The David Watson Podcast #183 What is the truth about college football and Bear Bryant

Tom Shanahan is an award-winning sportswriter and author whose books focus on Michigan State’s football program leading college football integration.

College Football Hall of Fame coach Duffy Daugherty 1960s rosters were college football’s first fully integration teams.

His 2022 story on the Rose Bowl, Alabama and segregation won first place from the Football Writers of Association of America.

Shanahan’s first book, RAYE OF LIGHT, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans, focused on the Daugherty’s back-to-back national championship teams.

The Foreword was written by Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy. His second book, THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s, explains how Daugherty’s former assistant coaches and players followed his blueprint as head coaches to spread his fingerprints coast to coast.

Their influence opened doors for the first Black players to integrate programs in the South and brought about the end of unwritten quotas limiting Black athletes to a half-dozen or so at USC and other schools.

The Foreword was written by former East Carolina coach Ruffin McNeill, who was inspired by Jimmy Raye to enter coaching.

Tom 
https://tomshanahan.report