Bailey Jones

I enjoyed the show, though I must point out that it could be assumed that every time you mentioned Alabama, you were talking about the state, and not just the university. Because while all of the stories about the University of Alabama and the integration of the football team were both true and fascinating, the same story had played out across the state at Auburn University years earlier, with much less fanfare and much less consternation.

Auburn first hosted an integrated opponent in 1966, and the first black football player on scholarship at Auburn was James Owens, in 1969. Both happened before Alabama did either.

Bear Bryant signed his first black player the next year. In fact that player, Wilbur Jackson, was on the freshman team (freshmen were not allowed to play on the varsity back then) when USC and Sam Cunningham came to town, which means that Bryant had already integrated his team BEFORE the infamous USC game.

While Bryant’s moves towards integration might have made more noise given his stature in the state, please don’t think that he was the trend-setter, since Auburn and coach Shug Jordan were setting the pace well ahead of Bryant and Alabama.

John Dodson

Not only should they be banned at the collegiate level, they should be banned at the secondary, high school level. The effect on education is insidious and destructive. There is nothing wrong with competitive, team sports, just keep them out of schools.

E. Marshall Buckles

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in my car, waiting for my wife and daughter to finish shopping at a grocery store in Short Pump, VA and babysitting our beagle “Eli” when I decided to turn on the radio. I happened to tune in to the middle of the History of College Sports. As one raised in Bristol, Tennessee, where Bristol Tennessee High School sports and University of Tennessee sports are more like religions than sports, I am aware that athletic teams can and often do have a sort of “unifying influence” upon student bodies and between educational institutions and their communities like no other. Even so, I also think that sometimes athletics can become somewhat like “the tail which wags the dog”, so to speak. At the college level, if it was up to me, all athletics would be moved to what we now know as NCAA Division III level. Athletics would be an extracurricular activity secondary to academics. Even so, I don’t see that happening in the near future if ever. East Tennessee State University, which I attended during the early 1970s, had discontinued their football team a few years ago. Recently they voted to again have a football team. Little Tusculum College, in Greeneville, TN, not far from ETSU, several years ago started to again have a football team after several decades without one. It seems that most colleges and universities tend to have athletics at some level. I tend to doubt that trend will change in our lifetimes no matter how good or how bad the economy. Dr. Ronnie Day, an ETSU history professor once told a class I was taking under him that “humankind still has one foot in the jungle and we will always have some sort of organized competitions in education and in communities.” I think that he was probably right. Oh well! I am late in making this comment, however, just thought I would “toss in my two cents worth” of comment. I enjoy your program (which, oddly, I usually seem to hear in that grocery store parking lot while babysitting “Eli” our beagle). Respectfully submitted, E. Marshall Buckles (“The Lord preserveth the simple”), Rockville, VA