Duffy Daugherty needs a Bill Walsh-like letter
PHOTO: Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty upon his retirement following the 1972 season.
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By TOM SHANAHAN
I need a Bill Walsh-like letter from Alabama coach Bear Bryant. I need it to secure Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty’s legacy leading college football integration.
Facts, curiously, haven’t been enough.
Daugherty’s leadership remains unjustly lost in the shadows of myths and revisionist history surrounding Bryant and the 1970 USC-Alabama game. If only Bryant had publicly written or said what he privately told Daugherty following the 1966 season.
The hurdle to clear is when pitching books to publishers, freelance articles to editors and a documentary to investors is they mistakenly believe Bryant led the way. Duffy doesn’t have someone to champion his cause. Bryant has many champions producing misleading books and documentaries based on a false narrative.
My Walsh-letter question is prompted by the mystery of what sways opinions and voters. God only knows, to quote Brian Wilson. Allow me to explain. Stay with me on this.
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For years, Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts advocated Don Coryell’s enshrinement before the Hall-of-Fame selection committee. As the pilot of the San Diego Chargers’ Air Coryell offense, he presented facts.
Facts, curiously, weren’t enough.
Two former Coryell assistant coaches who are both in the Pro Football Hall of Fame — John Madden (Coryell’s defensive coordinator at San Diego State) and Joe Gibbs (Coryell’s SDSU assistant and San Diego Chargers’ offensive coordinator) — also endorsed Coryell’s candidacy.
Their hallowed opinions, curiously, weren’t enough.
Fouts was the second NFL quarterback to throw for 4,000 yards in a season, in 1979. Joe Namath was the first in 1967, but he did so in the AFL days when defenses weren’t yet the caliber of the post-merger NFL days. A year after Fouts threw for 4,082 in 1979, his next two seasons were good for 4,715 and 4,802. Namath’s 4007 was followed by 3,147 and 2,734.
PHOTO; San Diego Chargers quarterback Dan Fouts with head coach Don Coryell.
Fouts’ career as a TV analyst also allowed him to break down Coryell’s impact in simple terms for the voters to understand.
His insight, curiously, wasn’t enough.
Later, Fouts added research I came up with at the suggestion of Fred Dryer, the College Football Hall of Famer and NFL veteran who played for Coryell at San Diego State. Dryer speculated that many of Coryell’s Pro Bowl players never made a Pro Bowl until they played for him.
I did the research. His hunch was right. Coryell’s players with St. Louis Cardinals (1973-77) and the Chargers (1978-86) formed a roll call of examples. Fouts himself was a prime example.
He earned his first Pro Bowl in 1979, his seventh year in the league and first full one with Coryell (Coryell was hired five games into the 1978 season to replace fired Tommy Prothro).
Fouts later told me the Pro Bowl facts he cited prompted some Hall of Fame voters to tell him afterward they were now voting for Coryell. But it still wasn’t enough.
Now fast forward to the 2023 vote. Fouts was cleaning out a desk drawer at his Oregon home when he found a copy of Walsh’s Coryell letter written in 2007 that Walsh included as a copy to Fouts. He read the letter to the committee. Here is a portion:
“You have been one of the greatest coaches of your time. And I believe everyone else in coaching shares my opinion. You have been a brilliant offensive mind. You have been the most creative and innovative coach the game has seen. At St. Louis and San Diego, you revolutionized the game.
“As a young coach, I was in awe of your offenses. I believe I learned more just watching your games than in my association with all other coaches combined.”
PHOTO: San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh.
That was the coup de grace. Coryell went from legend to immortal in Canton.
The facts didn’t change. He didn’t make a comeback to win that elusive Super Bowl that voters held against him. A scale front-loaded with facts was tipped by a letter.
I need such a letter to educate the misinformed sports media. Its members can’t grasp that Daugherty, Michigan State College Football Hall of Fame coach, stands alone as a kingpin of college football integration leadership. His leadership spanned a decade with the first fully integrated rosters in the 1960s.
The trouble is the sports media avoided race in the 1960s. Daugherty’s milestones weren’t part of the national conversation. The Bryant myths were made up in the late 1980s and spread in the 1990s. They found a home in the 1960s void left behind by a negligent media that failed at recording history.
The modern media continues to fail by foolishly regurgitating the myths. The revisionist history claims Bryant secretly orchestrated events around the 1970 USC-Alabama game to change America through one game. Never mind he never claimed such credit in his 1974 autobiography, “BEAR.”
The folklore, with no supporting facts, flies in the face of American history. We all know America doesn’t solve its racial problems overnight.
PHOTO: Alabama’s campus desegregated, in 1963. The CIvil Rights Acts were passed in 1964 and 1965. Bear Bryant continued to coach all-White teams until 1971.
Daugherty’s 1960s teams flowed with Martin Luthe King Jr.’s Civil Rights movement. The confluence led to a river of southern coaches to boldly integrating their football programs.
Bryant wasn’t one of the southern coaches. He remained silent until the 1970s. Alabama was the seventh of 10 Southeastern Conference coaches to recruit his first Black player, in 1970. By then, 33 of 37 major southern programs included Black players.
Well, as for a Walsh-like letter, I happen to know how one from Bryant to Daugherty would have read based on the Bear’s comments to Daugherty after the 1966 season. Bryant sat at a breakfast table with Dougherty and MSU equipment manager Marty Daly at the National Sporting Goods Convention in Chicago in January 1967.
The 1966 season ended with Alabama’s smallish 11-0-0 team that never played a game above the Mason-Dixon Line ranked No. 3 behind No. 1 Notre Dame (9-0-1) and No. 2 Michigan State (9-0-1). The Irish and Spartans played to a 10-10 in the Game of the Century, November 19, 1966, before a record TV audience.
I quote Daly based on what he heard Bryant tell Dougherty on pages 300 and 301 of “THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s.” Based on those quotes, here’s a hypothetical letter from Bryant to Duffy:
“Your team was bigger, faster and more talented than mine. I have some good White players, but your Black players were bigger and faster. I know what you’re doing up there recruiting a fully integrated roster. I’m going to have to get me some of them Black players to compete with you.”
Except in 1967, Daly quoted Bryant’s southern drawl saying, “NIG-ruhs.”
I’ve made my case with facts, but I need a Walsh-like letter.
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Tom Shanahan is an award-winning sportswriter and frequent contributor to Spartanmag.com in addition to posting on his website. 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
