Murray Warmath grew up in Tennessee, and Paul “Bear” Bryant grew up in Arkansas. Two tough men, they went on to play college football against each other at Tennessee and Alabama, respectively.
These two men of the twentieth-century American South changed college football forever, and in so doing, helped advance civil rights so long denied to their countrymen. So, too, did a Pennsylvania Scotsman named Duffy Daugherty.
It was a full two decades after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, but there were still but a handful of African-Americans playing college football, and none in the South of the1950s.
Warmath had initial success at Minnesota. However, he came to realize he needed to recruit on a wider basis. He sent his assistant coaches to Pennsylvania, Texas, North Carolina and other states to recruit talented players, most notably Black athletes. And they were very successful.
Warmath, ahead of his time and prescient in his thinking, integrated college football to an extent it had never been before.
From Pennsylvania, he recruited quarterback Sandy Stephens and running back Judge Dickson. An old friend of Warmath’s, unable to recruit Black athletes due to the times, suggested Murray recruit Bobby Bell from a segregated high school in North Carolina playing six-man football.
That move gave the Gophers a national title in 1960.
I had the privilege of coaching Bell in his freshman year on our scout team at Minnesota. He was the most gifted football player I have ever seen. Set at quarterback with Stephens, Warmath switched Bell to tackle where he became a legend in both college and the NFL.
After winning the 1961 Rose Bowl, Dickson, later an IBM executive, commented as to how that really opened up college football to Black athletes who saw in that game the first African-American quarterback, Stephens, succeeding on the big stage. It was after that game that many more colleges began to recruit African-Americans.
Bryant returned to Alabama in 1958 after highly successful stops at Southern schools with all-white teams, playing mainly against other all-white teams. At Alabama, he enjoyed immediate success, winning three national championships in the early 1960s.
Daugherty at Michigan State saw the results of Warmath’s efforts in winning Big Ten titles and followed suit. By 1966, he had his Spartans ready to play for the national championship.
In 1966, Notre Dame had a single Black player (future Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court Alan Page) playing against Daugherty’s Michigan State team which had seventeen African-Americans.
The Irish shared the national championship with the Spartans that year after they both played to a 10-10 tie, even though Alabama was undefeated and, by record alone, should have earned the title outright.
It was a clear message to Bryant from the national sports writers, the men who determined the national champion, to fully recognize the civil rights movement and integrate all of college football.
But Southern legislators forbade it. As a result, Bryant had mediocre all-white teams through the remainder of the 1960s, compiling a very un-Alabama-like record of 28-15-2.
When the NCAA added a tenth game in 1970, Bryant implored USC coach John McKay to bring his team to Birmingham to play the Crimson Tide. Bryant guaranteed McKay total safety from what many feared would be a hostile crowd.
USC accepted Bryant’s offer, beating Alabama, 42-21, just as Bryant knew they would. The game was played without incident.
The Trojans had a large number of Black players, amongst them Clarence Davis, who had been born in Birmingham but his family had moved to Los Angeles at the age of three for the promise of a better life it held for them. Alabama had no Black players.
It was in 1963 that racist Governor George Wallace, seeing Bryant’s all-white teams winning national titles, stood in the entrance door at the University of Alabama, defying the United States government’s order to admit Black students, stating, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”
Bryant knew better. In 1970, the first Black Alabama football player, Wilbur Jackson, walked proudly through that same door.
Bryant won three more titles in the 1970s with an ever increasing number of Black athletes.
Warmath, in 1960, had shown Bryant and Daugherty that African-Americans could successfully play college football at a very high level and be accepted. And graduate.
Bryant, in 1970, showed Alabama legislators the only way to win national championships was to integrate.
Two men of the deep South and a Scot from Pennsylvania changed college football forever because they all knew that in order to make their teams the very best they could be, they had to include African-Americans.
In hastening the withering of this existing racial imbalance, these men opened the door to eradicating racial discrimination throughout the country, allowing athletes to compete on a level playing field regardless of race.
Murray died in 2011 at 98. Duffy died in1987 at 72. Bryant died 28 days after he coached his 323rd and last victory at the age of 69.
They were giants of the coaching profession. Their leadership examples would be of great use in these perilous times.
When I was a youngster growing up in Queens, New York, so often did I find it uncomfortable when one of the nuns at St. Catherine of Siena Grammar School found me staring out the window.
Platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, Starz, Prime, PBS, BBC, Brit Box, HBO, ROKU, You Tube, WebOS, peacock, and others have replaced Starbucks, diners, coffee meetups, poker nights, book clubs, and just about every other human practice that puts people within touching range of one another.
Coach Reese 