Dec. 9, 2003
Listen to today’s edition of Inside Iowa
Editor’s Note: The following was written by Sean Keeler and first appeared in the Dec. 7, 2003 editions of the Des Moines Register. Former Iowa football coach Hayden Fry will be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame during ceremonies tonight in New York City.
In spite of all the taunts, the kicking, the spitting, the threats real and imagined, and a burden heavier than 20 helmets, only once did Jerry LeVias seriously consider not suiting up for Hayden Fry.
Souther Methodist rolled up to the Cotton Bowl one Saturday only to find LeVias’ No. 23 jersey was missing. LeVias was superstitious, a creature of habit. And he was rattled.
“Coach,” he told Fry, “I can’t play.”
The coach handed him No. 26.
“Put this on,” Fry said. He leaned closer, grinning, voice barely above a whisper. “It’s OK. We’re gonna confuse ’em.”
And with that, Levias, the first African-American athlete in the old Southwest Conference, let out a guffaw that said: And you wonder why I love this man?
“There’s 21 guys on the football field and one black guy,” LeVias gasped last week, “and . . . they’re gonna be confused!”
It’s still funn, some 37 years later, setting Jim Crow up for the sweep, then taking a reverse the other way for a big gain.
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Fry and LeVias are going in together, as they should, forever intertwined, the Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson of the SWC. If Hayden never coached another down in college football after 1972, when he was canned by SMU, he would still be Hall material. His legacy would be perspective, his ticket to Manhattan punched by principle and courage instead of three Rose Bowls.
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Before he was a legend, before he rasied Hawkeye football from the dead, ol’ Hayden was a pioneer. In 37 seasons as a college coach, Fry won 232 games and went to 17 bowls, 14 with Iowa. He hobnobbed with Hollywood stars and presidents. And yet the Silver Fox to this day considers giving LeVias a scholarship — smashing the color line in big-time Texas football — to be his greatest professional accomplishment.
“Was I naive or was I crazy?” said LeVias, who will be inducted with Fry into the college football Hallof FAme Tuesday at the posh Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York Ciyt. “Now, when I back, it feels like a movie.”
Fry and LeVias are going in together, as they should, forever intertwined, the Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson of the SWC. If Hayden never coached another down in college football after 1972, when he was canned by SMU, he would still be Hall material. His legacy would be perspective, his ticket to Manhattan punched by principle and courage instead of three Rose Bowls.
“At the time I recruited Jerry,” Fry recalled, “tehre was still a lot of people in that part of the country fighting the Civil War.” Fry was an assistant under Frank Broyles at Arkansas when SMU approached him. He was interested, but only if he would be allowed to integrate his roster. Mustang officials eventually relented, but Fry would have to start with just one — one who had to be a model student, a model citizen and, of course, a superstar on Saturdays.
He found all three in LeVias, a 5-foot 8-inch rocket who was the Desmond Howard of his day. Tagged “The Burner From Beaumont,” LeVias led SMU to its first SWC in 18 years as a sophomore in 1966, his first varsity season. He rewrote the SMU record book. As a senior, he was a consensus All-America on the field — he finished fifth in Heisman Trophy balloting in 1968 — and in the classroom.
Fry’s second African-American recruit, noseguard Rufus Cormier, did his post-graduate work at Yale and is now one of the most prominent lawyers in Houston.
“After that, (the adminstration) said, ‘You can bring in five,’ ” Fry said with a chuckle. “But we were the only school doing it.”
Other SWC coaches thought Fry was getting a little too progressive. So did some SMU fans. In Fry’a 2001 autogiography, it was speculated that a report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, in which it was rumored that SMU was planning a “super team” of at least 15 black players, may have contributed to his dismissal.
“He wasn’t the favorite of a lot of coaches in the South,” recalled LeVias, now vice president of marketing with Janice McKinney Court Reporting Services in Houston. “He broke the so-called gentleman’s agreement. People always focus on what I had to go through, but they don’t talk about what Coach Fry had to go through in doing the right thing.”
Fry assigned LeVias a security detail — the FBI stepped in — and screened his star’s mail. But he couldn’t screen his own. The dung heap of epithets would pile high some days, an anthology of the tiny mind and yellow belly.
Oh, how the hard-line crackers grumbled — at least, until they saw The Burner in action. In his debut season, LeVias either scored or set up the winning points in eight of the Mustangs’ 10 games.
The coach cherished the converts, however infrequent. One afternoon, after LeVias had been on campus awhile, one of his white teammates dropped by Fry’s office.
“coach,” he said, shutting the door behind him. “I want to apologize.”
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“(Hayden) wasn’t the favorite of a lot of coaches in the South. He broke the so-called gentleman’s agreement. People always focus on what I had to go through, but they don’t talk about what Coach Fry had to go through in doing the right thing.”
Jerry LeVias
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Why? Fry asked.
The player told Fry he couldn’t sleep, he felt so guilty. When he first heard about LeVias he was repulsed. He wanted to quit. He’d never played with an African-America. He’d never associated with an African-American.
But LeVias changed his mind, changed hi outlook. Changed his life.
“I tell you what, Coach,” the player said. “Every time Jerry scores a touchdown, he gets whiter and whiter.”