PHOTO: Terry Hanratty’s fateful scramble led to a collision with Bubba Smith (95). George Webster (90) forced Hanratty inside and into Smith’s pursuing path. Hanratty, Smith and Webster are all College Football Hall of Famers.

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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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By TOM SHANAHAN

Notre Dame’s campus is 158 miles south of Michigan State, but the football programs enjoy a coast-to-coast symbiosis. The bond dates to the unbeaten Irish and Spartans facing off in the 1966 Game of the Century.

The epic showdown provided a seminal moment based on two college football tipping points. It’s a moment in college football history worthy of a marker or a plaque on the Spartan Stadium grounds. The iterations labeled a “game of the century” don’t measure up to the 1966 Game of the Century.

— 1) The quasi-national championship was the first mega-TV event while attracting a record TV audience of 33 million – one in six Americans in a then-population of 195 million. Space-age satellite technology allowed for the first live broadcast of a game in Hawaii and to the U.S. military serving in Vietnam.

— The “Game of the Century” appellation has a half-dozen iterations, but the first one with Black players was November 19, 1966, at Spartan Stadium. Throughout the 1960s, Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty assembled the college game’s first fully integrated rosters. He was the vanguard who ignored the unwritten quota limiting Black athletes to a half-dozen or so.

Four elements swelled the buildup to late November: a) Michigan State won the national title in 1965, so its following was larger than Spartan Nation; b) African Americans took pride in Michigan State’ success and opportunities; c) Notre Dame’s national fanbase; and d) the schadenfreude of nationwide fans rooting against the Irish.

Both “c” and “d” were further fueled by Notre Dame quarterback Terry Hanratty as two-time national coverboy less than a month before the game. Time Magazine featured Hanratty with teammate Jim Seymour on October 28 and Sports Illustrated highlighted Hanratty alone on November 7. Who gets two national magazine covers within 10 days as a college athlete? And Two covers from preeminent American magazines underscored the anticipation for the November 19 Game of the Century.

The timing is right this week — thanks to the College Football Hall of Fame inducting Hanratty — to remember the moment in time and consider commemorating it with a plaque on the grounds of Spartan Stadium.

The National Football Foundation honors Hanratty, a three-time Top 10 finisher in the Heisman Trophy voting (1966-68), at Saturday’s home game against USC. The Hall of Fame gala for the Class of 2025 is December 9 at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.

If it sounds odd to connect Michigan State to a Notre Dame halftime ceremony, that’s only if you’re unaware of the unique bond between the 1966 teams.

“I’m happy for Terry,” said Michigan State College Football Hall of Famer Clinton Jones, who joined Hanratty in the Top 10 Heisman voting as a sixth-place finisher. “Our teams were connected unlike other rivalries. I’m proud we competed against those guys.”

Do you think Jones or other Spartans are happy for a Michigan player going into the Hall of Fame? Therein lies the difference.

It matters not at all that Hanratty was knocked out of the game in the first quarter when Michigan State’s 6-foot-7, 285-pound Bubba Smith tackled him and broke his collar bone. Smith’s size and speed was so rare for 1966. The collision added to both players’ legends.

Hanratty was among the Notre Dame and Michigan State players who gathered for the 2017 Irish-Spartans game at Spartan Stadium a year after the 50^th anniversary of the Game of the Century was recognized at Notre Dame Stadium.

PHOTO: Terry Hanratty (R) at the 2017 Notre Dame-Michigan State game at Spartan Stadium with four past Michigan State quarterbacks (L-R): Eric Marshall (1964-67), Steve Juday (1963-65), Jimmy Raye (1965-67) and John Mullen (1965-67). Hanratty played for the Irish, 1966-68.

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Do you think Michigan State players would invite Michigan players to join them to watch together arm-in-arm?

There is no other campus with a Game of the Century plaque despite the half-dozen iterations or the credentials to display one that matches the 1966 edition.

— There isn’t one at Ohio Stadium for the 1935 Notre Dame-Ohio State GOC. Why would there be? It was a mid-season game Notre Dame won 18-13. And neither team finished with a national title designation that went to Minnesota.

— There isn’t one at Yankee Stadium – old or new — for the 1946 Notre Dame-Army game that ended in a 0-0 tie. Yankee Stadium is a baseball shrine that was a neutral site.

— There isn’t one at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, Arkansas, for the 1969 Texas-Arkansas game that Texas won 15-14. Nor should there be one. There was no season-long buildup. Texas didn’t move to No. 1 and Arkansas to No. 2 until after Michigan upset No. 1 Ohio State in the last game of the Big Ten regular season. Texas won the national title, but unbeaten Penn State (11-0), not Arkansas (10-2), finished ranked No. 2. And let’s not overlook Texas and Arkansas were among of the last southern holdouts to bigotry (along with Alabama coach Bear Bryant) with all-White rosters. Southerners crashed the GOC party with 1969 game that doesn’t belong near the equal-opportunity 1966 Game of the Century.

— There isn’t one at Memorial Stadium in Norman, Oklahoma, for the 1971 Nebraska-Oklahoma GOC that Nebraska won 35-31. The loss spoils it for the Sooners, but there is justification for a marker or plaque. The 1971 edition was the first with two fully integrated rosters. Daugherty’s fingerprints are on that game, too. Nebraska coach Bob Devaney was a Daugherty assistant and Oklahoma coach Chuck Fairbanks was a player under Daugherty.

PHOTO: Michigan State’s Clinton Jones and Notre Dame’s Jim Lynch shake hands after the 1966 Game of the Century. Both players are College Football Hall of Famers.

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As for Notre Dame’s Saturday halftime ceremony, Hanratty personifies the Notre Dame-Michigan State bond. Hanratty was from Butler, Pennsylvania, and Daugherty mined Pennsylvania talent throughout his Michigan State as an assistant (1947-53) and head coach (1954-72). Daugherty was Hanratty’s second choice to Notre Dame and coach Ara Parseghian. He gave me this quote upon the 50^th anniversary, and it stands the test of time.

“Duffy Daugherty was such a wonderful human being,” Hanratty said. “No one can ever turn me against Michigan State. When I told Ara I was coming to Notre Dame, I knew I had to call Duffy. I’m thinking, ‘This is going to be horrible’ because you hear all these stories about coaches jumping on kids.

“I told Duffy, and he went on for 20 minutes about what great school Notre Dame was and what a great guy Ara was. He made that very difficult call for a 17-year-old kid special. I’ll always have a fondness for Michigan State because of Duffy.”

And Michigan State fans also will appreciate this comment he added: “I always root for Michigan State against Michigan.”

Although the teams played to a 10-10 tie and finished with 9-0-1 records, the Associated Press (writers), United Press International (coaches) and Football Writers Association named Notre Dame national champion and Michigan State No. 2. However, the NFF declared them co-champions.

Nevertheless, unlike other national championship showdowns with only the winner remembered, Notre Dame and Michigan State are tied at the hip. At the 1966 NFF dinner on December 6 in New York, Daugherty and Parseghian hammed it up as they held the NFF’s MacArthur Bowl Trophy emblematic of the national title.

Later in the month, Notre Dame center George Goeddeke, who played six NFL seasons, told a story illustrating the respect among the Irish and Spartans. Four or five from each school found themselves as teammates when invited to 1966 North-South Shrine All-Star game played on December 26 in Miami. They were available since Notre Dame’s administration banned bowl games until 1969, and Michigan State was barred from returning to the Rose Bowl after their 1965 Big Ten title by the conference’s archaic no-repeat rule.

“We practiced together and got to know each other,” Goeddeke said. “On Christmas Eve, we drank beer and sang Christmas carols in our hotel rooms. It was a great time.”

Would Michigan State players sit around singing Christmas Carols with Michigan players?

Hanratty’s induction makes him the ninth coach or player from the 1966 Game of the Century named to the Hall. Notre Dame’s Hall of Famers and their induction year are Parseghian (1980), linebacker Jim Lynch (1992) and defensive tackle Alan Page (1993).

Michigan State’s Hall of Famers: Daugherty (1984), linebacker/rover George Webster (1987), defensive end Bubba Smith (1988), receiver Gene Washington (2012) and Jones (2015) as a halfback.

There’s much more about the talent level.

Seven seniors were NFL first-round draft picks, but when the senior, junior and sophomore classes are combined (the NCAA prohibited freshmen eligibility until 1972), there were 42 overall draft picks, 33 pro player and 25 All-Americans.

“I’ve always said the talent assembled on the field that day was as good as any game any time,” Goeddeke said. “No question about it. There were so many guys that went to the pros.”

Lynch won the Maxwell Award – the other Heisman Trophy – but years later he said when asked about the best player in the country, Webster should have won the Heisman.

Webster was among the Daugherty’s Underground Railroad players recruited out of the segregated South from Anderson, S.C. In the Game of the Century, Michigan State lined up 20 Black players, 11 Black starters, two Black team captains, Webster and Jones, and Jimmy Raye as the South’s first Black quarterback to win a national title as an Underground Railroad passenger from Fayetteville, N.C. Notre Dame had one Black player, Page.

Michigan State was the future. Notre Dame and USC were the past. USC’s 1962 national title team numbered only five Black players and its 1967 national championship roster only seven despite a campus located in diverse and populated Los Angeles.

If the plaque was created and displayed on the Spartan Stadium grounds, new students and players can learn Daugherty’s history. Daugherty retired in 1972 after 19 seasons at Michigan State, so a plaque provides more recent alums a chance to learn history they may not have absorbed while on campus. And for each Michigan State game on TV, cameras can show the plaque as announcers tell the story.

Notre Dame and Michigan State are tied at the hip unlike any other rivalry and any other iteration of the Game of the Century. The 1966 Game of the Century’s significance can’t be erased from annals, but it has been largely forgotten in college football lore.

History is what happened. Lore is who’s telling the story.

Historian and best-seller author Doris Kearns-Goodwin reminds us, “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.”

Michigan State has failed to tell its own story of its moment in history and of Daugherty’s leadership. A 1966 Game of the Century plaque can launch Michigan State telling its own story – in history and lore.

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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.