North Carolina’s family affair keeps alive Dean Smith’s legacy (unlike Michigan State preserving Duffy Daugherty’s legacy)
PHOTO: North Carolina’s bench with then-head coach Roy Williams (L-R) and two assistants, Hubert Davis and Brad Fredrick. Davis played for Dean Smith before he joined Williams’ staff and succeeded him. Frederick played for both Smith and Bill Guthridge and coached under Williams and Davis.
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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.
— Watch a three-minute video to learn about our documentary at the fundraising stage, GAME CHANGERS OF THE CENTURY, and the Investment Deck.
— Documentary synopsis: Duffy documentary snynopsis.pdf – Google Drive
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“I talk about him (Dean Smith), and Coach Guthridge and Coach Williams every day.”
— North Carolina coach Hubert Davis on the Tar Heels maintaining the late Dean Smith’s legacy among players and students.
By TOM SHANAHAN
CHAPEL HILL _ Few colleges can claim a proud athletics history featuring a championship coach whose courageous influence on their sport extended beyond win-loss results to include racial progress.
One is North Carolina and Dean Smith, the Tar Heels basketball coach (1961-97) with two national titles, 1982 and 1993. He is widely credited, coast to coast, as a integration leader of his sport in the 1960s South.
President Barack Obama presented Smith’s wife with the 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House. Smith, who died in 2015 at age 83, was unable to attend due to dementia.
North Carolina’s current players were born long after Smith coached his final game in 1997 and after he slipped into dementia in 2007. He was no longer a presence on campus, but the school’s players and student body continue to be aware of his impact beyond the court.
Another school is Michigan State and Duffy Daugherty, the Spartans’ football coach (1954-72) with two national titles, 1965 and 1966. He was the vanguard of college football integration in the 1960s, but his legacy is lost in the shadows of history. College football was far more popular than college basketball in the 1960s, which makes Daugherty’s influence on the long road to integration deeper than Smith’s role.
A nomination campaign for Daugherty to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom was led a couple years ago by Michigan State Hall of Famers Clint Jones (football) and Bill Wehrwein (track). They included a letter of support from esteemed Detroit News sportswriter Lynn Henning.
STORY AND VIDEO: Clint Jones and his 1964 touchdown at North Carolina that history ignored – Tom Shanahan Report
Their bid was met by silence in Washington. It’s as if they were asking, “Who is Duffy Daugherty?”
Dean Smith is remembered nationally and on his campus. Duffy Daugherty is forgotten nationally and on his campus. How can this be?
It’s perplexing Michigan State’s current players and students largely can’t answer that question, either. They were born long after Daugherty coached his final game in 1972 and died at age 72 in 1987, but those aren’t the only reasons they’re unaware.
Underscoring my point is a story from Tony Banks, Michigan State’s quarterback in 1994 and 1995 who went on to play 10 NFL seasons. When Banks wore green and white – including upsetting Michigan in 1995 – he didn’t know Daugherty had recruited Michigan State Hall of Famer Jimmy Raye, who has a place in history as the South’s first Black quarterback to win a national title. Daugherty recruited Raye aboard his transcendent Underground Railroad out of segregated Fayetteville, N.C., but Banks didn’t learn it until he played for the Washington Redskins in 2002 and Raye was the team’s offensive coordinator.
As author Robert Heinlein said, “A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.”
Michigan State’s football program needs to understand the past half-century it has allowed a lack of history to repeat itself every four-year cycle of athletes and students.
Daugherty’s lost legacy started with his falling out with the administration in his final years when the football budget was cut. The breakup was followed by a series of MSU presidents, athletic directors and coaches from other places who failed to understand Daugherty’s impact nationally.
Adding insult to injury, fairytales about the 1970 USC-Alabama game that falsely promoted Alabama coach Bear Bryant as a leader were spread two decades after the game. And because Bryant’s acolytes and USC backers riding his coattails captured the national narrative, Daugherty and other true football pioneers from the 1960s were shoved into oblivion.
It’s a sports journalism failure the media failed to vet the Bryant myths simply because Bryant is a legend.
I’ve pointed out these MSU shortcomings in two books — RAYE OF LIGHT and THE RIGHT THING TO DO — with the hope of righting a wrong. I felt compelled following publication of THE RIGHT THING TO DO in 2024 to try a new approach — emphasizing MSU’s failures — to make my case on numerous on podcasts, THE END GAME, and sports radio shows, including Lansing-based, “The Drive with Jack.”
I didn’t expect to be met by silence or recoiling at constructive criticism rather than seeking a solution to properly celebrate Duffy Daugherty and MSU history. I didn’t expect MSU people to defend Bryant, including supporting the baseless claim Bryant sent Daugherty his Black stars from the South. Defending Bryant and accepting the myths about him diminishes Daugherty.
When Bryant was sued in 1969 by Alabama’s Afro American student association in 1969, Bryant was proven in court depositions to be unaware of Black players in his own backyard. Daugherty’s 44 Underground Railroad passengers from 1959 to 1972 came from 10 southern states.
Bryant said in a 1967 TV interview he couldn’t find any academically qualified Black athletes. Yet, Joe Namath, a White quarterback from Pennsylvania who was denied admission at Michigan State and Maryland, was admitted to Alabama.
Michigan State’s new administrators are open to learning Duffy’s history and bringing Daugherty’s spirit back to life on campus. The coaching staff, now and into the future, also needs to teach what Daugherty meant to the game.
After all, President Harry S. Truman said, “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.”
I asked North Carolina basketball coach Hubert Davis about the Tar Heels maintaining Smith’s legacy. This was on Wednesday before the team left for Friday’s exhibition at Bringham Young.
“That’s a message that is preached every day to these guys,” Davis said. “It’s the foundation of what this program is about. It’s about relationships and how it all ties together.”
Davis played for Smith (1988-92) and was an assistant for Roy Williams (2012-21) until Williams retired and Davis was promoted.
Willliams played for Smith’s freshman team and was an assistant for Smith (1978-88) before he returned to Chapel Hill as head coach, 2003-21.
Sean May, a former player (2002-05) before returning from the NBA as an assistant coach, played one season for former head coach Matt Doherty (2000-03) — a UNC player with Michael Jordan on Smith’s 1982 national title team. May finished his career under Williams and has been on UNC’s staff since 2015 under Williams and now Davis.
Davis’ other 2025-26 assistants are Brad Frederick, Jeff Lebo, Pat Sullivan and Marcus Paige. They are perched on branches that connect to Smith.
Frederick was a sophomore on Smith’s final team and played the next two seasons for Bill Guthridge, a Smith assistant (1967-97). Guthridge succeeded Smith as head coach (1997-2000). Fredrick is in his 13th season as a UNC assistant under Williams and Davis.
Lebo played for Smith (1985-89) and has been on the staff under Davis since 2021.
Sullivan played for Smith (1990-95), including the 1993 national title team. He was an assistant under Guthridge (1997-2000) and returned to the staff under Davis in 2021.
Paige played for Williams (2012-16), including the 2015 national title team. He has been on Davis’ staff since 2023.
To some, that may sound like too much inbreeding. Davis says otherwise.
“One of the many reasons I love our coaching staff is all of us didn’t play for the same coach here at Carolina,” Davis said. “The communication and what we give to the players is a full body experience of what this place is like but from different angles.
“I’m a different person from Coach Williams. Coach Williams is a different person from Coach Guthridge and Coach Guthridge a different person from Coach Smith. I think it’s really cool we can give our players our shared experiences from different perspectives and allow them to understand what this place has always meant and what it’s like.”
Michigan State basketball has maintained a similar connection to the past with Tom Izzo and his assistant coaches. Izzo wanted his players to know about his two predecssors, Jud Heathcote and Gus Ganakas. Football and basketball coaches are different numbers and not necessarily a fair comparison, but there is a canyon between the North Carolina/Dean Smith legacy and Michigan State/Duffy Daugherty history.
Without mentioning Michigan State’s failure to teach its players and student body Daugherty’s legacy, I asked Davis if he could imagine a school abandoning the legacy of a courageous coach who changed the face of the game.
“I could not imagine that,” he said. “It won’t happen here. I talk about him (Smith), and Coach Guthridge and Coach Williams every day.”
Links to my past stories on Michigan State and Duffy Daugherty leading college football integration:
— College football’s Diversified American Top 40 Hits, 1954 to the 1970s – Tom Shanahan Report
— My lengthy catalogue of 1970 USC-Alabama myths and Bear Bryant fairytales – Tom Shanahan Report
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I invite you to follow me on Twitter @shanny4055
I’ll put my facts on the true pioneers of college football integration versus Bear Bryant fairytales against anybody, anytime, anywhere. Watch here.
Click here for my story on the 1962 Rose Bowl and Segregation and Alabama.
— 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.” They are the most accurate accounts of college football integration in the 1950s and 1960s. They also debunk myths about the 1970 USC-Alabama game. The false narrative co-opted the stories of the true pioneers who stood up to Jim Crow and the KKK.
— Two children’s books also explain Michigan State College Football Hall of Fame coach Duffy Daugherty’s impact on integration through the Underground Railroad and the Hawaiian Pipeline: “DUFFY’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL UNDERGROUND RAILROAD” and “HOW DUFFY PUT HAWAII ON AMERICA’S FOOTBALL MAP.”
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PURCHASE LINKS, non-fiction books
— RAYE OF LIGHT, August Publications or on Amazon.
— THE RIGHT THING TO DO, August Publications or on Amazon.
PURCHASE LINKS, children’s books
— DUFFY’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, Order from Barnes and Noble here and Amazon here.
— HOW DUFFY PUT HAWAII ON AMERICA’S FOOTBALL MAP, coming soon on Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
