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

Visit my website homepage, TomShanahan.Report David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize winner and biographer: "History writes people out of the story. It's our job to write them back in." *** I’m humbled and honored to share with you I’ve won first place in a national sports writing contest sponsored by the Football Writers Association of America. The FWAA, on its Fifth Down website, announced the 30th annual contest winners. My story won first place for Enterprise. I wrote about the 1962…

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College football integration lore, in the form of traffic, has been steered to a fairytale exit

PHOTO: Pro-southern historians in the 1920s captured the narrative of the Civil War, and Robert E. Lee's statue stood over Richmond, Virginia, streets until it finally came down in 2021. A comparison can be made to Bear Bryant apologists and USC fiction writers capturing the college football integration narrative. Visit my website homepage, TomShanahan.Report “History writes people out of the story. It’s our job to write them back in.” — David Maraniss, Pulitzer prize-winning biographer By TOM SHANAHAN I’d…

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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

PHOTO: The 1961 UCLA football team that won the AAWU title to earn a Rose Bowl berth. My story was awarded first place for 2021 season Enterprise stories by the Football Writers Association of America. Visit my website homepage, TomShanahan.Report By TOM SHANAHAN The 1962 Rose Bowl established a college football Civil Rights milestone, but the 60th anniversary of the New Year’s Day game came and went without attention or even a fractional accounting. What should be remembered as…

Continue ReadingThe 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