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    N.C.A.A. Investigates Booster Club Funding for College Sports

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    The University of Tennessee’s football program is under investigation for recruiting violations involving a donor collective, signaling an effort to rein in the role of outside money in college sports.The N.C.A.A. is investigating the University of Tennessee’s football program for recruiting violations involving a group of outside donors, signaling an escalation of efforts to rein in the growing influence of money flooding into college sports, according to documents and people familiar with the case.The investigation is focused on Tennessee’s high-profile donor collective, a group of alumni and wealthy boosters who support the team by channeling payments and other benefits to players. The inquiry is looking at, among other things, the group’s role in flying a high-profile recruit to campus on a private jet while the football team was wooing him, one person familiar with the case said.Having the booster group pay for the trip by the recruit, Nico Iamaleava, now Tennessee’s starting quarterback, would be a violation of N.C.A.A. rules. The inquiry comes after the N.C.A.A. penalized Tennessee for earlier recruiting violations and signals the organization’s growing concern about the huge sums being injected into the nominally amateur world of college sports by donor collectives.The case could have profound implications for the direction of high-profile programs across the country, especially in football, where outside money raised and disbursed to players by collectives has reshaped the economics of the game. News of the investigation into Tennessee’s athletic program was first reported by Sports Illustrated.Officials at Tennessee are concerned that the investigation could result in a devastating blow to its football program, according to a person briefed on the matter. The program is already on probation for the earlier recruiting violations, and school officials are worried about the potential for the N.C.A.A. to take drastic action, like banning the team from postseason play and disqualifying players.Facing that possibility, the school has hired several law firms and is considering a range of legal options to stave off any consequences.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Rudy Riska, the Heisman Trophy’s Guiding Light, Dies at 85

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      For over 40 years he oversaw the awarding of the prestigious trophy to the nation’s top college football player and helped winners on their “magic carpet ride” in New York.Rudy Riska, who first glimpsed the Heisman Trophy on its pedestal at the Downtown Athletic Club in Lower Manhattan when he was a boy, and who years later became the invaluable guide, counselor and mentor for the young men who won it, died on Sept. 12 in a Brooklyn hospital. He was 85.His daughter Elizabeth Briody said the causes were dementia and pneumonia.For more than 40 years, the self-effacing Mr. Riska ran the organization at the club that awarded the Heisman to the year’s outstanding football player. He oversaw the itinerary of the winners and encouraged them to think seriously about what they would say in their acceptance speeches. He bought tickets to Broadway shows for their families, made reservations at top restaurants and organized the annual Heisman dinner in Manhattan, which drew as many as 2,000 guests.Mr. Riska developed that job as the athletic director of the Downtown Athletic Club, the trophy’s longtime home. He had noticed that no one was supervising the winner’s activities when he was in Manhattan for the award ceremony.“They were just college kids plucked from their campuses and suddenly flown to New York,” he told The New York Times in 2010. “They were often unsophisticated kids. Most had never played on national television. Many had never been on an airplane until they flew to New York. Their heads were spinning.”In 1961, Mr. Riska accompanied the Syracuse halfback Ernie Davis to meet President John F. Kennedy at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, while toting the 45-pound bronze trophy. Four years later, Mr. Riska threw passes at Battery Park to Mike Garrett, the University of Southern California halfback, who wanted to work out.“I realize how much power he had,” said Desmond Howard of the University of Michigan, seen here with Mr. Riska when he won the Heisman in 1991, “but he never put it on display.” Barton Silverman/The New York Times“I got there and Rudy put his arm around me and the rest was like a magic carpet ride,” Eddie George, the Ohio State running back who won the Heisman in 1995, told The Times. “And that was what Rudy wanted. He wanted every winner to remember his weekend forever.”Mr. Riska worked entirely behind the scenes — fans watching the televised annual ceremony would not likely have known his name or face — but the winners understood his importance.“I realize how much power he had, but he never put it on display,” Desmond Howard, the 1991 Heisman winner, said by phone. “When everyone defers to you, you must have power, but he carried himself as someone who served you and took care of all your needs.”Rudolph James Riska was born on Aug. 22, 1936, in Manhattan to Rudolph and Elizabeth (Marecek) Riska. His mother cleaned offices. His family lived for a while near the Downtown Athletic Club, in the financial district, and when he was 11 his father took him to see the Heisman.“I stared at the names engraved on the trophy,” he told The Times. “How lucky can a guy be to end up in a job where those names come to life and they become your friends?”His athletic focus as a youngster was baseball, not football. He threw a no-hitter for Metropolitan High School, which attracted the interest of the Yankees, who signed him to a contract. He played on low-level minor league teams in the Yankee system from 1955 to 1958 and the Baltimore Orioles’ system in 1959. At the Aberdeen, S.D., affiliate of the Orioles, his manager was Earl Weaver, the Orioles’ future Hall of Famer. He compiled a 36-33 record, but chronic bursitis ended his career.“What I think I have been able to do,” Mr. Riska once said, “is guide and protect the Heisman from people who might try to make money the wrong way on it. I like to view myself as the conscience of the Heisman.”Barton Silverman/The New York TimesHe went to work as a salesman for the sporting goods company Rawlings, but after two years he accepted a job with the Downtown Athletic Club. He was soon named to the post of athletic director, the position that John Heisman, the trophy’s namesake, held there until his death in 1936.As athletic director, Mr. Riska developed fitness and sports programs for club members and created events that honored renowned athletes. But it was as the executive director of the Heisman Trophy Trust and the Heisman Foundation that he was largely known.“What I think I have been able to do,” he told The Bay Ridge Paper in 2003, “is guide and protect the Heisman from people who might try to make money the wrong way on it. I like to view myself as the conscience of the Heisman.”He retired in 2004, three years after the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath led the club to close permanently. The trophy, which is awarded by a vote of members of the sports media and past winners, was moved to various locations and is now held at the Heisman Trust’s office in Manhattan.In addition to his daughter Elizabeth, Mr. Riska is survived by his wife, Josephine (Karpoich) Riska, known as Lorraine; another daughter, Barbara Piersiak; and four grandchildren.For a time, 15 or 20 of the past Heisman winners who traveled to New York City for the annual anointing of the newest winner took time off during the weekend to commemorate their achievements at a Blarney Stone bar near the club.“People might have been looking for them, but I’d let them go off by themselves for a couple of hours,” Mr. Riska told The Times. “They would let their hair down with their wives, rubbing shoulders with these blue-collar construction workers. It was a collection of some of the best college football players ever. But they just wanted to hang out with a regular crowd.” More

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      Considering Itself Outside the Title Picture, U.S.C. Fires Clay Helton

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      After the Trojans lost to Stanford as 17-point favorites, they moved on from Helton, who had two years left on his contract.With the University of Southern California’s defense being gashed, its offense stagnant and its discipline lacking — the kicker was ejected on the opening kickoff — fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum showered the team with boos during a 42-28 thumping at the hands of Stanford, which entered Saturday’s game as a 17-point underdog.Afterward, Clay Helton, the seventh-year coach, pleaded for calm.“At the end of the season, see where we’re at,” he told reporters.Wherever the Trojans are at the end of the season, Helton won’t be around to see it. He was fired Monday amid increasing fury from the school’s alumni and former players for whom Saturday wasn’t just a bad game, but another confirmation that the football program would never become a contender for a national title under Helton.In fact, Athletic Director Mike Bohn, in announcing a national search for a new coach, said in a statement that the Trojans would be better off for the remainder of the season with Donte Williams, a 39-year-old cornerbacks coach who has never even served as a coordinator, as the interim head coach.Bohn, who replaced Lynn Swann as the athletic director two years ago, said that despite adding resources for the football program since he arrived, it was clear even after two games — a win over San Jose State and the loss to Stanford — that U.S.C. was nowhere near becoming a national championship contender. “It is already evident that, despite the enhancements, those expectations would not be met without a change in leadership,” he said.If Helton’s firing was a shock this early in the season, it is de rigueur for the Trojans, who have quite the history of bloodletting with football coaches.Lane Kiffin was fired at the airport after being summoned from the team bus upon returning to Los Angeles following a defeat at Arizona State. Steve Sarkisian checked into rehab after getting fired in the middle of the season after repeatedly showing up drunk. And years ago, John Robinson returned home from Christmas shopping to find a message on his answering machine that he had been axed.Stanford running back Nathaniel Peat, right, had more than 100 yards rushing on only six carries in the Cardinal’s 42-28 win.Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated PressThis decision, though, might have been made far earlier but for the whopping six-year contract extension Helton was awarded by Swann before the 2018 season — one that is expected to have paid him close to $5 million this season and runs for two more years.The Trojans, who were carried to the Rose Bowl and the Cotton Bowl by quarterback Sam Darnold in Helton’s first two full seasons, have gone 19-14 since Helton signed the new contract. In last year’s pandemic-shortened season, the Trojans won their five conference games, but their hopes of sneaking into the College Football Playoff vanished when they were upset on their home field by Oregon in the Pac-12 championship game.Helton never gained a foothold with U.S.C. fans, who were befuddled that the former athletic director Pat Haden — who like his successor Swann had been a star football player at the school — promoted Helton to interim coach after firing Sarkisian, and then gave him the permanent job. Haden had previously passed on another interim coach, choosing to not retain Ed Orgeron, who two years ago coached Louisiana State to a national championship.Helton’s coaching staff was a revolving door, and each August he seemed to promise a more disciplined team. But even a rousing comeback victory over the conference rival U.C.L.A. last year was marred by Trojans taunting their rivals when the game ended — Helton falling to the turf trying to pull his players away.The scene was a picture of a coach who did not have control of his team.The cost of firing Helton will be considerable, presumably in the neighborhood of $15 million (the terms of his contract are not public because U.S.C. is a private school). But with a $315 million renovation of the Coliseum to be paid for in part through ticket sales, a considerable financial hit from the pandemic and declining attendance, there was also a cost to doing nothing.On Monday, U.S.C. decided it was too much to bear. More

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      Sam Cunningham Dies at 71; Fostered Integration on the Football Field

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      As one of three Black players in the U.S.C. backfield, he led the team to a stunning win in 1970 over Coach Bear Bryant’s all-white Alabama. He would go on to star for the New England Patriots.Sam Cunningham, a fullback for the integrated University of Southern California football team that in 1970 trounced Coach Bear Bryant’s all-white Alabama squad, died on Tuesday at his home in Inglewood, Calif. He was 71.His wife, Cine (Ivery) Cunningham, confirmed his death but did not cite a cause.Cunningham, a sophomore, was playing his first game for U.S.C. on Sept. 12, 1970, at Legion Field in Birmingham. For the Trojans it was a journey into the Deep South to a state that had been governed, and would be again, by the fiery segregationist George C. Wallace.Cunningham, whose nickname was Bam, formed an all-Black backfield with the quarterback Jimmy Jones and the tailback Clarence Davis. Cunningham, a backup player, was the game’s unexpected star, running for 135 yards on 12 carries and scoring two touchdowns in the Trojans’ 42-21 victory.For Alabama, it was a humiliating loss on the way to a 6-5-1 record — but it was also a lesson to Bryant that his Crimson Tide would falter in the future without Black players. He knew that already, having recruited Wilbur Jackson, a running back. But as a freshman, Jackson was not allowed to play for the varsity and watched the game at the stadium.Cunningham called the game a “tipping point” in the struggle for civil rights in sports. He told the U.S.C. athletics website in 2016 that it showed “that things should be equal on the football field as they should be in all other parts of life, but that’s not always the case.”The next year, Jackson and John Mitchell, a defensive end, integrated the Alabama team, which went 11-1 (including a win over U.S.C.). The team’s only loss was to Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.Richard Lapchick, a human-rights activist and the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, said Bryant knew he needed to recruit Black players to stay competitive.In a phone interview, Lapchick said that Bryant had confided in Eddie Robinson, the longtime coach of the historically Black Grambling State University in Louisiana, about the impact of his team’s loss to U.S.C.“Eddie told me how often Bear talked to him about what the game meant,” Lapchick said, “and what Sam meant to his ability to integrate.”By 1977, Alabama had 17 Black football players on scholarship.Samuel Lewis Cunningham Jr. was born on Aug. 15, 1950, in Santa Barbara, Calif. His father was a railroad worker. His mother, Zoe (Ivory) Cunningham, died when he was young; he was raised by his father and stepmother, Mabel (Crook) Cunningham, a nurse.Sam and his brothers, Anthony, Bruce and Randall, a future quarterback with the Philadelphia Eagles and three other N.F.L. teams, were all athletic. Sam was introduced to organized sports in elementary school, where he played basketball, baseball, volleyball and flag football.He was recruited by Coach John McKay to U.S.C. and, in his three seasons on the team, gained 1,579 yards on 337 carries. He scored four short-yardage touchdowns in the Trojans’ 42-17 victory over Ohio State in the 1973 Rose Bowl, which wrapped up a 12-0 season. That year’s team was ranked No. 1 in college football.Cunningham was selected by the New England Patriots with the 11th overall pick in the 1973 N.F.L. draft. In his nine seasons with the team, he accumulated 5,453 rushing yards, including 516 in his first season, a Patriots rookie record, and 1,015 in 1977, making him the second Patriot to exceed 1,000 yards in a season. He sat out the 1980 season in a contract dispute, which prompted the Patriots to trade him to the Miami Dolphins. But he failed the team’s physical and returned to the Patriots shortly before the 1981 season.“Sam ‘Bam’ Cunningham was one of my favorite players throughout the ’70s, and my sons all loved him,” the Patriots’ owner, Robert Kraft, said in a statement. “After I bought the team in 1994, it was my honor to welcome him back to the team on multiple occasions, recognizing him as a 50th-anniversary team member and again for his induction into the Patriots Hall of Fame.”Cunningham became a landscape contractor after his playing career ended.In addition to his wife, he is survived by his daughter, Samahndi Cunningham; and his brothers.Cunningham joined Jones and Davis in the backfield early in the first quarter of that historic 1970 game against Alabama.“I didn’t go into any game looking to change history, even though history has a tendency to be changed by things of that nature,” he told The Santa Barbara Independent this year. “I always tried to play to the best of my ability, and that’s what I did that evening. I was put in the right spot and got touched by the hand of God.” More

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      Terry Brennan, Youthful Notre Dame Football Coach, Dies at 93

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      One of Leahy’s Lads as a player on national championship teams, he was hired as coach at 25 and fired at 30.Terry Brennan was one of Leahy’s Lads, the elusive runners, strong-armed passers and muscular linemen who propelled Notre Dame to four national football championships under Coach Frank Leahy in the 1940s.Brennan played halfback on two of those teams, and he starred in the annual rivalry with Army. But he was remembered most for succeeding Leahy at age 25, a move that startled the college football world.Notre Dame announced Wednesday that Brennan, who was living in Wilmette, Ill., has died at 93. It did not provide details.Brennan took over a football program that had transformed Notre Dame from a small, largely unknown Roman Catholic institution in South Bend, Ind., to a storied name in popular culture. But his coaching résumé was limited to three high school championship teams in Chicago and one year as Leahy’s freshman coach.When Leahy retired and Brennan replaced him in February 1954, the sports columnist Red Smith saw turbulence looming.“He’s only 25,” Smith wrote. “By the time he’s 30, he’ll be a good deal more than five years older. Coaching Notre Dame is the most coveted job in football, and probably the most nerve-racking.”At the age of 30, Brennan was fired.He had coached four winning teams in five seasons. His 1957 team pulled off one of college football’s greatest upsets, a 7-0 road victory over Oklahoma, snapping its record-setting 47-game winning streak. But he had been faced with a reduction in athletic scholarships ordered by Notre Dame’s president, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, who was determined to have Notre Dame viewed as a renowned academic institution and only secondly as a football powerhouse. Father Hesburgh had, in fact, taught Brennan at Notre Dame and had admired his intellect.Brennan was probably doomed by his failure to win a national championship, something that Notre Dame’s alumni had come to expect virtually every year. And Leahy, in retirement, feuded with him, questioning the team’s fighting spirit.Brennan’s firing, four days before Christmas in 1958, was widely condemned in the football world.“Notre Dame won’t look very good in the eyes of the country,” said Louisiana State’s Paul Dietzel, the 1958 college coach of the year.The Indiana Catholic and Record, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, said that the real losers in Brennan’s firing were “the priests and laymen at Notre Dame who were trying, successfully, we believe, to remake the public image of Notre Dame from football factory to first-class university.”Terence Patrick Brennan was born on June 11, 1928, in Milwaukee. He was a high school football star, then made the Notre Dame lineup as a freshman in 1945, when most of the regulars were serving in World War II.In the postwar years, Notre Dame, led by quarterback Johnny Lujack, vied with Army for college football supremacy. Brennan, playing on both offense and defense, made a key play in their 1946 game at Yankee Stadium, a matchup of unbeaten squads, intercepting a halfback option pass by Army’s Glenn Davis on the Irish 8-yard line late in the first period. The teams played to a 0-0 tie, but Notre Dame was voted national champions.In the 1947 Army game Brennan ran the opening kickoff back 97 yards for a touchdown and scored again on a 3-yard run in the first period, sending Notre Dame to a 27-7 victory and another national title.He led the Irish in receiving and scoring in 1946 and ’47 and he rushed for 1,269 career yards, but knee problems kept him from a pro football career.Brennan coached Mount Carmel High School of Chicago to three consecutive Catholic league championships while obtaining a law degree from DePaul University in Chicago, then became Leahy’s freshman coach in 1953. Leahy developed health problems that season, leading to his retirement.Brennan had trouble getting into Notre Dame’s stadium for his first home game as head coach, against Texas, when he encountered roadblocks funneling traffic. “The police wouldn’t let me down Notre Dame Avenue, nor would they believe I was the head coach,” he once recalled. “I guess I looked too young.”Notre Dame went 9-1 and 8-2 in Brennan’s first two seasons as coach with players recruited by Leahy. But with the talent drying up in the face of scholarship restrictions and enhanced admission requirements for athletes, the Irish could no longer dominate. Notre Dame plunged to 2-8 in 1956, though quarterback Paul Hornung won the Heisman Trophy.On the eve of the 1956 season finale, at Southern California, Leahy said: “It’s not the losses that upset me. It’s the attitude. What has happened to the old Notre Dame spirit?”Brennan’s teams went 7-3 and 6-4 in the following two seasons, but with Notre Dame’s glory days clearly at an end, he was asked to resign. He was fired after refusing to do so, telling Sports Illustrated soon afterward that he didn’t want to be seen as “quitting and running out.”He was replaced by Joe Kuharich, a Notre Dame guard of the 1930s who had been coaching the Washington Redskins. Kuharich never had a winning team in four seasons at Notre Dame.Brennan became an investment banker in Chicago. He never coached football again.Brennan in survived by four sons, Terry, Chris, Joe and Matt; two daughters, Denise Dwyer and Jane Lipton; 25 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren. His wife, Mary Louise, died in 2001.Looking back at his firing, Brennan felt that criticism from Leahy had turned Notre Dame alumni against him. “Psychologically in his mind, if the person who followed him succeeded, somehow that took away from what he did,” Brennan told The South Bend Tribune in 1999. “I had absolutely no use for him.”“It’s a real shame, kind of sad,” Hornung said of Brennan. “He could have been one of the great coaches in Notre Dame history.” More

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      Dicky Maegle Dies at 86; Football Star Remembered for a Bizarre Tackle

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      He’s in the College Football Hall of Fame, but he’s probably best known for the Cotton Bowl game in which an opposing player left the bench to take him down.Dicky Maegle was an all-American running back at Rice University. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. And he was a Pro Bowl defensive back in his first N.F.L. season.But when Rice announced that Maegle had died on Sunday at 86, he was remembered mostly for a single moment: one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of college football, witnessed by some 75,000 fans at the 1954 Cotton Bowl in Dallas and a national television audience.Taking a handoff at Rice’s 5-yard line in the second quarter of its matchup with Alabama, Maegle cut to the right and raced down the sideline. When he passed the Alabama bench while crossing midfield, on his way to a virtually certain touchdown, the Crimson Tide fullback Tommy Lewis interrupted his rest period and, sans helmet, sprang onto the field and leveled Maegle with a blindside block at Alabama’s 42-yard line.The referee ruled that Maegle was entitled to a 95-yard touchdown run. Rice, ranked No. 6 in the nation by The Associated Press, went on to a 28-6 victory over 13th-ranked Alabama.Maegle, a junior that season, also scored on runs of 34 and 79 yards in that Cotton Bowl game and gained 265 yards on 11 carries.Lewis apologized to Maegle at halftime.“I’m too emotional,” he said when the game ended. “When I had him tackled, I jumped up and got back on the bench. I kept telling myself, ‘I didn’t do it.’ But I knew I did.”The following Sunday, Maegle and Lewis were reunited, so to speak, as guests on Ed Sullivan’s popular CBS variety show.“I saw him when he was about a step and a half away from me,” Maegle told The Dallas Morning News in 1995. “I veered to the left, and that helped cushion the blow. If I hadn’t veered away from him, I really think he would have broken both my legs.”Maegle was an all-American as a senior in the 1954 season, when he ran for 905 yards and 11 touchdowns and finished sixth in the balloting for the Heisman Trophy, presented annually to college football’s most outstanding player. The trophy was won that year by the Wisconsin back Alan Ameche (who went on to fame with the Baltimore Colts for scoring the winning touchdown in overtime in the storied 1958 N.F.L. championship game against the New York Giants).The San Francisco 49ers drafted Maegle in the first round of the January 1955 N.F.L. draft. He was a 49er for five seasons, playing mostly at right safety and occasionally as a running back, then concluded his pro career with the 1960 Pittsburgh Steelers and the 1961 Dallas Cowboys. He intercepted 28 passes, running one of them back for a touchdown.He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1979.Maegle (who spelled his surname Moegle at the time), Lewis and other players immediately after one of the strangest plays in college football history. The referee ruled that Maegle was entitled to a 95-yard touchdown run.Rice UniversityRichard Lee Moegle (he later legally changed his surname to reflect its correct pronunciation) was born on Sept. 14, 1934, in Taylor, Texas, about 30 miles northeast of Austin. He played high school football, then received an athletic scholarship to Rice.After leaving football, he pursued real estate interests and managed hotels in Houston.Maegle’s wife, Carol, told The Houston Chronicle that he died at their home in Houston, and that he been in declining health since a fall several months ago. (Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.)Tommy Lewis, who played in the Canadian Football League, coached high school football and worked in insurance in Alabama, died in 2014 at 83.Roy Riegels, the center for the University of California who ran 69 yards the wrong way after picking up a fumble by Georgia Tech in the 1929 Rose Bowl game, leading to Cal’s 8-7 loss and earning the moniker Wrong Way Riegels, watched the Maegle-Lewis drama unfold from his California home.He had advice for Lewis the next day:“Laugh with ’em, that’s all you’ve got to do. What the heck difference does it make? It’s just a football game.”Maegle wasn’t laughing about that Cotton Bowl game as time passed; he believed that the Lewis episode overshadowed his considerable football achievements.“People still just don’t get it,” he remarked some 40 years later. “I led the nation in punt returns. I led the nation in yards per carry. I led the conference in rushing and in scoring. But when people introduce me, all they ever mention is what happened in that game.” More

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      Pentagon Lets Cameron Kinley Delay Service for N.F.L.

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      The former Navy defensive back signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but his request to push back his military commitment was initially denied.In an about-face, the Department of Defense approved the request of cornerback Cameron Kinley to delay his Navy commission so he could play in the N.F.L., concluding a weekslong saga in which Kinley had initially been denied the chance to pursue a pro football career. More

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      Terry Donahue, Who Led U.C.L.A. to Bowl Victories, Dies at 77

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      Over 20 years, he had more wins than any football coach in the school’s history, including seven consecutive bowl championships.Terry Donahue, who became the face of football at U.C.L.A. as a player and coach, staying in the latter position for 20 years and leading the school to seven consecutive bowl-winning seasons in the 1980s, died on Sunday at his home in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 77.The cause was cancer, U.C.L.A. said.Donahue won more games than any other coach in the school’s and the Pac-12 Conference’s history, and he ended his career with a winning record against each of the conference’s teams, including the Bruins’ crosstown rival, the University of Southern California Trojans.Overall, he won 151 of the 233 games he coached, and 98 of those victories were in the Pac-10 (as the conference was known before adding two teams in 2011). His eighth and final win in a bowl came in the 1991 John Hancock Bowl.Donahue’s streak of bowl victories included Rose Bowl wins in ’83, ’84 and ’86. He was the first person to appear in the Rose Bowl as a player, an assistant coach and a coach.On the field, Donahue played in 1966 in U.C.L.A.’s first Rose Bowl victory. The team earned the nickname “Gutty Little Bruins” because nobody on the defensive line weighed more than 225 pounds. Donahue, a walk-on, weighed just 195 pounds.He brought the same overachieving spirit to his tenure as a coach. Some of U.C.L.A.’s best players in the Donahue era, like the future Hall of Famer Jonathan Ogden, came from regions far from California. The famed quarterback Troy Aikman transferred to U.C.L.A. from another college football program.Donahue talking to his quarterback John Barnes in 1992.Otto Greule Jr/Allsport, via Getty ImagesIn an article last year about how Donahue’s successors have not measured up to the standard he set, The Los Angeles Times attributed Donahue’s success to his being “a pioneer in national recruiting,” in part by having a scout “scour the country for talent.” N.F.L. teams chose 14 players from the Donahue era in the first round of professional drafts.In a 2011 interview with The Los Angeles Times, he discussed the level of commitment required to discover and woo young quarterbacks. “You need money, access to an aircraft if possible,” he said. “I went and got players from Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Hawaii, Texas, Oregon.”A news conference where Donahue announced his retirement in 1995 became a spectacle. The Los Angeles Times said that a U.C.L.A. spokesman prepared two news releases in case Donahue changed his mind. As he began to explain his decision, hundreds of reporters and friends “leaned forward at the same instant,” The Times reported.“I can’t believe I’m holding this press conference,” Donahue said. “What are you all doing here?”But he did retire. Twenty-five years later, The Times would write that the U.C.L.A. football program had been “tormented” since Donahue’s departure.Terrence Michael Donahue was born on June 24, 1944, in Los Angeles to Betty (Gantner) Donahue and Bill Donahue, a physician.He was a starting linebacker at his high school in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, but he struggled to establish himself in college, failing to gain a steady position at San Jose State and Los Angeles Valley College before getting a tryout at U.C.L.A. in 1964. He was taken on as a reserve lineman and worked his way up to starter.“Terry didn’t have a lot of ability, but he had a lot of character, high intelligence and seldom made a mistake,” Jerry Long, a former U.C.L.A. line coach, said.Donahue graduated from U.C.L.A. in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in history. He also earned a master’s from the university in kinesiology in 1977.Donahue in 2013. He struggled to accept his own decision to retire as U.C.L.A.’s coach. “I can’t believe I’m holding this press conference,” he said during the announcement. “What are you all doing here?”Stephen Dunn/Getty ImagesHe got his start as a coach by asking a former mentor, Pepper Rodgers, to take him on as an unpaid assistant for the University of Kansas Jayhawks. When Rodgers became head coach at U.C.L.A., Donahue followed him. Rodgers’s successor, Dick Vermeil, left to coach the Philadelphia Eagles in 1976, and Donahue took over, even though he was in his early 30s.After leaving U.C.L.A., he worked in the front office of the San Francisco 49ers from 1999 to 2005.Donahue’s survivors include his wife of 52 years, Andrea (Sogas) Donahue; three daughters, Nicole, Michele and Jennifer; and 10 grandchildren.In 1976, Donahue’s first season coaching U.C.L.A., the Bruins went 9-2-1. An article in Sports Illustrated said he “may be the best young coach in the country.” Known to be relaxed and well tanned, Donahue was asked if he ever felt nervous.“We’re prepared and we’ve worked hard, so there’s nothing to worry about,” he told Sports Illustrated. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go throw up.” More

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      Cheers for Carl Nassib Show a Changing Football Culture

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      Nassib’s coming-out announcement has been met with largely positive responses, a reception other football players who publicly identified as gay, like Dave Kopay, did not experience.A day is coming when this will not make headlines.Dave Kopay, now 78, was the first major team athlete in North America to publicly come out as gay. He did it in 1975, shortly after retiring from the N.F.L., through a newspaper article. Then he bore the brunt for years.“Blackballed from football,” he told me this week. “College and pro. I was an outcast.”Michael Sam, a star lineman at Missouri, came out as gay through interviews with ESPN and The New York Times. It was 2014. He received more support than Kopay did decades earlier but a similar backlash. Despite being one of the best defensive players in college football, he never played in an N.F.L. game.Jake Bain came out while still in high school in 2017. Since he was a star running back, news stories focused on his sexuality, and with them came a mix of care and venom. Bain struggled with depression and quit the game after a year as one of the few openly gay players in college football.On Monday, Las Vegas Raiders defensive lineman Carl Nassib became the first active N.F.L. player to come out. He did it on Instagram, another athlete telling his story in his own way. And he did so with a joy and ease that made me realize just how much the world is changing.“I just want to take a quick moment to say that I am gay,” he said, looking directly into his cellphone’s camera from his home in West Chester, Pa.He would continue for less than a minute, saying he is happy and has supportive family and friends, and pledging $100,000 to the Trevor Project, which offers suicide prevention for L.G.B.T.Q. youth. However brief, it felt like we were watching a man become unburdened, an athlete knowing he was sending his truth to an audience more willing to embrace his message than ever before.The Raiders defensive lineman came out in a video posted on social media and said he would donate $100,000 to the Trevor Project, a nonprofit dedicated to suicide prevention efforts for L.G.B.T.Q. youth.John Bazemore/Associated PressConsider the tone of the responses that have so far followed Nassib’s announcement. The lack of public recrimination and the type of bullying disgust that gay athletes have endured for years.His message has been widely hailed. Kudos came quickly: from the N.F.L. commissioner, from stars across the league, from the Raiders’ owner and from Coach Jon Gruden.With a mix of delight and awe, Kopay watched it all unfold from his apartment in Palm Springs, Calif.“Looking at all of this, seeing the reaction to Carl’s announcement, it gives me a surge of contentment,” he said. “But I have to say, I thought this would happen 40 years ago.”He noted the clutch of retired N.F.L. players who have recently made their sexual identity publicly known, and the large numbers in women’s sports like basketball and tennis. But an active player coming out in the N.F.L., a league still basking in a soup of toxic masculinity and macho posturing? For Kopay, a seeker of true change in sports, that has always been the holy grail.“I thought that when I came out it would not be long before players in the league followed me,” he said. “But I had to wait. Oh, did I have to wait.”Kopay, who was a running back, recalled the 1960s and ’70s, when he lined up for a series of teams in an N.F.L. career that stretched nearly a decade. He didn’t hide his sexuality. Most of his teammates and coaches knew. He remembers that Vince Lombardi, who coached Kopay in Washington, was particularly supportive.But going public? Not a chance.Years later, Sam tried to break that mold. When he told his truth after his final season at Missouri, a profound societal shift was underway. A little over a year later, the Supreme Court would finally make gay marriage legal in the United States.Still, the football world was not ready. On draft night, TV cameras zoomed in as Sam kissed his boyfriend on national television. Cue the bleating anger from some fans, the weak-kneed squeamishness from some retrograde corners of the league.The St. Louis Rams cut Sam in training camp and, despite having been one of the best defenders in college, he was out of football a year after being drafted.Jake Bain knew all about Michael Sam’s story. “What I took from watching that unfold was wariness,” he said.Back then, Bain was entering high school in St. Louis, and already a football sensation in youth leagues. Watching the trouble endured by Sam made Bain, who now identifies as pansexual, feel he should keep quiet about his own sexuality.Still, as time passed and he began confiding in counselors, his confidence and self-understanding grew. He came out during a speech at a school assembly. Soon the story of the gay state champion football star was in the local newspapers, on TV, posted on the internet. Along with support came derision. Opponents peppered him with extra hits and verbal barbs. Protesters from a hate group that calls itself a church showed up at his school, shouting that he was headed for hell.In 2018, the college football prospect Jake Bain came out as gay and went on to play at Indiana State. “I wish I’d had a Carl Nassib to look up to as an example,” he said.A J Mast for The New York TimesBain ended up at Indiana State. He became one of the few openly L.G.B.T.Q. players in Division I football. The team and coaches there were supportive, he said, but as the headlines kept coming about his sexuality so did the pressure and the venomous hatred, especially online.Bain spiraled into depression. He said that after friends found out he was cutting himself, he entered a mental hospital for three days. The experience made him realize that he had to walk away from football. The pressure that sprang from his decision to come out proved too much.“I wish I’d had a Carl Nassib to look up to as an example,” said Bain, now a student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. “But I just missed out. Now we have a player from the N.F.L.” He added, “Just knowing that this is happening is a powerful truth for me and all the young kids out there who dream of playing in the league.”Dave Kopay could not agree more.“To see someone out there like Carl, to know what he will represent to so many, I just can’t get over the emotions,” he said. “His example shows what I have been saying for years to young people: ‘Relax. Just be happy with who you are and don’t be afraid to tell the world. There will be critics, but there will also be love and support. Just make it happen, with no shame, because we are on the right path.’”Indeed, we are.Resistance to change — to full inclusion and equal treatment, no matter one’s sexual or gender identity — is still with us. It still must be fought by anyone who cares deeply for justice.But we’re on the right path.I hope someday soon I won’t be writing about this because it won’t even be news. More