What in the world would we do without sports?
I’m not referring to replacing our time watching the recently canceled or postponed events that have left the sports world dark.
I mean without the leadership of the various sports governing bodies and officials that made the decision to step back, to evaluate and then to realize taking action is necessary to be good global citizens. Americans too often say a problem won’t happen here until sports shows us we’ve already been hit.
Where would we be without NBA and commissioner Adam Silver knocking over the first domino? The decision to suspend play was rapidly followed by the NCAA, Major League Baseball, NHL, golf, soccer and many other pro and amateur sports along with high school and youth sports.
There are, of course, more important steps to take toward stemming the coronavirus pandemic, but that doesn’t diminish the importance of the first step.
The NBA already had considered playing games in empty arenas before the players – LeBron James at first scoffed – and general public knew where this was headed. James, as uncommon as he is, was like most people that were largely going about their business, dismissing the coronavirus as a problem for other countries.
The Ivy League, to its credit, was the first to cancel an event, its four-team conference basketball tournament. But even the Ivy allowed other spring sports to continue. What was needed was larger awareness that the NBA created. Within the next 24 to 48 hours, dominoes rapidly fell. Americans in general and politicians in particular that had downplayed the impact began to accept the magnitude.
There is no disputing how rapidly other businesses and schools reacted following the NBA decision.
My email box has been flooded daily with messages from companies explaining how they are protecting employees and clients. I didn’t receive any such emails prior to the NBA setting off dominoes.
We’ve seen this before in American society.
The sports world has led the way in pushing a nation to live up to the ideals of Declaration of Independence.
Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the face of German dictator Adolf Hitler and his Aryan racial superiority. Joe Louis knocked out Germany’s Max Schmeling in 1938 after having lost to him in 1936. They were celebrated as Americans.
In 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey defied Major League Baseball’s color line when he integrated the sport with Jackie Robinson. The next domino three months later was the Cleveland Indians signing Larry Doby.
The NFL had quietly integrated a year earlier with Kenny Washington and Woody Strode, but football was played in the vast shadow of baseball, the national pastime, in those days. Also bigger than the NFL, until the Super Bowl era, was college football.
College football doesn’t have a single landmark moment like Jackie Robinson and baseball, but no school or coach did more for the integration of college football Michigan State College Football Hall of Fame coach coach Duffy Daugherty with the support of his school’s president, John Hannah.
Daugherty’s Underground Railorad teams, recruiting the segregated South, has been a correction to college football history I learned while researching “Raye of Light,” my book with Jimmy Raye. The subtitle: Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the integration of college football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans.
As David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling biographer writes: “History writes people out of the story. It’s our job to write them back in.”
Michigan State had a history of playing black athletes, but a symbiosis connected the Spartans’ 1950s Rose Bowl victories to Daugherty’s famed Underground Railroad teams of the 1960s. Black players alone wasn’t news. An Underground Railroad team against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement was.
The Spartans gained a reputation among black southern high school coaches when they watched black stars Leroy Bolden and Ellis Ducket lead the 1954 Rose Bowl victory and Clarence Peaks and John Lewis in the 1956 Rose Bowl win.
The Rose Bowl was the penultimate college football event, especially on TV. The southern black coaches that watched those games laid the first tracks to Daugherty’s Underground Railroad teams. The coaches, among them Willie Ray Smith, the father of College Football Hall of Famer Bubba Smith, began to send their players north to play for Daugherty.
That led to awareness when Michigan State met Notre Dame in the 1966 Game of the Century, the highest rated TV football game until the NFL’s Super Bowl grew until a quasi-national holiday.
For example:
In 1960, national champion Minnesota had only five black players.
In 1966, Notre Dame had only one black player, Alan Page. The Spartans lined up 20 black players against the Irish in the 1966 Game of the Century that ended in a 10-10 tie. The National Football Foundation named Michigan State and Notre Dame national co-champions.
In 1967, USC’s national championship team had only seven black players, but by 1972, USC’s national champions numbered 23. Daugherty’s Spartans had shown the Trojans and the rest of the nation the way
With time, myths and fiction grew out of the 1970 USC-Alabama game that is was a catalyst to integration. Alabama coach Bear Bryant had dragged his feet on integration – Alabama didn’t have a black player until 1971 – but once Alabama fans realized Bryant was on the wrong side of history, they became Bryant apologists creating a folklore around him.
Author Keith Dunnavant and 1970 USC linebacker John Papadakis joined hands once Papadakis wrote a fictional script that gained legs. USC fullback Sam Cunningham, whose interaction with Bryant after game was key to the false narrative, finally debunked the story line. He admitted 33 years later that Bryant never paraded him through the Alabama locker room as an example of what football player looked likie.
Sadly, it has been at Daugherty’s expense.
But the larger point here is once again sports is leading the way. Michigan State’s Underground Railroad teams weren’t a singular moment, but they represent a primary domino.
More people understand the need to contain the coronavirus, starting with the NBA knocking over the first domino.
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I invite you to follow me on Twitter @shanny4055
Tom Shanahan, Author: Raye of Light
— 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://www.shanahan.report/a/forty-four-underground-railroad-legacy-facts
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.”
https://www.augustpublications.com/
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