To new AD Batt: Our history includes Michigan living in the shadows of Biggie and Duffy
— Visit my homepage: TomShanahan.Report
— Click here for review and purchase link: THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s and here for a purchase link to RAYE OF LIGHT, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans.
— Learn about our documentary at the fundraising stage, GAME CHANGERS OF THE CENTURY, and the Investment Deck.
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By TOM SHANAHAN
Dear Mr. J Batt:
You stated at your introductory press conference you want to learn Michigan State’s history, so I’m following my first letter on the Spartans’ leadership off the field with one about the win-loss columns on the field.
Duffy Daugherty, our coach from 1954 to 1972, set standards for college football integration on a U.S. Constitution level. Thanks to his leadership, Michigan State stands alone as a singular story. We are not another Minnesota, Illinois or USC, a misconception you may hear. Duffy ignored the unwritten quota limiting Black players to a half-dozen or so to assemble the first fully integrated rosters in the 1960s.
My first letter on Michigan State history to J Batt
On the field, the Spartans stood atop the college football world in the 1950s and 1960s with College Football Hall of Fame coaches Biggie Munn (1947-53) and Daugherty as his successor. They won national titles and Rose Bowls.
In those days, football’s two biggest TV games of the year were the Army-Navy Game and the Rose Bowl. College football was bigger than the NFL until NFL popularity exploded in the late 1960s. The 1966 Game of the Century matching Notre Dame and Michigan State drew a larger TV audience, 33 million, than Super Bowl I played two months later.
Biggie’s teams won 28 straight games from mid-season 1950 to mid-season 1953. Duffy’s 1965 and 1966 teams were 19-1-1. For two decades, Michigan lived in our shadow. Between 1950 and 1969, the Spartans dominated the series, 15-4-2. Duffy liked to tell his players the sweetest bus ride they’d ever take was from Ann Arbor to East Lansing after a victory. We didn’t see another decade-long run like that until Mark Dantonio won eight of 10 (2008-17).
How could our Paul Bunyan stature have been squandered?
Well, let’s blame it first on an easy target — President Richard M. Nixon. He committed a crime against Spartan Nation that was worse than Watergate. He lured MSU president John Hannah to Washington in 1969 to serve as the head of the US Agency for International Development.
Alabama’s Bear Bryant, USC and 1970 game: Cataloging Fraudulent Folklore – Tom Shanahan Report
Hannah’s departure led to a falling out between Duffy and the new administration when the football and athletic budgets were cut. In Duffy’s eponymous 1974 book, he claimed the Spartans’ football budget was at the bottom of the Big Ten alongside Northwestern. Back then, Northwestern posted 23 straight losing seasons, 1972 to 1994.
“When I left after the ’72 season,” Duffy wrote of his retirement, “our athletic budget was the ninth lowest in the conference. Dr. Hannah just wouldn’t have let that happen.”
Hannah, MSU’s president from 1941 to 1969, had built Michigan State from a regional college into a world-class research university during his time in office. He understood an avenue to take was to place a national power football program on the school’s front porch.
His first right move paid off with two hires. He lured Munn away from Syracuse. And since Munn brought Duffy with him as an assistant, it paid off with Duffy as an in-house successor.
PHOTO: Biggie Munn (R) brought Duffy Daugherty with him from Syracuse to Michigan State in 1947, and Daugherty succeeded him in 1954.
Before there was Tom Izzo-like loyalty, Daugherty’s commitment to MSU was tested 11 years into his East Lansing stay (seven as an assistant, four as a head coach) when Texas A&M tried to hire him, in 1958.
In 1963, Notre Dame wanted to hire the Spartans’ Irishman. Hannah told Duffy he didn’t want to lose him to South Bend. They worked out a new deal that allowed Duffy to report directly to Hannah on football matters (friction had developed in the new dynamic of Biggie as AD and Duffy as his football coach).
The 1963 season turned out to be symbolic in more ways.
Sherman Lewis, a halfback from segregated Louisville, Kentucky, was the Spartans’ first Underground All-American player. He finished third in the Heisman Trophy voting to Navy quarterback Roger Staubach. The Spartans came up a game shy of the Rose Bowl when they lost the Big Ten title showdown in the regular season finale to Illinois and Dick Butkus.
But the 1963 recruiting class produced greater fruit with the 1965 and 1966 national title seasons. There were four College Football Hall of Famers – rover George Webster, defensive end Bubba Smith, halfback Clinton Jones and receiver Gene Washington. Webster (Anderson, S.C.), Smith (Beaumont, Texas) and Washington (La Porte, Texas) were recruited aboard the Underground Railroad along with All-Big Ten picks Charlie Thornhill (Roanoke, Virginia) and James Summers (Orangeburg, S.C).
Oddly enough, Michigan State ended the 1965 and 1966 regular seasons facing Notre Dame with the national title at stake. In 1965, No. 1 Michigan State defeated No. 4 Notre Dame, 12-3. In the 1966 Game of the Century, No. 1 Notre Dame and No. 2 Michigan State played to a 10-10 tie. With identical 9-0-1 records, the National Football Foundation named the Spartans and Irish co-champions, but the Associated Press, United Press and the Football Writers Association voted Notre Dame No. 1.
The timing of Hannah’s 1969 departure was compounded by changes in Ann Arbor. Michigan’s new athletic director was Don Canham, a marketing whizz ahead of his time. He was hired in 1968, and his investment in football in 1969 included hiring Bo Schembeckler as head coach.
Duffy managed to upset Michigan the first time he met Bo in 1969, but then Bo won 13 of the next 15 games. He posted a 17-4 record against four MSU coaches: Duffy, 3-1; Denny Stolz, 3-0; Darryl Rogers, 3-1; Muddy Waters, 3-0; and George Perles, 5-2.
In the 1970s, Ohio State and Michigan were the Big Two and the Spartans were grouped among the Little Eight. Side note: Big Ten Bashing came about when Bo and Ohio State’s Woody Hayes went 1-9 in 1970s Rose Bowls.
To be fair, a case can be made for Duffy losing his edge in the 1970s. The Spartans were decimated by graduation and injuries in 1967 (3-7), but Michigan State was basically a .500 program his final five years. Or maybe that fault lies with the assistant coaches he hired to replace his former assistants in the 1950s and 1960s who went on to become head coaches.
Yes, there were upsets of No. 5 Notre Dame in 1968, No. 13 Michigan in 1969, No. 9 Ohio State in 1971 and No. 5 Ohio State in 1972, but a demoralizing 6-6 tie at Iowa that dropped to the Spartans’ record to 2-4-1 and prompted him to announced he would retire at the end of the 1972 season.
Michigan State’s decline has been blamed on the desegregation in the South drying up Duffy’s pipeline. It’s not that simple. Duffy’s post-1966 recruits weren’t Hall of Famers, but they included All-American picks — running back Eric Allen (Georgetown, S.C.) and Billy Joe Dupree (West Monroe, Louisianna). Defensive lineman Ernie Hamilton (Greenville, S.C.) was an All-Big Ten pick as a junior in 1971 and projected as an All-American his senior year until an injury. Defensive end Otto Smith (Columbia, S.C.) and quarterback Charlie Baggett were All-Big Ten honorees.
The 1972 team included 10 draft picks and 11 All-Big Ten honorees, including Maxwell Award winner Brad Van Pelt. But it lacked a quarterback. The Spartans’ squandered games with poor passing percentages and interceptions. Michigan State’s offense was 105th in the nation with 14.2 points a game.
Duffy didn’t go out a winner and his great contributions to the sport – leading integration – came at a time when the mainstream media avoided race. His role is still misunderstood by the national media.
Prior to the 1970s, White sportswriters didn’t know how to handle stories about race or may not have appreciated the changing face of the game. Duffy’s legacy also has been muddled by the false narratives Alabama coach Bear Bryant sent him players from the South. Bryant was oblivious to Black talent.
Sadly, those muddled factors have prevented Duffy Daugherty’s career from being properly recognized nationally among the game’s most important figures.
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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
