Sportswriter sees "disgrace" in MSU's non-recognition for 1966 team.

Like the indomitable Blues Brothers, sportswriter and author Tom Shanahan is on “a mission from God.”

That mission is to get Michigan State University to recognize its important role in desegregating college football. He takes MSU to task for its lack of effort to recognize Duffy Daugherty and his role in desegregating college football in the 1960s.

In his new book, “The Right Thing to Do: The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s,” he makes the case that Daugherty and the 1965 and ‘66 football teams kickstarted desegregation in college football. The 1965 team shared the national championship with the University of Alabama, while the 1966 team did so with the University of Notre Dame, based on various polls.

Shanahan began the quest with his book “Raye of Light,” which detailed the career of Jimmy Raye, the first Black quarterback to lead a team to win a college national championship, which he did at MSU in 1966.

In a recent interview, Shanahan told me he was disappointed that after his first book, the myth about Alabama coach Bear Bryant’s supposedly sending Black players to MSU still exists. The legend is that Bryant did so in the 1960s because he could not integrate his own team.

Shanahan pointed out that the myth was recently restated by MSU basketball coach Tom Izzo in a postgame interview after beating the University of Maryland.

He is also miffed that Bryant is lionized for helping desegregate the SEC.

“Alabama was the seventh team of 10 to desegregate,” he said.

But he is also miffed at MSU.

“It’s a disgrace that MSU has done nothing to recognize the 1966 team,” he added.

As a point of reference, Shanahan said that 41.5% of Black players nationwide who won a 1960s national championship ring were from MSU.

“The 1966 team was transcendent” but inadequately recognized by the school.

Shanahan said he finds it ironic that MSU’s campus does not recognize the 1966 team, yet there is a plaque at MSU for the so-called “Game of Change.” That 1963 game pitted the desegregated Loyola University Chicago basketball team against all-white Mississippi State University in the NCAA regional semifinal round. What made it historic was that the Mississippi State coach and president defied Mississippi’s unwritten law against competition with teams that had Black players.

In the new book, Shanahan points to numerous other college sports programs across the country that have recognized groundbreaking Black athletes. He quotes MSU athletic director Alan Haller in a speech on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2022 as saying that MSU had plans to recognize the 1965 and ‘66 teams and Duffy Daugherty with a statue outside the football building. He talked about plans for a statue based on the iconic photograph of Daugherty with George Webster, Bubba Smith, Bob Apisa, Gene Washington and Clinton Jones.

“It will be the first thing you see as you go into the building,” he quotes Haller as saying.

Granted, MSU’s football program has had a few speed bumps since then, but nothing has happened to recognize the two teams.

College programs that have erected memorials include the University of Alabama; the University of Tennessee; the University of Iowa; the University of Kentucky; the University of California, Los Angeles; and Auburn University, among others. Once again, irony strikes (this time twice): The University of Houston erected a statue honoring Bill Yeoman for his pioneering role in desegregating the school’s football team. Yeoman served as an assistant coach under Duffy at MSU. Syracuse University retired the jersey of Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, a pioneering Black quarterback in the 1930s and a member of the Tuskegee Airmen. Daugherty was a lineman on Syracuse’s 1937 team when Singh was banned from playing against Maryland because of his race.

According to Shanahan, a 1978 MSU grad who was sports editor of the State News, MSU has numerous firsts the school could recognize, going back to Gideon Smith, a Black player on the 1913 and ‘14 teams.

Shannon said the only explanation he can think of for the continuation of the Bear Bryant myth is Bryant got his message out first, and it became embedded in popular culture.

“It may be a better story — Southern coach fights for desegregation — but it’s just not true,” Shanahan said.

He said the facts show that Duffy developed a relationship with southern Black high school football coaches, most notably Bubba Smith’s father, and that was the beginning of college football’s underground railroad.

He also believes that sportswriters did not write about race in the 1960s.

“It’s a failure of sports journalism,” he said. “The clock is ticking on telling that story. Most of the players are approaching their 80s.”