand the fairytale reduces Daugherty, the true courageous leader, to a passive bystander.

This is the same Bear Bryant who said on film for a 1967 TV interview his roster remained all-White because he couldn’t find any Black players academically qualified. How does the media square that with Bryant as Batman?

THE BIG PICTURE

Rittenberg’s story also makes a misleading sweeping statement that Michigan State’s 1965 and 1966 national title teams were “some of the most racially and geographically integrated teams in all college in college football.” That’s like saying Babe Ruth was one of baseball’s first home run kings. The failure of the 1960s media to properly document history overlooked progress that was taking place.

Alabama author Keith Dunnavant, a Bryant apologist, makes similar generalizations in HBO’s film, “Breaking the Huddle.” The producers failed to fact-check is claims.

Dunnavant also wrote a book, “The Missing Ring,” claiming reverse racism in 1966 cost Alabama a national title to No. 1 Notre Dame and No. 2 Michigan State. Allen Barra, another Bryant biographer, labeled Dunnavant’s claim “borderline irrational” in a Los Angeles Times review. But here we go again: Bryant is fashionable. The LA Times publicized Dunnavant’s book with this headline: “Hats off to ‘Bama’s Bear.”

In reality, Michigan State was a singular 1960s story under Daugherty, but the story isn’t fashionable but misleading generalizations picked up by media outulets prevent Duffy from gaining “fashionable” approval from media gatekeepers. Daugherty shifted the paradigm, whether history and the media understand this or not.

Daugherty’s rosters included Black players in the teens at the start of the decade and into the 20s by mid-decade. To lump Michigan State with Minnesota, Illinois, USC and other programs is a misleading simplification is to not understand what was taking place elsewhere in the 1960s.

Schools throughout the country followed an unwritten quota limiting Black athletes to a half-dozen or so until the late 1960s. USC numbered only five Black players on its 1962 national title team and only seven on its 1967 national title roster. They feared too many Black players couldn’t get along in a White locker room. Daugherty’s teams debunked the stereotype.

USC’s own poor track record has been obfuscated by myths surrounding the 1970 USC-Alabama game as a tipping point. The fairytale ignores USC started only four Black players that night at Legion Field. Yes, there were 18 Black players on the roster, but 11 were transfers who arrived in 1969 or 1970. It wasn’t until then USC finally abandoned the quota system.

But providing ESPN a pass requires another qualifier: It’s been 11 years since Rittenberg wrote that story. I’ve written two books and numerous website stories thoroughly explaining the above facts to debunk the many myths.

Here are the facts the media ignores: Duffy’s Underground Railroad was built on a network of southern Black high school coaches and White southerners opposed to segregation who viewed Michigan State as a North Star for Black kids to escape Jim Crow. In all, 44 passengers from the segregated South rode the Underground Railroad from 1959 through Duffy’s final season, 1972.

Duffy didn’t recruit the South — the South recruited Duffy.

But In addition to the print myths a cottage industry of books and films (HBO, Showtime and ESPN) have cashed in on falsely crediting Bryant as a crusader who staged the 1970 USC-Alabama game at Legion in Field in Birmingham as a tipping point.

Again, no evidence supports the fairytale beyond the box score, which I explain in Parts II and VI of this story.

THE COLD, HARD TRUTH

Editors and publishers respond to my pitches about the Daugherty, a College Football Hall of Fame coach, with this response: “Duffy who?”

One name I’ve mentioned in the past was Bryant Gumble from his acclaimed HBO Real Sports series. I cite this point with anguish. I have great respect for Gumble’s career, which added to my shock when I received his response to my story pitch about NFL coaching icon Jimmy Raye and my then-new book, “RAYE OF LIGHT, RAYE OF LIGHT, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans.”

Gumble wrote to me, “My younger audience wouldn’t understand the story.”

Is the 21st century too far removed from the 1960s to educate them? Does the tale lacking a major publishing company or outlet as the storyteller diminish interest?

Yes, it is a hard story to explain, but why is that an excuse to fail to set the record straight? If HBO’S Real Sports won’t take on the story, who will?

No one, that is, until Osahon Tongo of NFL 360/NFL Network. Tongo’s 2023 documentary, “The Indelible Legacy of Jimmy Raye,” won a Sports Emmy. Tongo was in his mid-30s when we spoke during his research, and he told me he was intrigued as a Black male who was born after segregation to learn what men like Jimmy Raye endured. He had read my book, “RAYE OF LIGHT.”

Listen to what Tongo says here: The End Game Episode 12

Jimmy Raye (L) and Osahon Tongo backstage at the 2023 Sports Emmys in New York.

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But there’s another twist. In an irony that can’t be made up, on the same night and on the same New York stage that Tongo’s film was honored, Gumble was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Another sad story: When RAYE OF LIGHT was published, I pitched an NFL Network producer. His sardonic decline, suggesting Raye wasn’t worth a story, was, “I know who Jimmy Raye is.” Clearly, he didn’t.

This episode explains the value of diversity in a newsroom. An aging White producer failed to understand the value of diversity.

But that’s not all. I was once told by a Deadspin editor, Eric Barrow, he agreed with me that “Bryant gets too much credit.” But he didn’t use my freelance pitch.

An editor at an Alabama newspaper told me essentially the same thing and took a pass.

Editors at The Undefeated (now Andscape) rejected my freelance pitch. I first pitched Kevin Merida, but he passed it on to Steve Reiss. An email response from Reiss stated with ESPN’s budget cuts it wouldn’t be fair to offer “pennies for what would have been a lot of effort on your part.”

I subsequently published the story on my website without any compensation. Pennies add up to more than a blank check. And a true story informing an unaware the public is invaluable.

No one, apparently, wants to take on Bear Bryant’s legacy — real or not.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The media’s lack-of-fact checking in print stories eventually spread to film.

A 2013 Showtime film, Against the Tide narrated by USC alumnus Tom Selleck, requires numerous factchecks to set the record straight. One is at the 17:53 mark. Selleck erroneously reads from the script.

“It wasn’t as if Bear Bryant and Alabama stood alone. Nearly all of the SEC schools were equally slow to integrate.”

Selleck needed to send that back to rewrite. Bryant once said he may not be the first SEC school to integrate, but he wouldn’t be the third. He was right. He was the seventh.

Here’s another example. Charles Davis of Fox Sports and later CBS Sports egregiously labeled Duffy Daugherty as an opportunist when interviewed for an ESPN story. I listened confused Duffy can be cynically criticized for recruiting Black athletes in the 1960s, while Bryant is praised for finally recruiting Black players in the 1970s to remain competitive.

But it’s satisfying to know I’m on the same side as David Halberstam, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian. He wrote this in a 2002 ESPN article:

“But the Bear was very late to the dance, especially because people are always talking about football coaches as leader. In this case, he did not lead very well.”

PACINO, PULL DUFFY BACK IN

Mr. Pacino, if you’re listening, you were great in the 2018 HBO Joe Paterno movie. I think you could have been great playing Duffy, too.

Al Pacino as disgraced Penn State coach Joe Paterno in HBO’s 2018 movie.

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Imagine Pacino playing Duffy in this 1965 (true) scene: A booster told Duffy it’s OK to use Black players, but he cautioned they would no longer be friends if he started a Black quarterback. Duffy threatened to punch him in the nose and added they were no longer friends as of that moment.

That’s a scene made for Michael Corleone, uh, Al Pacino. Can you make Duffy marketable?

For the record, Jimmy Raye of segregated Fayetteville, N.C., was the South’s first Black quarterback to win a national title. He was a sophomore backup in 1965 who played frequently in relief of All-American Steve Juday and a two-year starter in 1966 and 1967.

I’ll debate anybody, anytime, anywhere on these points.

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I invite you to follow me on Twitter @shanny4055

Tom Shanahan is a Football Writers Association of America award-winner for Enterprise. He has written two books on Michigan State leading college football integration is that explain Civil Rights progress: “THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s” and “RAYE OF LIGHT, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans.” They are unlike other college integration books in a market oddly dominated by books center on Bear Bryant myths.

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