Excerpts taken from Raye of Light, Chapter 10: The Missing Heisman.
By Tom Shanahan
Michigan State football legend George Webster was Zion Williamson before Zion Williamson was Duke’s basketball wunderkind. Their stories are a comparison of two South Carolina giants and how America has changed between their generations.
What better time to highlight the late Webster and the Duke freshman than this week. Their two schools’ basketball teams meet in the NCAA Tournament East Regional final on Sunday in Washington, D.C.
Sure, their sports are different, but they are connected as Zeus-like figures rising from South Carolina soil tainted by slavery but now evolving with enlightened times.
Segregation of the 1960s stunted Webster’s fame and opportunities. A more progressive nation has richly rewarded Zion with celebrity fueling his stock with future millions in the bank from NBA salary and shoe endorsements.
Webster escaped segregation aboard Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty’s Underground Railroad. He left an imprint on the college game like no other defensive player as a two-time All-American pick and College Football Hall of Famer. The 6-foot-4, 225-pounder was an innovative rover back. He was part linebacker, part safety and — unlike other rover backs — part defensive end.
“George brought a new kind of attention to the rover back position in the 1965 and 1966 seasons,” said Hank Bullough, Michigan State’s defensive coordinator who went on to a long NFL coaching career, including as head coach of the Buffalo Bills.
The Spartans won national titles in 1965 and 1966, with Webster and running back Clinton Jones voted team captains. It marked the first time two black teams captains were elected on an integrated team without a white player sharing the role.
As for Zion, college basketball coaches have said all year they’ve never seen a basketball player like the 6-7, 285-pound Williamson.
“Zion is a different bird,” said North Carolina coach Roy Williams before facing Duke. “We tried to recruit him hard. He’s a combination skill set I’ve never seen before. He deserves the attention and he’s backed up.”
Had Webster played in Williamson’s time, he might have achieved more stature in his sport. He should have been a true Heisman Trophy candidate, but defensive players in general don’t gain votes and certainly not a black defensive player in the 1960s. The only two defensive players in the Top 10 voting were two white linemen, one from segregated Arkansas, Lloyd Phillips, and one from segregated Georgia, George Patton.
“George Webster should have won the Heisman that year,” said Jim Lynch, a Notre Dame All-American linebacker that won the 1966 Maxwell Award that the organization bestows upon its selection as the top player in the nation.
Lynch knew Webster well. He faced the Spartans in the Game of the Century. He joined Webster in the College Football Hall of Fame as a 1992 inductee. They both played in the NFL.
Notre Dame quarterback Coley O’Brien, who was thrust into the Game of the Century early in the first quarter when starter Terry Hanratty suffered a broken collarbone on a Bubba Smith sack, remembered watching with trepidation game film of Michigan State’s defense.
“George Webster was the guy we feared the most,” O’Brien said. “He was tall, rangy and could deliver a blow. We watched the film and said, ‘Th-a-a-t’s George Webster? Bubba Smith was a great defensive end, but George Webster was the guy I worried about.”
When Webster’s number was retired, Daugherty said: “George Webster is not only the finest player I have ever seen, but he symbolizes our 1965 and 1966 teams.”
Jimmy Raye says he’s never been around a better football player — at any level. Other players might be the best at a specific skill, but Webster was nearly equal to their best skill in addition possessing superior all-around ability. Raye, the South’s first black quarterback to win a national title as the Spartans’ starter in 1966, coached in college six years and the NFL another 36 seasons.
Something else that connects and separates Webster, Williamson and their times were knee injuries.
Webster suffered his at a primitive time for sports medicine as a junior at Westside High in Anderson, S.C. The injury could have spelled the end of his career, but then-Clemson coach Frank Howard helped Webster. Michigan State teammate Jim Summers of Orangeville, S.C., tells the story.
“Frank Howard made sure that operation at Clemson University’s medical facility,” Summers said. “George was probably the first black person to spend any sustained time on that campus. If it wasn’t for segregation, George probably would have gone to Clemson, Frank treated him so well.”
Clemson in 1961 was a particularly hostile place to confront integration issues. The University of Maryland’s Daryl Hill, who broke that Atlantic Coast Conference’s color line in1963, said one of the ACC road trips where he felt most threatened by fans and abused with cheap shots by opponents was Clemson – the players coach by Howard. Before the Maryland-Clemson game on November 16 at Clemson’s Memorial Stadium, Hill’s mother was denied entrance. Clemson’s president Robert C. Edwards intervened and allowed her to sit in the president’s box with him.
Howard, an Alabama alumnus and close friend of Alabama coach Bear Bryant, never challenged segregation in the South. His defenders say he was not a racist. His critics say he retired followed the 1969 season because Clemson’s president had pushed for integration. Clemson’s first black student was admitted in 1963. In 1967 Clemson’s president began to encourage his coaches to integrate the school’s athletic teams.
Howard’s successor was Hootie Ingram, and his first season in 1970 he signed Marion Reeves as Clemson’s first black football player.
That was the racial climate surrounding Clemson in 1961 when Frank Howard extended George Webster, an extraordinarily caring man, a remarkable act of kindness. It may well have saved the career of one of college football’s greatest defensive players.”
For Williamson, the story behind his knee injury was “shoe-gate.” He suffered strained knee when his Nike shoe blew out in the first 36 seconds of a game against North Carolina.
Nike responded by quickly sending a jet with executives to Durham as part of its damage control. Its product had failed a potential client worth millions in sales and endorsements. Former NBA players suggested Williamson shut it down and not play rather than risk future earnings.
But after missing six games, Williamson has returned to the court to lead No. 1-Duke to the doorstep of a Final Four and national title. He is playing with the spirit of his fellow South Carolinian.
America still has many miles to travel in race relations, but a examining the Zeus-like careers of George Webster and Zion Williamson reminds us how far we’ve come.
George Webster almost had his career cast aside for the color of his skin if not for man considered a racist helping him. Zion Williamson had executives as worried about his knee as doctors.
We have to know how far we’ve come to know where we’re going next. Zion Williamson is traveling a path George Webster helped clear for him.
Now their two schools meet in basketball in pursuit of a national title.
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I invite you to follow me on Twitter @shanny4055
Tom Shanahan, Author: Raye of Light http://tinyurl.com/knsqtqu
— Book on Michigan State’s leading role in the integration of college football. It explains Duffy Daugherty’s untold pioneering role and debunks myths that steered recognition away from him to Bear Bryant.
http://shanahan.report/a/the-case-for-duffy-and-medal-of-freedom
Don’t believe the myths at Duffy Daugherty’s expense about Bear Bryant’s motivation to play the 1970 USC-Alabama game or myths about the Charlie Thornhill-for-Joe Namath trade. Bear Bryant knew nothing about black talent in the South while he dragged his feet on segregation.
http://shanahan.report/a/myths-that-grew-out-of-1970-alabama-game-with-usc
http://shanahan.report/a/mystery-solved-in-thornhill-and-namath-myth
David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize winner and biographer; “History writes people out of the story. It’s our job to write them back in.
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