PHOTO: Tyrone Willingham (R) was Notre Dame’s head coach when Jimmy Raye was a New York Jets assistant and visited an Irish practice.

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By TOM SHANAHAN

Tyrone Willingham knows something about Black football coaches breaking barriers. He learned from his Michigan State mentors clearing paths and by establishing his own milestones.

Willingham was the first Black head coach to take a team to the Rose Bowl when his 1999 Stanford team won the Pac-10 title. He was the first Black head coach at Notre Dame in any sport, 2002 to 2004.

And now — from his perch in history — he’s eagerly watching the College Football Playoff semifinal on Thursday matching Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman and Penn State’s James Franklin.

One of them will be the first Black head coach in a national championship game. The winner has a chance to become the first to win a national title. College basketball’s John Thompson never won a second national title, but one 1984 crown was enough for the Georgetown coach to earn immortality.

“The first thing I want to say is I’m proud of those two for the way they represented their teams and universities,” Willingham said. “Until you reach the ultimate success, people are always critical of you. Those two coaches have shown their true colors as leaders. They’ve been very professional in the manner they led their teams and handled all the circumstances around them. It’s a joy to see this happening.”

Too frequently when Black coaches break barriers the media is slow to recognize the significance. The pioneers are made to sound like overnight success stories.

To appreciate Willingham’s place in history, step back two decades. When he took the Notre Dame job, he was one of only four Black head coaches in major college football.

Some media members carelessly jumped the gun, stating the Irish’s 2002 game against Michigan State – Willingham’s alma mater was then led by African American Bobby Williams – would be the first with two major college Black coaches. But by kickoff it was recalled that barrier had been quietly broken in 1996 when Oklahoma’s John Blake faced Oklahoma State’s Bob Simmons.

Their moment, like so many others, was unappreciated. But such an oversight won’t happen in this week’s buildup. The media — for too long focused on Bear Bryant myths embellishing his record — has recently become better at identifying true pioneers.

Willingham’s long road began with attending segregated schools in North Carolina until desegregation arrived during his high school years in Jacksonville, N.C. Willingham played quarterback in high school, but he undersized. He wrote letters to 100 schools asking for an opportunity.

Only a Toledo coach and Michigan State assistant coach Jimmy Raye responded. Raye, who rode College Football Hall of Fame coach Duffy Daugherty’s Underground Railroad out of segregated Fayetteville, N.C., was in his first year on Daugherty’s staff. He convinced Daugherty to take a chance on Willingham. He earned letters 1973 through 1976 as a quarterback and receiver. Willingham also was a baseball second-team All-Big Ten outfielder, 1976, and team captain, 1977.

Willingham’s senior season was under head coach Darryl Rogers, who hired Willingham in 1977 as a graduate assistant. He also was a secondary coach for the Spartans under Rogers’ successor, Muddy Waters, 1980-82.

The Raye-Willingham-Daugherty connection is another chapter on how all of college football integration’s story — for players and coaches — can be traced back to Daugherty. Raye was the South’s first Black quarterback to win a national title playing on the Spartans’ 1965 and 1966 championship teams.

Willingham’s first two mentors were pioneer Black assistant coaches – Raye and Sherman Lewis. Daugherty recruited them as Underground Railroad players from the Jim Crow South and then hired Lewis as an assistant in 1969 and Raye in 1972. At that time, other schools were hiring their first Black assistant or had yet to.

“They are what you call bricks and mortar for what has happened over the years,” Willingham said. “There are other coaches that fit in that category. They didn’t get the glory and recognition of being a head coach, but they were so good and so professional you learned from being around them. I was blessed to be at Michigan State and have two of them right there. They weren’t far removed from their playing careers.”

In addition to Raye breaking barriers as one of only two Black starting quarterbacks at a major college in the 1966 season, Lewis was Daugherty’s first Underground All-American. He played halfback out of Louisville, Kentucky, and was third in the 1963 Heisman Trophy voting.

Much of Daugherty’s influence has been lost to history by a negligent 1960s sports media that avoided race and thus failed to chronicle his leadership.

The opportunities Daugherty provided Lewis, Raye and Willingham eventually led to them coaching in the NFL. When Raye joined the San Francisco 49ers in 1977, there were only seven other Black assistants in a 30-team league. In 1983, Raye was only the NFL’s second Black coordinator when Los Angeles Rams head coach John Robinson hired him as offensive coordinator.

Lewis’ first NFL job also was with the 49ers, in 1983. He won three Super Bowl rings with the 49ers and one as offensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers in the 1996 season.

In the mid-1980s, Raye’s name was mentioned among a half-dozen candidates as the first Black head coach. That distinction went to Art Shell with the Los Angeles Raiders in 1989, but Raye’s ground-breaking helped generate conversation.

Progress remained slow at a time when Raye, now 78, and Lewis, 82, were in their prime coaching years. They didn’t get a chance to follow Shell into history.

That same 2002 season when Willingham was one of only four major college Black head coaches there were only two Black head coaches in the NFL — the Indianapolis Colts’ Tony Dungy and the New York Jets’ Herm Edwards.

“Unfortunately, Jimmy Raye and Sherman Lewis are unknowns,” Willingham said. “People have only a small idea of what they’ve accomplished. I learned from them, and I owed them nothing less than to do my very best.”

Willingham has often said he’s embarrassed for football he had a chance to be a head coach and not his mentors.

“With their talent, skill sets and motivation, yes, they would have been good head coaches. There is no guessing about that.”

The Pro Football Hall of Fame bestowed the NFL Awards of Excellence for assistant coaches on Raye in the inaugural class in 2022 and Lewis in the second class in 2023. NFL 360/NFL Network produced a 2023 documentary on Raye’s career, “THE INDELIBLE LEGACY OF JIMMY RAYE,” that won a Sports Emmy Award.

Willingham, 71, has had other mentors, including the late Dennis Green, who was a pioneer as a Black head coach at Northwestern (1981-85), Stanford (1989-91), Minnesota Vikings (1992-2001) and Arizona Cardinals (2004-06). Green hired Willingham as a Stanford assistant (1989-91) and Vikings assistant (1992-94). Stanford named Willingham its head coach, 1995-2001.

PHOTO: Tyrone Willingham was Stanford’s head coach, 1995-2001.

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Freeman and Franklin are on the verge of history this week, but it remains to be seen if their long roads are fully appreciated in media accounts. The paths pioneering Black coaches cleared have led to 16 Black head coaches in 2024.

“It takes a fairly deep path to get to this point,” Willingham said. “It’s not like they woke up showing leadership qualities at Notre Dame and Penn State. They had to show their leadership all along the way.”

Willingham also cites his family history preparing him to take advantage of his Michigan State opportunities. His father, Nathanial, didn’t graduate from high school, but his mother, Lillian, was an elementary school teacher with Masters Degree from Columbia University. She was the first African American woman to serve in the Onslow County School Board at a time of upheaval in a changing social climate.

“To have those two parents in my path, I understood the emphasis of education and leadership,” Willingham said. “My dad didn’t have a formal education, but he was an amazingly smart man. My mom was a leader.”

Franklin and Freeman represent another dimension of America accepting progress. Franklin’s father is Black and his mother White. Freeman’s father is Black and his mother Korean.

Willingham encourages the attention Freeman and Franklin receive this week and beyond.

“Hopefully we’ve reached a day where these things can be viewed in the open public arena and not be hidden,” he said. “Right now, we’re in a hidden era. Right now, people are trying to hide history and things that have happened. When we put this out in the open, we show we can succeed. It shows the depth and quality of this country if it uses all its resources.”

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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.

Tags: Alabama, Bear Bryant, Duffy Daugherty, Michigan State

Tags: Jimmy Raye, Michigan State, North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame