Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for The Right Thing to Do by Tom Shanahan - Available

The Right Thing to Do

by Tom Shanahan
ebook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Read a sample Read a sample
1 of 1 copy available

Jerry LeVias, Warren McVea and Leon Burton are major figures in college football history, but their accomplishments aren't widely celebrated these days, even at their alma maters. The story of college football integration in the 1960s was ignored by sportswriters of the era, and schools saw little upside to trumpet their racial accomplishments.


The stories of these groundbreaking college football pioneers and the coaches who fought for integration-led by Michigan State's Duffy Daugherty and his coaching tree, featuring the likes of Dan Devine, Chuck Fairbanks and Bill Yeoman-are compiled for the first time in The Right Thing to Do: The True Pioneers of College Football Integration. From award-winning journalist Tom Shanahan, The Right Thing to Do addresses the official racial quota system in the 1960s college football world and the "Conspiracy of Silence" in the sports press, avoiding any mention of racial politics. It also addresses carefully crafted but totally false myths from the era, including the role of Alabama's Paul "Bear" Bryant in college football integration-a role where Bryant was a laggard, not a leader.


The Right Thing to Do: The True Pioneers of College Football Integration focuses on three big stories:

  • His peers considered Michigan State's Duffy Daugherty a pioneer, but the true extent of his impact on college football integration is still being discovered. Michigan State players represented an overwhelming 41 percent share of Black players throughout the nation to win a 1960s national championship ring, according to the titles voted upon by AP (writers) and United Press International. Daugherty's coaching tree heavily impacted the college football game, going back to Dan Devine taking the reins at Arizona State, and the mentoring of Duffy's Disciples, like Jimmy Raye and Sherman Lewis, reverberates today with subsequent generations of college and professional coaches.
  • Student activism was key to progress in the Civil Rights Era, and that trend was reflected on the college football front-even when coaches did not respond well to activism. Sportswriters were unwilling to report on such efforts, such as when Colorado's 1961 Big Eight champions declined an invitation to the Orange Bowl, wanting assurances that every player-Black and white alike-would be staying at the same hotels and eating at the same restaurants, practices not taking place in the segregated South. Student uprisings also put a halt to Bear Bryant's backdoor effort to place his segregated Alabama Crimson Tide in the 1962 Rose Bowl, an effort called out by UCLA players and the Los Angeles Times' Jim Murray-the only sportswriter in the country to cover the ill-fated effort.
  • The groundbreaking players who braved the prejudice and abuse of the era: SMU's Jerry LeVias, the first Black scholarship player in the Southwest Conference; Houston's Warren McVea, the first Black player to sign with a major Texas college; Wake Forest's Bob Grant and Kenneth "Butch" Henry, the first Black scholarship players in a major Southern conference; and Gary Steele, West Point's first Black football letterman.


    • Creators

    • Publisher

    • Release date

      January 1, 2024

    • Formats

      • Kindle Book

      • OverDrive Read

        • ISBN: 9781938532740

      • EPUB ebook

        • ISBN: 9781938532740
        • File size: 7772 KB

    • Languages

      • English

    • Reviews

      • Kirkus

        A work of sports history that fills in the gaps in the integration story of college football. The racial integration of college football was not a moment, but a decade-long process. It happened in fits and starts, tempered by unspoken quotas that kept programs from recruiting more than a couple of Black players at a time. "The dominoes started falling separately," observes Shanahan, a sportswriter, in his preface, "but undercurrents connected them. By the end of the decade the tributaries flowed together with [the] force of the mighty Mississippi spilling into modern football's predominantly Black rosters." A key figure in the author's telling is Michigan State's head coach, Duffy Daugherty, who not only recruited numerous Black players for his team but also helped launch the careers of Black coaches such as Sherman Lewis and Jimmy Raye. Shanahan also profiles several groundbreaking players from across the country, including "Wonderous Warren" McVea, the running back who, while at the University of Houston, became the first Black player for any major university in Texas, and Jerry LeVias, the diminutive wide receiver who, by playing for Southern Methodist University, integrated the Southwest Conference. The author also dismantles some of the folk history surrounding integration. For example, he argues that the 1970 season opener between the integrated University of Southern California teamand the all-white University of Alabama squad, which has since been held up as a watershed moment for integration, was not considered one at the time, and that USC was not even a particularly progressive program on that front. Shanahan's prose is breezy, and his account is full of unexpected subplots, such as Daugherty's commitment to incorporating Hawaiian and Samoan players as well: "Daugherty and [Tom] Kaulukukui struck up a friendship when Michigan State played at Hawaii, in 1947. Once Daugherty was named head coach, he told Kaulukukui anytime there was a player in Hawaii with Big Ten talent, he'd save a scholarship for him." It's a fascinating read that helps contextualize college football within the wider Civil Rights Movement, demonstrating the often-sporadic nature of institutional change. A compelling and essential story of one of the most significant evolutions in sports.

        COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)

    Formats

    • Kindle Book
    • OverDrive Read
    • EPUB ebook

    subjects

    Languages

    • English

    Loading