PHOTO: Malcolm Gladwell is a New York Times bestseller with books studying society.

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THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s

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“Overstories matter. You can create them. They can spread. They are powerful and they can endure for decades.”

— Malcolm Gladwell’s 2024 book, “Revenge of the Tipping Point.”

By TOM SHANAHAN

Memo to Malcolm Gladwell:

Please consider dissecting Bear Bryant “overstories.” You’ll find it’s right in your wheelhouse.

The overstories about the legendary Alabama coach were “created” and “spread” nearly 40 years ago. Powerful overstories “can endure for decades.”

But the problem with the Bryant overstory is it has been accepted into college football lore despite no supporting evidence. The myth falsely claimed he orchestrated events to launch college football integration as a tipping point through a single contest, the 1970 USC-Alabama game played at Legion Field in Birmingham.

But tipping points don’t develop overnight in an American history of racial progress. Advances require painful steps over time.

Michigan State’s Duffy Daugherty assembled college football’s first fully integrated rosters in the 1960s – other schools followed an unwritten quota limiting Black athletes to a half-dozen or so – and southern pioneers were breaking ground long before Alabama played USC. One of the most prominent competing through death threats was Southern Methodist’s Jerry LeVias (1966-68), a College Football Hall of Famer. He was the first Black player in the Southwest Conference when he signed with the Dallas school, in 1965.

I came up with my plea to you after reading your book “Revenge of the Tipping Point.” What stood out was I learned “The Holocaust” was not much more than a footnote to World War II history as told in America until a 1978 TV four-part mini-series aired on NBC.

You explain the Holocaust survivors were for many years reluctant to speak about the unspeakable — the murder of 6 million Jewish people by Hitler’s Nazi Germany in World War II. The Holocaust’s first museum in the country wasn’t until 1961 and then not the next one until 1984.

As you state in your book, “References to Auschwitz or concentration camps are rare,” the historian and Holocaust survivor Gerd Korman wrote in 1970 after reading through more than a dozen of the top contemporary history books of the post-war era.

As you explain, it all changed after 120 million Americans tuned into The Holocaust aired as an NBC mini-series four nights in 1978. It was the first time many Americans had heard of the Holocaust.

You continue, “The chart showing usage of the term Holocaust, with a capital H, show that sometime early in 1978 that word goes from almost never having been used to being used all the time. When did the Holocaust miniseries air? April 16, 1978.”

That’s what we have here with the 1970 USC-Alabama game. It didn’t even rate a footnote on racial progress until an overstory was created two decades after the game was played. What makes the 1970 USC-Alabama game’s successful overstudy more startling is there was no TV event as a sparkplug parrarllel to The Holocaust. The game wasn’t televised. It was limited to radio.

The Bryant/1970 USC-Alabama myths claims that USC fullback Sam Cunningham, a Black fullback, ran over all-White Alabama to the embarrassment of Alabama’s bigoted fanbase. The plot included Bryant quietly orchestrating events behind the scenes, scheduling USC as a game to lose. He wanted the embarrassing loss, according to the false narrative, to gain permission to recruit Black athletes to remain competitive.

But that’s not what happened. First of all, Bryant had signed his first Black player, Wilbur Jackson, nine months before USC arrived in Birmingham.

An honest study of a 1960s timeline points to many figures above and below the Mason Dixon Line forced change step-by-step throughout the 1960s.

In the segregated South, they include Maryland and Wake Forest of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Maryland’s Darryl Hill was the South’s first Black player in a major conference as a senior transfer. A year later Wake Forest was the first southern conference member to sign Black players out of high school, with Bob Grant and Butch Henry among three.

The “first” dominos falling continued with Houston’s Warren McVea, the first Black player to sign at a major Texas school, 1964. Players from the two remaining major southern conferences signing were Southern Methodist’s Jerry LeVias in the Southwest Conference (1965) and Kentucky’s Nate Northington and Greg Page in the Southeastern Conference (1966).

SEC progress continued as Tennessee signed Lester McClain in 1967. In the fall of 1969, conference rivals Auburn, Florida, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt signed their first Black players.

Alabama was the seventh of 10 SEC members to recruit its first Black players. Bryant’s slow enlightenment follows an American racial progress pattern. Rose Parks launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. The U.S. Congress didn’t pass two Civil Important bills President Lyndon Johnson signed in 1964 and 1965.

The 1970 USC-Alabama myth wasn’t crafted until the late 1980s and didn’t spread into college football lore until the early 1990s. The 1960 sports media avoided race, and milestones weren’t properly reported.

The void provided a landing spot for the 1970 USC-Alabama myth. The media, under the spell of Bryant hagiography, was smitten with the image of Cunningham running amok as a denouement. The unvetted myth was happily regurgitated until it caught on.

PHOTO: College Football Hall of Famer Jerry LeVias signed with SMU as the first Black player in the Southwest Conference. He was breaking ground five years prior to the 1970 USC-Alabama game.

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Bryant’s backers, including curators of the Paul W. Bryant Museum on the Alabama campus, have worked to develop a successful myth, says Kevin Thompson, a South Carolina professor. He wrote his PH.D dissertation at the University of Alabama on Bryant myths.

Thompson on Bryant mythology:

“How Bryant is constructed in the museum is that he is a larger-than-life paternal figure … It’s all very paternal and it’s method of control. There is nothing for me to not believe that Bryant wasn’t trying to control the narrative about the problems that are associated with racial integration at the time in Alabama. He wanted to quash those as much as he could. I think he wanted to have control over the narrative as he could.”

Well, Mr. Gladwell, here’s how I apply overstory characteristics that you highlight in your book with the 1970 USC-Alabama myth:

— “Overstories matter:” The true pioneers paid a price to blaze trails and make college football integration a fait accompli by 1970. Yet they remain unjustly overshadowed and written out of history by the Bryant overstory.

— “You can create them:” The 1970 USC-Alabama game wasn’t reported as a racial progress moment in real time. Instead, USC boosters crafted the myth in the late 1980s. The Southern California media latched onto it in the early 1990s – two decades after the game was played – and it spread to the national media. For the USC boosters, the myth burnished a USC image despite its past of following an unwritten quota limiting Black athletes to a half-dozen or so until the late 1960s. Alabama fans, naturally, embraced a myth obfuscating Bryant dragged his feet.

— “They can spread:” “The popular misconception worked its way into the national folklore with the aid of poorly researched sports writing. Nationally prominent media figures simply regurgitated the unvetted myth.”

— “They are powerful and can endure for decades:” A cottage industry of dubious books and documentaries reinforce Bryant as a White savior and continue to profit from a narrative based on speculation. This includes documentaries released in the 21sth century – HBO, Breaking the Huddle, 2008; Showtime, Against the Tide, 2013; and ESPN films in 2019 and 2020.

They stick to the accepted myth either out ignorance about the 1960s facts or to collect on their advances paid for the project.

As author and mucker Upton Sinclair once observed, “It’s difficult get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on not understanding.”

Sir Gladwell, you’ve dabbled in sports at the Grantland, so you’ll find this fits your search for “interesting stories” and “interesting research” as one of your biographies states.

You’d be righting a wrong that credits a man who doesn’t deserve recognition and hopefully shifting it to the true 1960s pioneers of college football integration.

Oh, and I’ll debate this with anybody, anytime, anywhere.

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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.