PHOTO: Alabama’s segregated football roster sent 40 White players to face Colorado’s Bill Collins, the Buffaloes’ first Black team captain, for the 1969 Liberty Bowl coin flip. Bryant using race as gamesmanship was nothing new.

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By TOM SHANAHAN

Attention journalism students:

The Georgia Tech-Colorado football season opener on August 29 provides a journalism lesson for ESPN to share, courtesy of Colorado professor Deion Sanders.

The Buffaloes’ third-year head coach said at a media conference on August 8 he wants to honor Bill Collins, a Buffaloes integration trailblazer who died on July 31 from pancreatic cancer. Collins stood up to Alabama football racism at the 1969 Liberty Bowl, and Sanders said he plans to recognize Collins at a game this season.

The journalism lesson is this: It’s not what, it’s who.

It took Coach Prime’s celebrity to draw attention from the media to a story ignored nationally for 56 years. After Sanders brought up Collins’ courage, USA Today’s Brent Schrotenboer wrote an article dated August 9.

ESPN, The Athletic (the New York Times sports page), Sports Illustrated and other national media outlets remain missing in action, but the USA Today article is a start.

Colorado dutifully released Collins’ obituary written by CU Historian/Sports Information Director Emeritus Dave Plati on August 4, and I picked it up on my website.

I knew Collins’ history from Plati sharing the Liberty Bowl story when I was researching my 2024 book, “THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s.”

My book includes a chapter on Colorado’s 1961 team threatening to boycott the 1962 Orange Bowl in Jim Crow Miami to support the roster’s five Black players. Miami and the Orange Bowl backed down.

Collins is one of those untold stories — outside of Colorado circles — from the 1969 Liberty Bowl matching the Buffaloes and Alabama. The game was played in Memphis one year after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in the Tennessee city.

Colorado’s 1969 team included seven Black players and a Black assistant coach against Alabama’s Jim Crow White roster. Alabama coach Bear Bryant sent 40 White players for the coin flip. Colorado was represented by its tri-captains — Collins and two White teammates, running back Bobby Anderson and tight end Mike Pruitt.

Anderson, a College Football Hall of Famer, recounted the moment in my 2024 book, “THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s.”

He and Pruett made impromptu decision at the coin flip. They stepped back and told Collins they wanted him to represent the Buffaloes.

“We wanted to make a statement we were with our Black brothers,” Anderson said. “Bill showed great courage. He had a great game.”

In the first half, Colorado and Alabama traded scores until the Buffaloes took a 31-19 halftime advantage. But as the Buffaloes trotted to their locker room, Anderson said Alabama fans shouted racial epithets and spit at them.

On Page 333, Anderson added: “We’re in the locker room and all of the sudden we heard Bill Brundige screaming.”

Anderson referred to CU’s defensive end, a White teammate.

“He said, ‘Did you hear what they were calling our Black brothers?’ He was normally a calm guy, but he was emotional. He was livid with the Alabama fans.”

In the second half, Alabama rallied for a 33-31 lead until Colorado scored the final 16 points — two touchdowns and a safety — to finish a 47-33 victory.

If Alabama sending 40 White players to coin flip was race-based gamesmanship, it was nothing new from Bryant.

Retired Wisconsin College Football Hall of Fame coach Barry Alvarez, who played at Nebraska, told a 1965 Nebraska-Alabama Orange Bowl story. He heard it many years later from Jackie Sherrill, who played at Alabama and coached at four schools. Sherrill told Alvarez that Bryant brought up race before game.

“Jackie Sherrill told me Bryant used that as motivation — they were all White and we (Nebraska) were integrated and so forth,” Alvarez said.

The account is told on Page 15 of “THE RIGHT THING TO DO.”

But such Bryant episodes at the 1965 Orange Bowl and 1969 Liberty Bowl never gain a mention from Bryant’s minions. They fawn over his career in articles and books that led to documentaries. They cherry-pick facts to falsely cast Bryant as an integration leader. The national media subsequently regurgitates the false narrative.

They ignored Bryant was the seventh of 10 Southeastern Conference coaches to recruit his first Black player, in 1970. By the 1970 season openers, 33 of 37 major southern conference schools included Black players.

As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin says, “What happens in history is often a slippery business. And as ever, depends on who is doing the telling, when they are telling the tale and why.”

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Denver Channel 9 feature on Bill Collins

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The national media avoiding race in the 1960s meant many milestones weren’t recorded. The void allowed myths posing Bryant as an integration leader to spread the past 30-some years.

The myths surrounding the 1970 USC-Alabama game were crafted in the late 1980s and spread nationally in the early 1990s. The popular misconception worked its way into the national folklore with the aid of poorly researched sports writing.”

The fairytale also has overshadowed two more 1960s integration trailblazers at Wake Forest who have passed away in the last two years. In 1964, Wake Forest under head coach Bill Tate was the first major southern conference school to sign Black recruits out of high school. One of the three was Bob Grant.

Tate died June 23, 2025, and Grant on May 19, 2024. Neither death was noted by the national media. Wake Forest’s story is a chapter in “THE RIGHT THING TO DO.”

This is a story on Tate from my website: Sports journalism missed the story of Bill Tate in life and death – Tom Shanahan Report

And this was the story I posted on Grant: College football lore continues to fail Wake Forest’s Bob Grant and his trailblazing tale – Tom Shanahan Report

Wake Forest’s communications office properly reported both deaths. Maybe the school should have BT initials on their uniforms this year. They should have had BG initials a year ago.

But Tate and Grant lacked a celebrity such as Deion Sanders to inform the media.

That’s the bookend to Sanders’ journalism lesson delivered over the weekend.

But ESPN has the opportunity to enlighten a national audience when Georgia Tech-Colorado is one of only 11 Friday night games on national TV.

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We’re trying to tell the true stories of college football integration in the 1960s through a documentary in development. Watch a three-minute Sizzle Reel teaser with investment information.

Game Changers of the Century documentary development – Tom Shanahan Report

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Tom Shanahan is an award-winning sportswriter with two books on college football integration, “RAYE OF LIGHT, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans,” and “THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s,” and a children’s book, “DUFFY’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.” Shanahan’s 2022 story on the 1962 Rose Bowl, Alabama and segregation was awarded first place for Enterprise from the Football Writers Association of America.

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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

DUFFY CHILDREN’S BOOK purchase links: Order from Barnes and Noble here and Amazon here.