The year the quarterback who was later a stock broker beat the Super Bowl ticket market
PHOTO: Notre Dame’s Terry Hanratty added his College Football Hall of Fame enshrinement in December to his national title and two Super Bowl rings with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
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— Click here for book 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
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“I think I’ve met all 80,011 fans who told me they were at the game.”
— Michigan State quarterback Jimmy Raye.
“Tell Jimmy I’ve surpassed him. I’m at about 200,000. It’s like Woodstock.”
— Notre Dame quarterback Terry Hanratty.
By TOM SHANAHAN
A Super Bowl LX ticket’s cheapest face value price is $950. The secondary market’s lowest price is $2,500 for Sunday’s game matching the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks.
That makes this a good time to tell Terry Hanratty’s story of when he beat the Super Bowl IX ticket market. Back then the face value was $20. The Super Bowl hadn’t yet evolved into a unofficial national holiday when Hanratty and the Pittsburgh Steelers played their first Super Bowl in the 1974 season against the Minnesota Vikings.
Hanratty, Notre Dame’s College Football Hall of Fame quarterback with Super Bowl IX and X rings, knew the feeling of big game with heavy ticket demand. He led unbeaten No. 1-ranked Notre Dame into the 1966 Game of the Century against unbeaten No. 2 Michigan State.
The quasi-national title was played before a crowd of 80,011 fans that overflowed Spartan Stadium ad a record TV audience of 33 million tuned in out of population of 195 million. The 2025 national championship game between Indiana and Miami drew a TV audience of 30 million out of 347 million.
Hanratty says the 1966 Game of the Century was bigger than the early Super Bowls.
Bigger than the Super Bowl? Anecdotes and ticket demand comparisons make the case.
“Yes, yes – by far,” said Terry Hanratty, who spoke from experiences as Notre Dame’s College Football Hall of Fame quarterback, 1966-68, and as a nine-year NFL veteran with a career that included two Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl wins, IX (1974 season) and X (1975).
Super Bowl I wasn’t a sellout. Only 61,946 fans attended the game at the 94,000-seat Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on a 72-degree West Coast afternoon under sunny skies. But for the Game of the Century, despite a 33-degree Midwest afternoon under windy, lead-grey skies, a then-record crowd of 80,011 overflowed 76,000-seat Spartan Stadium.
In the late Mike Celizci’s 1992 book, “THE BIGGEST GAME OF THEM ALL,” Michigan State assistant athletic director/ticket manager Bill Beardsley told a story about the relentless letters and phone calls his officed fielded. He said Richard Paisley of Cleveland wrote him that if President Lyndon B. Johnson attended, Michigan State would give him a ticket. The note concluded that since the White House announced Johnson wasn’t attending, Paisely would take Johnson’s ticket.
Beardsley thought that was such a clever request, he gave Paisley one of the tickets the school was holding back.
“It was a ridiculously big game,” Hanratty said. “None of us at the time had any clue that 20, 30, 40 and now 50 years later we’d be meeting people that tell us exactly where they were for the Michigan State game.”
Make that 60 years … and counting. The two quarterbacks, Hanratty and Michigan State’s Jimmy Raye, still encounter fans claiming they were among the overflow crowd of 80,011 at 76,000-seat Spartan Stadium.
“I think I’ve met all 80,011 fans who told me they were at the game,” said Raye, was recruited out of segregated Fayetteville, N.C., aboard Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty’s Underground Railroad.
“Tell Jimmy I’ve surpassed him,” said Hanratty. “I’m at about 200,000. It’s like Woodstock.”
Raye and Hanratty added to the 1966 Game of the Century’s honor roll following their playing days.
Raye was hired by Daugherty as a pioneering Black coach in college at Michigan State and who went on to coach 37 years in the NFL. In 2022, the Pro Football Hall of Fame honored Raye in its inaugural class of the NFL Awards of Excellence.
Hanratty, using ticket demand as his scale, cites his experience with the Steelers at Super Bowl IX. The game on January 12, 1975, was staged outdoors at Tulane Stadium, the traditional Sugar Bowl site and home to Super Bowls IV and VI. Construction of Louisiana SuperDome was behind schedule, and it didn’t open until the fall for the New Orleans Saints’ 1975 season. Five years earlier Super Bowl IV was played at the Sugar Bowl on a 39-degree day. Before the Steelers left for New Orleans, Hanratty relied on instincts that later served him as a stockbroker for 30 years.
“A travel agency in Pittsburgh was buying all the tickets it could for junkets,” he said. “They were paying $150 for a ticket. The players got four free tickets, and you could buy 20 more. Then you could flip them for $150. That was a good deal in those days. I took it to the max.”
Hanratty checked notes with teammates, including College and Pro Football Hall of Famer Lynn Swann.
“I said, ‘Swannie, did you sell your tickets?’ He said, ‘No, if I can get $150 here, I’ll get $300 down there.’”
Hanratty’s instincts were on the money. The weather broke as a rainy, 46-degree afternoon, although attendance was listed as 80,099.
“It was bad weather, and you could get tickets for $5 outside the gate,” Hanratty said. “You would never see that today.”
Swann was unable to unload his tickets.
“I asked Swann, ‘Do you still have those tickets?’ He fans them out in front of me. I had a saltshaker behind my back, and I put salt on his tickets. I said, ‘They taste better with salt on them.’”
— Vagas Ferguson and I make a return visit to the Notre Dame campus bookstore to sign books prior to the Michigan State-Notre Dame game on September 19 at Notre Dame Stadium.
— My story from 2024 book signing: Vagas Ferguson and I set record straight on Dan Devine’s legacy and college football integration leadership history – Tom Shanahan Report
Another 1966 Game of the Century distinction is comparing its lasting memory with other championship results. Losers are forgotten. But with the 1966 Game of the Century ending in an anticlimactic 10-10 tie, the debates continue.
“There were classy guys on both sides of the field,” Hanratty said. “Once the whistle blew after the game, everybody liked everybody. Good thing the game ended in a tie, or we’d all be forgotten by now.”
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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.
