Pat Fitzgerald adds green and white to Big Ten awards, but Duffy remains lost to history
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
— I will debate anybody, anytime, anywhere Duffy Daugherty led college football integration
— My FWAA first-place story on the 1962 Rose Bowl and segregation
— I’ll debate anybody, anytime, anywhere on the true timeline of college football integration in the 1960s. Don’t believe the Bear Bryant/1970 USC-Alabama game fairytales: Click here: Tom Shanahan Promo.mp4 – Google Drive
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By TOM SHANAHAN
Attention college journalism professors:
Allow me to summarize a couple of sports journalism failures from the 1961 football season.
As UCLA closed in on the title for the 1961 Athletic Association of Western Universities (a forerunner to the Pac-8), the Bruins’ eight Black players threatened to boycott the 1962 Rose Bowl.
After Colorado clinched the 1961 Big Eight title, Colorado’s roster that included five Black players threatened to boycott the 1962 Orange Bowl.
You could win a lot of bar trivia bets on these facts. And enlighten young journalists the Civil Rights movement was ignored on 1960s sports pages.
Both stories are explained in my book, “THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s.” UCLA is Chapter 25: “UCLA and Jim Murray Battle ’Bama, Bryant.” Colorado is Chapter 6: Colorado, Sonny Grandelius and the Orange Bowl.”
The UCLA chapter is a version of my 2022 story that won first place for Enterprise from the Football Writers Association of America.
The stories untold in 1961 are a result of the 1960s sports media avoiding race. It feared alienating subscribers, listeners and advertisers. This was a practice that dated to the 1930s known as the “Conspiracy of Silence.” When Jackie Robinson broke the Major League Baseball color line in 1947, race was an afterthought in the stories.
The stories of 1960s college football pioneers remaining unknown in the 21st century continuing the sports journalism failure. College football lore still ignores the courage of the UCLA and Colorado players to treat race with the respect of the Declaration of Independence rather than the elephant in the room.
The Bruins’ Black players, supported by UCLA’s Black students threatening protests outside the Rose Bowl, were upset upon hearing rumors segregated Alabama would be invited over the traditional Big Ten representative. For context, understand in May of that year, Freedom Riders attempting to integrate the bus system in the South were attacked and firebombed in Alabama.
No one in the media asked UCLA’s Black players about their stance. UCLA’s Kermit Alexander, an African American, explained it to me in a 2015 interview what they would have said: “If we can’t play on their field in Alabama, why should they be able to play on our field in Pasadena?”
The Rose Bowl’s consideration was driven in backroom discussions. AAWU commissioner Admiral Tom Hamilton had sole authority to choose the AAWU opponent. Alabama coach Bear Bryant was Hamilton’s World War II buddy.
But Alabama president Frank Rose – in a rare instance of demonstrating Bryand had a boss — thwarted Bryant’s backdoor maneuvering. Rose announced Alabama would play in the Sugar Bowl. Rose, perhaps, feared more stories about Alabama racism detailed in coverage of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement jumping from the front page to the sports page.
You can read more on the sequences of events from my 2022 story: The 1962 Rose Bowl’s 60th anniversary: UCLA’s Black students and players stared down Bear Bryant with Jim Murray’s break from 1960s media customs – Tom Shanahan Report
Colorado’s players responded to the treatment of their five Black teammates when the Buffaloes played earlier in the season against Miami at the Orange Bowl. Their Black teammates couldn’t stay with them at the hotel or ride on the same buses.
He was true to his word. As the Orange Bowl representatives extended their invitation in the Colorado locker room following a win over Iowa State, Romig announced the team wasn’t playing unless something was done about Jim Crow.
“If we’re going to go, we’re going to go as a team,” Romig told me for a 2023 interview and repeated in midway through this video: Game Changers of the Century documentary development – Tom Shanahan Report
The Orange Bowl officials scrambled to a pay phone with the news. The Orange Bowl and Miami backed down.
You can buy my book to read the Colorado chapter. Books by Tom Shanahan – Tom Shanahan Report
There is, though, a difference between the media handling the 1962 Rose Bowl and the 1962 Orange Bowl.
The 1962 Orange Bowl and courage of Colorado’s players remain lost to history. UCLA’s 1962 Rose Bowl players were written out of history.
The media adopted Bryant’s view expressed in his 1974 book, “BEAR,” as the accepted college football lore narrative. Bryant blamed LA Times columnist Jim Murray for opposing Alabama’s appearance in the Rose Bowl.
Bryant referenced his 1955 Texas A&M team losing to UCLA 21-0 at the L.A. Coliseum.
On Page 174, Bryant stated: “… I snapped at a writer on the Los Angeles paper after the game. He asked if I had thought we could win, and I said, ‘You silly so-and-so, what do you think we came out here for?’
“Those things turn on you. Jim Murray came over and saw us play and made a fuss over our being considered for the Rose Bowl when we won the national championship in 1961. He wrote about segregation and the Alabama Ku Klux Klan and every unrelated scandalous thing he could think of, and we didn’t get the invitation.”
Murray didn’t work for the L.A. Times or any L.A. newspaper in 1955. In the early 1950s, he was with Time magazine and then began working for Sports Illustrated in 1953 as it prepared to launch in 1954. Murray’s 1961 motives were to offer a civics lesson to Bryant and a Jim Crow state.
Murray was a Pulitzer Prize winner. It took Trumpian-like deceptions to cast Murray as a villain. Only Bryant, with his sycophants and a compliant media regurgitating his opinion, could get away with casting Jim Murray as a villain,
Colorado didn’t make a bowl game this year, but Alabama is returning to the Rose Bowl on Thursday against Indiana in the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff.
In 2023, a story was posted on Al.com: “What took Alabama so long to return to the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day.” The story stuck to Bryant’s misleading narrative. The story doesn’t touch on Hamilton’s duplicitous role.
So far, we haven’t seen a story claiming Murray sabotaged Bryant’s dream to return to the Rose Bowl. So far. Also, will College Football Gameday’s crew turn weepy eyed about Alabama and Bryant?
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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
— I will debate anybody, anytime, anywhere Duffy Daugherty led college football integration
— My FWAA first-place story on the 1962 Rose Bowl and segregation
— I’ll debate anybody, anytime, anywhere on the true timeline of college football integration in the 1960s. Don’t believe the Bear Bryant/1970 USC-Alabama game fairytales: Click here: Tom Shanahan Promo.mp4 – Google Drive
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By TOM SHANAHAN
Now that Pat Fitzgerald wears green and white, a Michigan State coach represents the list of Big Ten football awards named for conference legends.
OK, yes, that was tongue in cheek.
Everybody knows Fitzgerald played at Northwestern, 1993-96, and was the Wildcats’ head coach, 2006-2022. The Butkus-Fitzgerald Linebacker of the Year Award pairs Fitzgerald with Illinois’ Dick Butkus. They’re both College Football Hall of Famers.
My point is to underscore Michigan State’s lack of representation among the Big Ten football awards named for the conference’s legends.
The awards feature 37 Big Ten legends representing 12 schools spanning 18 awards. The awards were inaugurated in 2011 and include the expansion additions of Nebraska (2011) and Penn State (1993). The list wasn’t altered to include Rutgers and Maryland in 2014 nor USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington in 2024.
The lone Spartan among the 37 legends is College Football Hall of Famer Bubba Smith (1964-66). He shares the Smith-Brown Defensive Lineman of the Year Award along with Penn State’s Courtney Brown (1996-99).
For clarification, when I say “lone” Michigan State representative, I mean of the 22 offensive and defensive positions. I’m not including a kicker, Morten Andersen (1978-81), and punter Brandon Fields (2003-06). They deserve their recognition, of course, but when people debate the game’s all-time legends, kickers and punters are afterthoughts.
— My open letter to Pat Fitzgerald explaining Duffy’s unappreciated legacy – Tom Shanahan Report
Michigan and Ohio State are most prominently represented and that’s understandable considering their Heisman Trophy winners. Even so, note that Ohio State’s Archie Griffin — the game’s only two-time Heisman winner (1974-75) and a member of the National Football Foundation Board of Directors – was left off the list. So was Michigan Heisman winner Tom Harmon (1940), who was the Big Ten’s second Heisman winner after Iowa’s Nile Kinnick (1939). Kinnick, by the way, is honored.
Whoever sat on the Big Ten panel to select names for the awards acted for many of the selections — not all — like middle-school girls who watch “Keeping up with the Kardashians.” They don’t know there’s a difference between fame and popularity.
Here’s the list:
— Wisconsin (4 plus a special teams kicker) – Alan Ameche (RB); Ron Dayne (RB); Pat Richter (WR); Jim Bakken (ST/K); Dave McClain (Coach).
— Michigan (4) – Desmond Howard (WR); Charles Woodson (Defensive PoY); Bo Schembechler (Coach); President Gerald Ford (Leadership).
— Ohio State (4) – Eddie George (Offense PoY); Orlando Pace (OL); Jack Tatum (DB); Woody Hayes (Coach).
— Minnesota (3) – Darrell Thompson (Freshman PoY) Bronko Nagurski (Defensive PoY); Tony Dungy (Humanitarian).
— Purdue (3) – Brian Griese (QB); Drew Brees (QB); Rod Woodson (DB).
— Iowa (2 plus special teams) – Dallas Clark (TE); Tim Dwight (Specialist); Nile Kinnick (Leadership).
— Indiana (2) – Antwaan Randle El (Freshman PoY); Anthony Thompson (Humanitarian).
— Nebraska (2) – Dave Rimington (OL); Johnny Rodgers (Specialist). Note: Rimington and Rodgers never took a snap in a Big Ten game.
— Northwestern (2) – Otto Graham (Offense PoY); Pat Fitzgerald (LB)
— Penn State (2) – Ted Kwalick (TE); Courtney Brown (DL). Note: Kwalick never took a snap in a Big Ten game.
— Illinois (1 plus P) – Dick Butkus (LB); Dwight Edelman (P).
— Michigan State (1 plus a K and P) – Bubba Smith (DL), Morten Anderson (SP), Brandon Fields (P).
PHOTO: Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty with his five 1965-66 two-time All-Americans. L-R: Clinton Jones, Bob Apisa, Bubba Smith, George Webster and Gene Washington. Smith, Webster and Washington rode Daugherty’s Underground Railroad. Apisa, recruited out of Honolulu as one of Daugherty’s Hawaiian Pipeline players, was college football’s first Samoan All-American pick.
Curiously, there’s no George Webster, Michigan State’s two-time All-American and College Football Hall of Famer widely considered the greatest Spartan football player of all time. That is, unless you want to argue with the summations of Webster’s coach, Duffy Daugherty, and Biggie Munn, the Spartans’ former head coach who was the athletic director when Webster played.
Bubba Smith is a legend, of course, but Michigan State’s 1965 and 1966 players unequivocally state Webster was the team’s best player.
As I wrote in “RAYE OF LIGHT, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans,” Bubba was the most famous Spartan, Webster the greatest Spartan and Jimmy Raye the most socially significant Spartan. Raye, recruited out of segregated Fayetteville, N.C, was the South’s first Black quarterback to win a national title and a pioneering Black coach in college and the NFL. The Pro Football Hall of Fame honored Raye in its 2022 inaugural class of NFL Awards of Excellence.
Middle-school girls, cooing over Bubba’s outsized personality, would vote for Bubba over the substance of Webster and Raye.
There’s also no Brad Van Pelt, who won the 1972 Maxwell Award – the other Heisman — as a two-time All-American and the College Football Hall of Famer. The Maxwell, unlike the Heisman, has a history of honoring defensive players. Van Pelt was the fourth defensive player to win in the Maxwell’s first 36 years. The third was Notre Dame linebacker Jim Lynch (1966), who faced the Spartans in the 1966 Game of the Century. Lynch, by the way, said more than once Webster, a linebacker/rover, should have won the 1966 Heisman.
PHOTO: Before Pat Fitzgerald and his neck roll, there was 1972 Maxwell Award winner Brad Van Pelt playing with a neck roll.
Both Webster and Van Pelt played a “rover” position that combined a linebacker with a safety. The innovative position was designed by Daugherty’s defensive coordinator, Hank Bullough. Maybe there should be the “Webster-Van Pelt Award” for hybrid players.
As for Munn and Daugherty, it’s mystifying they aren’t represented, especially if we remember the fabric of the game is supposed to be bigger than wins and losses. They changed the face of the college football as integration leaders while leading the Spartans to national titles in the 1950s and 1960s.
Munn played a role as head coach (1947-53) and athletic director (1954-71), but Daugherty (1954-72) was the game-changer with college football’s first fully integrated rosters.
Daugherty was the first coach to ignore the unwritten quota limiting Black players to a half-dozen or so. In 1962, the Associated Press reported the Spartans’ 17 Black players were the most in major college football history. What the report didn’t state was the Spartans broke their own records. The 1960s sports media failed to recognize college football followed an unwritten quota limiting Black athletes to a half-dozen or so.
For example, in the that same 1962 season, USC numbered only five Black players on its national title team. Things hadn’t changed much by 1967 when there were only seven Black players on the Trojans’ championship roster. One of the seven was San Francisco City College import O.J. Simpson. The low numbers were despite the diversity and population of Southern California.
Daugherty’s 1964 Spartans traveled to segregated North Carolina as the first fully integrated team to play in the South in a game against the Tar Heels at Kenan Stadium.
In the 1966 Game of the Century, the Spartans lined up 20 Black players, 11 Black starters, two Black team captains, College Football Hall of Famers George Webster and Clinton Jones, and Raye, recruited out segregated Fayetteville, N.C., was one of only two Black quarterbacks in major college football. Notre Dame lined up one Black player, Alan Page.
With a record TV audience of 33 million witnessing the contrast, the unwritten quota began to crumble the remainder of the decade and into the 1970s.
These facts are lost to history because the 1960s sports media avoided race for fear of alienating subscribers and advertisers. And because the Big Ten hasn’t done its homework.
The Big Ten’s coach honor is the Dave McClain/Schembechler-Hayes Coach of the Year Award for Wisconsin’s McClain (1978-85), Michigan’s Bo Schembechler (1969-89) and Ohio State’s Woody Hayes (1951-78).
McClain never won a Big Ten title in an eight-year Wisconsin tenure that was 46-42-3, but his character and death in 1986 at age 48 from a heart attack likely contributed to recognizing him. But I will question naming Schembechler and Hayes.
Schembechler never won a national title. Hayes was fired in 1978 for punching a Clemson player on the sideline. The Clemson’s player’s transgression was intercepting a pass on the way to the Tigers beating Ohio State in the Gator Bowl. The volatile Hayes was not exactly an example of the game’s fabric beyond wins and losses.
Together, from 1970 to 1979 in Rose Bowl games, Schembechler and Hayes were a combined 1-9. They spawned a national pastime (outside the Midwest) – Big Ten Bashing. If you lived outside the Midwest, like I did, you were forced to endure constant Big Ten Bashing.
Who else is there as a Big Ten coach? Michigan’s Fielding Yost can’t be considered. In recent years, there was a call to remove his name from the campus ice arena when research revealed his racist attitudes.
The Big Ten’s middle school girls voted Joe Paterno’s name onto the Big Ten Championship game trophy in 2011. But soon enough his name was removed when the Penn State Jerry Sandusky/sex-abuse scandal broke, and it was clear Paterno looked the other way for years. The school also took down a statue to him. Paterno was fired at mid-season and died a few months later, January 22, 2012. This is why you don’t honor people with statues while they’re still alive.
Here are impeccable candidates: Munn and/or Daugherty.
Munn claimed the Associated Press and United Press International national crowns in 1952 and won the 1954 Rose Bowl. Daugherty won the 1956 Rose Bowl and shared two national titles in 1965 (UPI, National Football Foundation and co-Football Writers Association of America) and in 1966 (co-NFF).
PHOTO: Duffy Daugherty (L) upon succeeding Biggie Munn as Michigan State’s football coach. Munn retired from coaching to serve as the Spartans’ athletic director.
Daugherty’s back-to-back unbeaten Big Ten titles in 1965 and 1966 remain, technically, unmatched. Ohio State posted three straight 8-0 Big Ten records, 2012-14, but the Buckeye only claimed the Big Ten championship game title in 2014. In 2012, Ohio State was ineligible for the title game for NCAA sanctions. in the 2013 season, the Buckeyes lost to Michigan State.
Ohio State also was unbeaten in 2019 (8-0) and 2020 (5-0), but the 2020 pandemic season was limited to five conference games. A sixth Big Ten game wasn’t played when Michigan canceled the annual showdown with Ohio State for what it stated were Covid-19 pandemic reasons.
As for advancing the game’s opportunities, no coach matched Duffy Daugherty’s Underground Railroad, with 44 Black players recruited from the segregated South between 1959 and 1972. Those with cursory knowledge will mention Minnesota’s Murray Warmath, but he only had five Black players on his 1960 national title team. Duffy stands alone in the pantheon.
How about the Munn-Daugherty Courage Award?
If only the Big Ten understood Daugherty’s story. But that’s too deep for middle school girls to comprehend.
Daugherty’s story has been lost to history for a half-century. There are two reasons: 1) Duffy’s milestones in the 1960s were ignored by a sports media that avoided race; 2) A fairytale about Bear Bryant and the 1970 USC-Alabama game was made up two decades after the game was played yet has been regurgitated unvetted by a sports media blinded by Bryant’s legend.
However, let’s be grateful now that USC is a Big Ten member that the Big Ten Network hasn’t (yet) produced a documentary pushing the 1970 USC-Alabama game’s false narrative Bryant and USC coach John McKay were crusaders who launched integration with a Nixonian-secret plan.
I still expect some unaware Big Ten producer to get the green light from an unaware Big Ten executive to produce a Big Ten Network film celebrating McKay as a Big Ten integration leader. McKay, in reality, followed the unwritten quota that Daugherty ignored. Such a production would be at the expense of Daugherty and the true 1960s pioneers.
But as the great philosopher/golfer Lee Trevino liked to say, “It could be worse.”
The Big Ten Network could decide USC’s Jimmy Jones (1969-71) was a pioneering Big Ten Black quarterback without realizing Michigan State’s Jimmy Raye (1965-67) cleared the path for Jones and future Black quarterbacks. Not to mention Raye helped clear the way for future Black coaches, including Tony Dungy, who considered Raye a mentor.
Or as Winston Churchill was credited with saying, “A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”
The truth of Duffy’s history has never caught up with the Bryant/McKay fairytale. That’s a sports journalism failure that journalism professors and watchdogs need to address.
One USC podcaster sheepishly told me he didn’t know Duffy lined up 20 Black players in the 1966 Game of the Century. That’s the root of the problem. The myth first came from USC backers unaware of the 1960s progress, including in the South. Many editors have told me Bryant gets too much credit, but they don’t use my pitches.
As I’ve stated previously, one-third of the media has been suckered by the Bryant fairytales, one third realizes it’s a myth but are afraid to take on the Bryant legend (I count Bryant Gumble in this category for responding to me “his younger audience wouldn’t understand the story”) and a third is too young to grasp college football integration is recent history, not ancient.
I’ll debate anybody, anytime, anywhere on this.
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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.
