When African-American Quarterback Jimmy Raye enrolled at Michigan State University in 1964, he was much more than a student athlete: he was part of a groundbreaking movement that changed college football forever. The Michigan State team with a progressive head coach, a pioneer black quarterback, and the first fully integrated roster in college football is the subject of this engrossing new book by award-winning author Tom Shanahan.Michigan State was a world away from Raye's hometown of Fayetteville, N.C. -- both in miles and culture. In his junior season in 1966, Raye was Michigan State's first black starting quarterback and the first black quarterback from the South to win a national title. The story of Raye's journey, as well as those of his Spartan teammates and coach Duffy Daugherty, is told in Raye of Light: the first book to fully explain Duffy Daugherty's Underground Railroad and its impact on college football.
Reviewing a record that few schools can match--11 national championships, 42 conference championships, three Heisman Trophy winners, and countless All-Americans--this sports history spotlights the University of Michigan's football legacy. The book presents 122 years' worth of action captured by the school's student-run newspaper, the Michigan Daily, drawing from the devoted reporters and photographers who covered the sidelines. Featuring stories and images that were originally published in the periodical, the account presents a record of these young journalists' outstanding work as well as a must-have keepsake for anyone who ever strolled the campus in Ann Arbor or attended games at Michigan Stadium. The school's legendary coaches, greatest players, and most memorable victories are related, from the teams of Fielding Yost and Fritz Crisler through the Bo Schembechler and Lloyd Carr eras to Brady Hoke's current bowl-winning club. Conducting a spectacular journey through the past of one of college football's top programs, this is an all-inclusive companion for die-hard UM fans.
Here Whitney and Kourtakis examine Michigan State football, on and off the field in the Perles years. They interviewed professors, athletes, and coaches to bring the MSU football program and its controversial coach to life. Profiles of some key players whose tangles with their opponents and sometimes the law this fascinating reading.
Michigan State University's football history is overflowing with famous, interesting, and colorful figures. From Gideon "Charlie" Smith, who in 1913 became one of the nation's first black collegiate players, to George Webster, the "Greatest Spartan of All Time," to Morton Andersen, who still holds the Big Ten record for longest field goal-they are all Spartans. Earl Morrall, Bubba Smith, Lorenzo White... the list goes on. Added to this list of tremendous players are legendary coaches like the "Biggie" Munn and Duffy Dougherty. And who could forget the famous 10-10 tie with Notre Dame in 1966 or the Rose Bowl victory over Southern Cal in 1987? Spartan tradition is more than the coaches and players on the field, however, and Michigan State Football: They Are Spartans offers many rare images and long-forgotten anecdotes about how the program became a player on the national stage. The early days as a farm college team, the development into a football power as an independent, the successful struggle to join the Big Ten conference, and of course, the historic rivalry with a certain team from Ann Arbor are all recounted in the pages of this book.
"A rough-and-tumble pop-culture look at the history of this storied game." —National Review Online The 100-Yard War showcases two great football teams who want nothing more than to beat each other, celebrating their storied history and going behind the scenes with the players and the fans to reveal the bitterness, the passion, and the pride surrounding the Game. ESPN called it the number one sports rivalry of the century. It transcends the years, the standings, and all other distractions. And thanks to the countless remarkable football games between Michigan and Ohio State—and hundreds of thousands of devoted alumni and followers—the rivalry is now an enormous cultural event.
Some of greatest untold stories from Michigan’s football program are shared in this book based on intimate interviews with former players and coaches. Due to his long history covering Michigan football, author Steve Kornacki was given open-door access to Lloyd Carr, Bo Schembelcher, and Gary Moeller, all of whom provided hours of their time sharing their personal accounts and of occurrences during their coaching tenures; the stuff that legends are made of. Stories include being in the Michigan locker room after Bo Schembechler’s last game in the Big House and hearing his rousing speech leading the team in “The Victors” as they punctuated each verse by thrusting red roses toward the ceiling. Coach Carr tells about riding in a limousine through New York on the eve of the Heisman Trophy presentation with Desmond Howard en route to a meeting at NBC Studios with Tom Brokaw and a night in the green room at Late Night with David Letterman. A more heartfelt yarn is the “American Dream” tale of quarterback Elvis Grbac’s Croatian family and the story of center Steve Everitt’s family surviving Hurricane Andrew in a bathtub with the family dog and his 1990 Gator Bowl MVP trophy. Go Blue! reaches back to those special places in time in the program’s history in addition to sharing heartwarming anecdotes. This collection is something no Michigan football fan will want to be without.
While investigating how the current Big Ten Conference came to include Michigan State and not other suitors including Pittsburgh and Nebraska, this work traces the sometimes shadowy history of college football. It's a story of intrigue, lying, timing, friendships made and broken along with costly arousing outbursts, all based on extensive and detailed research.David Young is a practicing physician in Holland, Michigan. He grew up in East Lansing. While attending Notre Dame in the mid 1970s, his next door neighbor, Jack Breslin, shared a story with him about the special relationship between Michigan State and the University of Notre Dame. The 1946 Spartan graduate and executive vice president of MSU noted that the Irish administration had played a prominent role in Michigan State College's evolution into a major land-grant research institution. It all had to do with aiding a Spartan application for membership in the "Western Conference" during the late 1940s. Mr. Breslin also offered comment on the University of Michigan's role in that transition. Unfortunately, while walking back to the Yardboy to finish mowing his lawn, those words were muffled by the idling engine. "And if Michigan had its way...."Three decades later, Dr. Young decided to investigate what his alma mater did to assist Michigan State's grand vision as crafted by a far-sighted president. He also wanted to find out what Breslin intended to say about the Wolverine's involvement in the application process. What he discovered, hidden within the stacks of 13 university archives, has now dispelled a popular myth. In its place, the amateur historian reveals the true story--an extensively cited account of John Hannah's quest for membership in the Big Nine and Michigan Law Professor Ralph Aigler's obsession with impeding that relentless pursuit. Intertwined in the complex tale are the fascinating roles played by two commissioners as well as various leaders at Minnesota, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Northwestern, Purdue, Pittsburgh and the University of Chicago.Though this account focuses on a unique intrastate rivalry, the book remains a must read for anyone interested in the evolution of the modern game of college football. And for alumni/fans of the many schools involved with either aiding or hindering Hannah's quest, the story will explore what now appears to be a very controversial decision in May of 1949 to accept Michigan State College into the Western Conference.
They are known as "cupcake games"--lower division teams get paid to travel to college football Meccas where the hosts make a nice profit from an extra game. On September 1, 2007, the University of Michigan Wolverines, with more wins than any team in history, hosted the Appalachian State Mountaineers from Boone, North Carolina, in the first such game at Michigan Stadium, the largest stadium in the country. App State was no cupcake. Coach Jerry Moore, in the spirit of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team and other memorable underdogs, assembled his team with two things in mind--speed and character--and conditioned them to the breaking point. "We're fixin' to shock 'em," he shouted at practice, in the locker room, at the dinner table. This book tells the inside story of Moore's legendary team and the Mountaineers' historic win.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the “poet laureate of Michigan football," a riveting inside chronicle of the Jim Harbaugh era, and "an unprecedented look at the inner workings" (Sporting News) of a big-time college football program John U. Bacon received rare access to Head Coach Jim Harbaugh’s University of Michigan football team: coaches, players, and staffers, in closed-door meetings, locker rooms, meals, and classes. Overtime captures this storied program at the crossroads, as the sport’s winningest team battles to reclaim its former glory. But what if the price of success today comes at the cost of your soul? Do you pay it, or compete without compromising? In the spirit of HBO’s Hardknocks, Overtime delivers a deeply reported human portrait that follows the Wolverine coaches, players, and staffers. Above all, thisis a human story. In Overtime we not only discover what these public figures are like behind the scenes, we learn what the experience means to them as they go through it – the trials, the triumphs, and the unexpected answers to a central question: Is it worth it? From the “poet laureate of Michigan football” (according to New York Times’s Joe Drape), and one of the keenest observers of college football, Overtime offers a window into a legendary program and the sport itself that only John U. Bacon could deliver.
