Visit my homepage: TomShanahan.Report
— 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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By TOM SHANAHAN
The Houston Heart Association honored the right coach of the year, Indiana’s Curt Cignetti.
But they named their annual award for the wrong person, Alabama’s Bear Bryant.
Each year, since 1986, the Houston Heart Association presents its award at a dinner serving as a fundraiser for a worthy cause. And if ever there was a season for a unanimous winner, Cignetti in 2025 was the man.
But for an organization based in Houston, they could have named the award for a coach who bettered represented the American ideals of opportunity spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution.
The heart of football is diversity. Bear Bryant was heartless, coaching all-White rosters at four schools spanning 25 years – Maryland (1945), Kentucky (1946-53), Texas A&M (1954-57) and his first 12 seasons (1958-69) in his Alabama career (1958-82).
One better choice is Bill Yeoman. Another is Hayden Fry.
PHOTO: Warren McVea stands before a picture of Bill Yeoman at Houston.
Yeoman, the University of Houston’s College Football Hall of Fame coach, desegregated the program in 1964 when he signed Warren McVea. Texas was still a segregated state when Yeoman and McVea bravely challenged Jim Crow and Ku Klux Klan. Houston’s played throughout the South, including Southeastern Conference stadiums, helping to spur integration at southern football programs.
Fry, the Southern Methodist University College Football Hall of Fame coach, was the first Southwest Conference coach to sign a Black player in 1965 with Jerry LeVias. Fry and LeVias took on Jim Crow and the KKK. In addition to playing a SWC schedule, SMU won at Auburn, in 1968. LeVias was the first Black player to score at Auburn’s then-named Hare Stadium.
Yeoman and Fry are Texans – although Yeoman was a transplant as a former assistant coach for Duffy Daugherty at Michigan State — who followed the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texan. NASA’s Johnson Space Center is based in Houston.
Those are a lot of Houston connections that were ignored for this award.
PHOTO: SMU’s Jerry LeVias with Mustangs coach Hayden Fry. LeVias and Fry are both College Football Hall of Famers.
But HHA went for name recognition. They picked Bryant, who waited until 1970 to join the 20th century when he signed Wilbur Jackson as his first Black player.
Have a heart, Houston Heart Association. They should rename their award for Bill Yeoman and Hayden Fry.
Certainly, Bryant knew X’s and O’s as a national championship coach. But as they say in Texas, Bryant was all hat and no cattle when it came to respecting American ideals for a more perfect union. Alabama’s campus desegregated in 1963 when James Hood and Vivian Malone were admitted. Bryant waited another seven years with his football program, even though he had the law of the land on his side.
Inside the Pigskin, February 5, 2026: Detroit Pistons Continue to Roll – South Florida Tribune The link to my podcast appearance includes comments from me on Curt Cignetti winning the Bear Bryant Award at the 42:33 mark, comments the award should be named for Bill Yeoman or Hayden Fry at the 45:19 mark and I comment on Mel Tucker’s implosion 52:49 mark. Sadly, It was at the expense of telling the true story of college football integration leadership from Duffy Daugherty.
He remained silent through the 1960s as African American homes and churches were bombed in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called such silence the shame of good people.
In 1965, Bryant told Look Magazine he may not be the first Southeastern Conference coach to desegregate, but he wouldn’t be the third. He was true to his word. He was the SEVENTH – behind Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi State, Florida, Vanderbilt and even his in-state rival, Auburn.
In 1967, when five African American students attempted to make the team as walk-on players in spring football, he cut all five. When asked in a TV interview caught on film when he would have a Black player, he said he couldn’t find any that were academically and athletically qualified.
Here are African Americans from the South named first-team All-American players: Michigan State’s Bubba Smith, Beaumont, Texas; Michigan State’s George Webster, Anderson, S.C.; Michigan State’s Gene Washington, La Porte, Texas; and UCLA’s Mel Farr Sr., Beaumont, Texas. Four of those five are Houstonians.
Other Black All-American players in 1966 included Michigan State’s Clinton Jones, Cleveland, Ohio; Notre Dame’s Alan Page, Canton, Ohio; USC’s Nate Shaw, San Diego, California; Purdue’s John Charles, Newark, New Jersey; and Syracuse’s Floyd Little, New Haven, Connecticut.
And here’s another condemning story about the real Bear Bryant from his days coaching at Kentucky. In those days, college football operated under a Gentleman’s Agreement. Northern schools benched their limited number of Black players when they played a southern opponent.
Michigan State was as guilty as any school until Biggie Munn arrived in 1947 as head coach with Duffy Daugherty as his top assistant and eventual successor.
In 1946, then-Michigan State coach Charlie Bachman left behind halfback Horace King for a game against Kentucky in Lexington. But by 1947, when Kentucky traveled to Michigan State, Munn and Daugherty set in motion the Spartans as college football integration leaders. The number of Black players grew each year, including Don Coleman, a College Football Hall of Famer, as the Spartans’ first Black All-American player, in 1951.
What happened in the 1947 Kentucky-Michigan State game is anecdotal because the sports media avoided race until the late 1960s. Many milestones of progress were ignored in print and lost to history. This story is told in Chapter 28 of my book, THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s.”
In many of these cases, we rely on the Black press. The Michigan Chronicle, a Black newspaper based in Detroit, followed the story to see how the Spartans would react to Kentucky and the Gentleman’s Agreement under its new coach.
Well, Munn played King. But there’s more.
When Kentucky saw King warming up in uniform, Bryant kept his team on the sidelines before the kickoff for a few minutes in protest. The delay was told by Ray Uribe, King’s lifelong friend growing up in Jackson, Michigan, who attended the game. In the Jackson Citizen-Press obituary on King published in 2006, King said, “They wouldn’t come on the field. It took quite a while before they agreed to play the game.”
It’s a sports journalism failure this is an untold story.
If you’re familiar with the claim Bryant led college football integration based on the 1970 USC-Alabama game, it’s another sports journalism failure to regurgitate a fairytale. The myth claims Bryant scheduled USC as a game to lose to shock his bigoted fan base into allowing him to recruit Black players.
USC routed Alabama 42-21, but the myth ignores a year earlier Tennessee traveled to Alabama and routed the Crimson Tide, 41-14. Tennessee’s Jackie Walker, the SEC’s first Black All-American player, returned a first-quarter interception 27 yards for a 21-0 lead. Tennessee led 34-0 before Alabama scored two fourth-quarter touchdowns.
Walker was the first African American to score at Legion Field against Alabama. The New York Times game story published on October 19, 1969, made no mention of Walker as an African American player or Tennessee’s integrated roster.
Alabama also lost 47-33 to integrated Colorado in the 1969 Liberty Bowl. In other words, Alabama fans were used to integrated teams rolling up 40 points on the Crimson Tide by the time USC arrived in 1970.
The sports journalism failure also shows up in Time Magazine. In a glowing 1980 cover story on Bryant as his career was winding down, the 5,100-word tome didn’t mention a single word about the 1970 USC-Alabama game transforming race in the South. That’s because the myth wasn’t made up until the late 1980s and spread unvetted in the media in 1990s.
There’s more. In 1991, one of Bryant’s friends, Al Browning, a long-time Alabama journalist, produced a documentary on Bryant’s life, “The Legacy Lives.” There wasn’t a single word about the 1970 USC-Alabama game. Nevertheless, the popular misconception Bryant was a leader worked its way into the national folklore at the expense of true heroes with the aid of poorly researched sports writing.
The Houston Heart Association chose a segregationist over honoring coaches who mounted true acts of Texas courage — Houston’s Bill Yeoman and SMU’s Hayden Fry.
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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.
