Grantland Rice | |
|---|---|
_-_World_Telegram_%2526_Sun_photo_by_Paul_Thompson_LCCN2013646402.jpg) Ricec. 1920 | |
| Born | (1880-11-01)November 1, 1880 Murfreesboro, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Died | July 13, 1954(1954-07-13) (aged 73) New York, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Sportswriter |
| Alma mater | Vanderbilt University |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Florence Rice |
Henry Grantland Rice (November 1, 1880 – July 13, 1954) was an Americansportswriter,columnist, andpoet fromTennessee known as the "Dean of American Sports Writers". He published three books of poetry, and coined the famous phrase that it was not important whether you “won or lost, but how you played the game.”
His writing was known for its elegance and published innewspapers around the country, andbroadcast on the radio. He and his writing are among the reasons that theroaring 1920s in the United States are sometimes referred to as the "Golden Age of Sports".
In 1924, he nicknamed theNotre Damebackfield the "Four Horsemen". In 1925 he replacedWalter Camp in selectingcollege footballAll-America teams. Rice set out to make heroes of sports figures who impressed him, most notably inbaseballBabe Ruth, inboxingJack Dempsey, infootballRed Grange andKnute Rockne, ingolfBobby Jones andBabe Didrikson, and intennisBill Tilden.
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Rice was born on November 1, 1880 inMurfreesboro, Tennessee, the son of Bolling Hendon Rice, a cotton dealer,[1] and Mary Beulah (née Grantland) Rice.[2] His grandfather Major Henry W. Grantland was aNashville cotton farmer and aConfederate veteran of theCivil War.[3] As a young teenager, Rice attended military schools—Tennessee Military Institute and Nashville Military Institute. After a year at Wallace University School, Rice attendedVanderbilt University in Nashville.[4]
At Vanderbilt, Rice was a brother in thePhi Delta Theta fraternity. He studiedGreek andLatin and graduated with aBA degree inclassics as part of the class of 1901.[5] Rice was tall and slender, over 6 feet tall and well under 140 pounds. He was a member of the football team for three years, and ashortstop on the baseball team. On the football team, he lettered in the year of1899 as anend and averaged two injuries a year. He suffered a broken shoulder blade, a broken collar bone, and four broken ribs.[6] On the baseball team, he was captain in 1901.[5][7] Rice notes thatpro baseball took off in the South in his senior year at Vanderbilt.[8]
Rice's first job in 1901 was for theNashville Daily News. From 1902 to 1907 he worked for theAtlanta Journal and theCleveland News. Rice married Fannie Katherine Hollis on April 11, 1906; they had one child, the actressFlorence Rice.
He became a sportswriter for theNashville Tennessean in 1907, under owner-publisherLuke Lea. The job at theTennessean was given to him by formerSewanee Tigers coachBilly Suter, who coached baseball teams against which Rice played while at Vanderbilt.
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Afterwards he obtained a series of prestigious jobs with major newspapers in the northeastern United States. In 1911 he was hired by theNew York Evening Mail, and in 1914 he began his Sportlight column in theNew York Tribune. He also provided monthly Grantland Rice Sportlights as part ofParamount newsreels from 1925 to 1954.[9] He is best known for writing forCollier's.
He and his writing are among the reasons that the 1920s in the United States are sometimes referred to as the "Golden Age of Sports". He became even better known after his columns were nationally syndicated beginning in 1930, and became known as the "Dean of American Sports Writers".
Rice's writing tended to be of an "inspirational" or "heroic" style, raising games to the level of ancient combat and their heroes to the status ofdemigods. According to author Mark Inabinett in his 1994 work,Grantland Rice and His Heroes: The Sportswriter as Mythmaker in the 1920s, Rice very consciously set out to make heroes of sports figures who impressed him, most notably in baseballBabe Ruth, in boxingJack Dempsey, in footballRed Grange andKnute Rockne, in golfBobby Jones andBabe Didrikson, and in tennisBill Tilden. Unlike many writers of his era, Rice defended the right of football players such as Grange, and tennis players such as Tilden, to make a living as professionals, but he also decried the warping influence of big money in sports, once writing in his column:
Money to the left of them and money to the right
Money everywhere they turn from morning to the night
Only two things count at all from mountain to the sea
Part of it's percentage, and the rest is guarantee
Rice authored a book of poetry,Songs of the Stalwart, which was published in 1917 by D. Appleton and Company of New York. His most famous poem is "When the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name; He marks not that you won or lost, but how you played the game."
Rice coached the 1908Vanderbilt baseball team. He dubbed the Nashville baseball stadiumSulphur Dell,[10] and declared the1908 Nashville vs. New Orleans game the "greatest game ever played in Dixie."[11] Rice authored Baseball Ballads in 1910.
In 1907, Rice saw what he would call the greatest thrill he ever witnessed in his years of watching sports during theSewanee–Vanderbilt football game: the catch byVanderbilt centerStein Stone, on adouble-pass play thrown near theend zone byBob Blake. It set up the touchdown run byHonus Craig that beatSewanee at the very end for theSIAA championship.[12] Vanderbilt coachDan McGugin inSpalding's Football Guide's summation of the season in the SIAA wrote, "The standing. First, Vanderbilt; second, Sewanee, a mighty good second;" and that Sewanee halfbackAubrey Lanier "came near winning the Vanderbilt game by his brilliant dashes after receiving punts."[13]
He is best known for being the successor toWalter Camp in the selection ofCollege Football All-America Teams for beginning in 1925, and for being the writer who dubbed the great backfield of coach Rockne's1924 Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team the"Four Horsemen" of Notre Dame.[14] ABiblical reference to theFour Horsemen of the Apocalypse, this famous account was published in theNew York Herald Tribune on October 18, describing the Notre Dame vs. Army game played at thePolo Grounds in New York City:
Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of theSouth Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.[15]
— Grantland Rice, October 18, 1924[15]
The passage added great import to the event described and elevated it to a level far beyond that of a mere football game. This passage, although famous, is far from atypical. Another famous passage celebrated Red Grange:
A streak of fire, a breath of flame
Eluding all who reach and clutch;
A gray ghost thrown into the game
That rival hands may never touch;
A rubber bounding, blasting soul
Whose destination is the goal — Red Grange of Illinois![16][a]
Rice's all-time All-Americabackfield in 1939 wasJim Thorpe,Red Grange,Ken Strong, andErnie Nevers.[18] His all-time line was centerGermany Schulz, guardsPudge Heffelfinger andJack Cannon, tacklesFats Henry andBill Fincher. Another all-time All-America selection in 1949 by Rice shows a backfield ofSammy Baugh, Thorpe, Grange, andBronko Nagurski. His all time line was center Schulz, guards Heffelfinger andHerman Hickman, tackles Henry andCal Hubbard, and endsDon Hutson andBennie Oosterbaan.[19]
Rice was an advocate for the emerging game ofgolf in the United States. He became interested in the sport in 1909 while covering theSouthern Amateur at the Nashville Golf Club.[b] Rice took lessons from the club's pro Charlie Hall. Rice began playing there regularly and said "I never dreamed that golf would provide so must grist for my typewriter". Golfer and athleteBradley Walker was active in the Nashville Golf Club and became a close friend of Rice.[21]
Rice edited American Golfer magazine beginning in 1920, until 1936. He wrote extensively about golfer Bobby Jones and considered him the greatest-everputter.[22][23] When theAugusta National Golf Club was formed, Rice was one of the eighty charter members. Rice is a member of the New York State Golf Association Hall of Fame.[24]
Before leaving for service inWorld War I, he entrusted his entire fortune, about $75,000 (the equivalent of around $1.4 million today), to a friend. On his return from the war, Rice discovered that his friend had lost all the money in bad investments, and then had committed suicide. Rice accepted the blame for putting "that much temptation" in his friend's way.[25] Rice then made monthly contributions to the man's widow throughout his life.[26]
Rice fought in the 30th Division, lieutenant in the 115th Field Artillery.[6] He spent fourteen months in military service.
One source recalls if you wanted to anger Rice, mention prizefighters who avoided fighting in World War I.[6]
Rice died at the age 73 on July 13, 1954, following a stroke.[2] Rice's autobiographyThe Tumult and the Shouting, the title a reference toKipling, was published in 1954. He is interred atWoodlawn Cemetery inthe Bronx,New York City.
By one estimate, Rice wrote more than 22,000 columns and more than 67,000,000 words.[27]
In 1951, in recognition of Rice's 50 years in journalism, an anonymous donor contributed $50,000 to establish the Grantland Rice Fellowship in Journalism withThe New York Community Trust.[28] In 1954, theFootball Writers Association of America (FWAA) established theGrantland Rice Trophy, an annual award presented (from 1954 to 2013) to the college football team recognized by the FWAA as the national champions.[29][30] TheGrantland Rice Bowl, an annual college footballbowl game held from 1964 to 1977, was named in his honor, as was the Grantland Rice Award given to the winner. Rice was posthumously awarded the 1966J. G. Taylor Spink Award by theBaseball Writers' Association of America. The award, presented the following year at the annual induction ceremony at theBaseball Hall of Fame, is given for "meritorious contributions to baseball writing".[31]
At Vanderbilt, a four-year scholarship named for Rice and former colleague and fellow Vanderbilt alumnusFred Russell is awarded each year to an incoming first-year student who intends to pursue a career in sportswriting. Recipients of the Fred Russell–Grantland Rice Sportswriting Scholarship include author and humoristRoy Blount Jr.;Skip Bayless ofFox Sports[32] andNew York Times best-selling author,Andrew Maraniss.[33] Thepress box inVanderbilt Stadium atVanderbilt University is dedicated to Rice and named after Rice's protégé, Fred Russell. For many years, a portion of one floor of theColumbia University Graduate School of Journalism was designated the "Grantland Rice Suite". Grantland Avenue in his hometown of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was named in his honor.
Rice was mentioned in anI Love Lucy episode entitled "The Camping Trip", and was portrayed by actorLane Smith, also a native of Tennessee, inThe Legend of Bagger Vance. On June 8, 2011,ESPN'sBill Simmons launched a sports and popular culture website titledGrantland, a name intended to honor Rice's legacy.[34] It operated for a little more than four years until being shuttered by ESPN on October 30, 2015, several months after Simmons's departure.[35]
Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.
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