PHOTO: Michigan State assistant coach James Adams is being retained by new head coach Pat Fitzgerald.

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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

— How Duffy Daugherty and the MSU Team Changed College Football History

— My FWAA first-place story on the 1962 Rose Bowl and segregation

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By TOM SHANAHAN

One of the nation’s fastest economically growing areas is the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area known as The Triangle. With such growth comes a growing high school athlete talent pool.

Sometimes my worlds overlap. This is one of those times.

In my role writing features on the area’s top players for the News & Observer, earlier this year I asked Duke coach Manny Diaz about the area talent pool. Diaz was a graduate assistant (2000-01) and assistant coach (2002-05) at NC State in Raleigh as well as in later years a head coach at Miami and defensive coordinator at Penn State.

“North Carolina is becoming a state, in my mind, that is nationally underrated for the talent and the coaching in it,” Diaz said. “I think the high school coaches in the state do a phenomenal job and are building the type of programs that players really want to go to. Not that the coaches didn’t do a great job back then, too, but we’re in a different era.”

I don’t follow high school recruiting as much as I used to when the process was basically limited to the college recruiter, the high school coach and the family, but I know Michigan State is a presence these days more than in the past. The reason is defensive backs coach James Adams, who has been retained by new head coach Pat Fitzgerald.

Adams, who joined Michigan State’s staff in January 2025, knows the Triangle, having played at Northern Durham High on his way to playing and coaching at Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, N.C.

PHOTO: Garner safety A.J. Randle (1) celebrates breaking off a touchdown run while taking snaps at quarterback.

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Three highly recruited junior defensive backs from the Triangle that Michigan State has offered scholarships are Garner safety Aronson “A.J.” Randle, Millbrook safety Cairo Williams and Clayton cornerback Akedran Crumel.  

Randle, a 6-foot-3, 210-pounder, and Crumel (6-1, 155) have 25-plus offers. Williams (6-2, 180) is sitting at 10 offers, but his list is sure to grow based on his play and attending camps in the spring.

In addition to the Triangle schools — NC State, North Carolina and Duke — Randle and Crumel have offers from recruiting heavyweights that include Ohio State, Miami and Tennessee. Randle also has an Alabama offer and Crumel a USC offer.

Williams and Crumel are still finishing their junior seasons this week while playing in a state championship game.

PHOTO: Clayton junior Akedran Crumel has yielded only five completed passes in 2025.

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Williams plays for Raleigh Millbrook, the same high school as Michigan State redshirt sophomore defensive end David Santiago, who transferred to the Spartans last year from Air Force. Millbrook (13-0) plays against Cornelius Hough (12-1) on Thursday at North Carolina’s Kenan Stadium for the 8A Division state title of the N.C. High School Athletic Association.

PHOTO: Millbrook junior safety Cairo Williams sprints down field on special teams coverage.

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Crumel and Clayton play for the 7A Division state title of the NCHSAA on Friday at Kenan Stadium. The Comets face Greensboro Grimsley, which features 5-star quarterback Faison Brandon. He is committed to Tennessee and is reported to have earned $1.2 million in NIL payments this year. His family successfully sued the NCHSAA after he was denied NIL opportunities as a junior.

Of the three, Michigan State has the best chance with Randle. His older brother, Brandon Bouyer-Randle, played linebacker at Michigan State out of Battle Creek Central from 2017 through 2019. He finished his career at Texas Tech (2020, 2021) and Connecticut (2022).

Randle’s older cousin, Willie Bouyer, was a Michigan State receiver on the Spartans’ 1987 Big Ten title team that won the Rose Bowl. Willie’s father Corey Bouyer was a Hall of Famer at Ferris State, an NCAA Division II school in my hometown of Big Rapids, Michigan.

Randle’s mother, Nikki Bouyer, ran track at Lansing Sexton as a five-time state champion and AAU national champion. She competed at Michigan State before finishing her career at Clemson, where she is a in the Tigers’ Hall of Fame.

Michigan State doesn’t have a bloodline connection to Williams, but the Spartans got in early on Williams because Adams is familiar with Williams’ father from their days as high school players in Durham.

Crumel is the longest shot for Michigan State of the three defensive backs.

Watching Randle patrol the secondary as well as take some quarterback snaps while breaking off long runs, I told A.J.’s mother he reminded me of watching Michigan State College Football Hall of Famer Brad Van Pelt (6-5, 235) towering in a secondary.

Another offer on Randle’s list is from Ferris State, the defending NCAA Division II champion still competing in this year’s upcoming DII semifinals. The Bulldogs may not have a shot at Randle, but it’s a legacy offer that demonstrates the class of Ferris coach Tony Annese.

Nikki Bouyer and the late Willie Bouyer Sr., a Ferris State football and track and field All-American and Ferris Hall of Famer, are cousins. Willie Bouyer Sr. and Corey Bouyer were brothers. Michigan State’s Willie Bouyer was the son of Corey Bouyer.

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DUFFY DAUGHERTY AND THE SOUTH

No Michigan State coach, of course, can top Duffy Daugherty’s success recruiting the South. But they can strive to match the record of Jimmy Raye, an MSU assistant under Daugherty (1972) and Denny Stolz (1973-75).

I don’t know if James Adams is aware of this, but Michigan State’s history successfully recruiting the South began with Duffy’s Underground Railroad during segregation. He recruited 44 Black players from 1959 through 1972. They were steered to him by Black high school coaches and White southerners opposed to segregation, although the media gets sloppy when it is guilty of regurgitating erroneous claims from Bear Bryant sycophants that the Alabama coach sent Daugherty players.

Not a single player among Daugherty’s Underground Railroad passengers tells a backstory involving Bryant.

Daugherty recruited Raye out of E.E. Smith High in Fayetteville, N.C. He was the South’s first Black quarterback to win a national title on the Spartans’ 1965 and 1966 teams. Daugherty later hired Raye as an assistant coach, launching his pioneering career among Black coaches.

Among the southern recruits Raye landed in the 1970s were All-Big Ten players Otto Smith, Columbia, S.C., Tommy Graves, Norfolk, Virginia; Charlie Baggett, Fayetteville, N.C., and Tyrone Willingham, Jacksonville, N.C. Larry Bethea of Newport News, Virginia, was an All-American.  

PHOTO: Jimmy Raye recruited Larry Bethea (88), Tommy Graves (10) and Leon Williams (22) from the South in the Spartans’ 1974 recruiting class. Bethea pulled off the remarkable feat of earning Big Ten MVP honors as a senior defensive lineman in 1977.

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Graves’ favorite player was Bran Van Pelt, the Michigan State All-American who won the Maxwell Award — the other Heisman Trophy. Van Pelt wore No. 10 with the Spartans and New York Giants. Raye made sure Van Pelt met Graves, and Graves wore Van Pelt’s No. 10 at Michigan State.

Raye was hired by the San Francisco 49ers in 1977 and at the time was one of only 10 Black assistants in a 28-team league. By 1983 as the Los Angeles Rams’ offensive coordinator, he was only the second Black coordinator in NFL history.

In 2022, the Pro Football Hall of Fame honored Raye in its inaugural class of NFL Awards of Excellence.

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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.