Leveling the Playing Field: The Story of the Syracuse 8 by David Marc (review)

In this engaging book, David Marc focuses new attention on an important, but sometimes overlooked, episode in the history of college football and race relations. In April 1970, a group of African American football players at Syracuse University boycotted spring practice to protest the racial policies of their beloved and powerful coach Ben Schwartzwalder. The protestors demanded better academic advising, the chance to compete fairly for positions and playing time, competent medical care, and, most emphatically, an African American assistant coach. Schwartzwalder reacted sternly, dismissing the protestors from the team and then sabotaging efforts by Syracuse chancellor John Corbally to find a compromise allowing them to return. The program’s white players staged a counterboycott to support their coach, while alumni, fans, and the press rallied to Schwartzwalder’s side. Despite support from the New York State Human Rights Commission and an internal university report that found “real, chronic” racism in Schwartzwalder’s program, none of the eight—five of whom had been starters—ever played for Syracuse again. The coach’s apparent victory, however, actually signaled his program’s inability to adapt to changing times. Schwartz-walder’s final teams, overwhelmingly white, declined competitively, and he retired after a dismal two-victory campaign in 1973.

The book is divided into two parts. The first provides a narrative history of the black athlete at Syracuse, culminating in the 1970 boycott and its aftermath. The second, and most intriguing, section contains interviews with seven African American athletes involved in the protests: Gregory Allen, Ronald J. Womack, Dana Jon “D. J.” Harrell, Clarence “Bucky” McGill, Abdullah Alif Muhammad, John Lobon, and Duane “Spoon” Walker. These edited first-person narratives are the most powerful sections of the book and are valuable primary sources. Taken together, they present a damning picture of Schwartzwalder and the racism endemic to the Syracuse football program in 1970.

The story’s central tension revolves around Schwartzwalder’s reputation as an early champion of racial inclusion and his handling of the 1970 player revolt. How could a man who coached Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Floyd Little, and other black athletes much earlier than his peers, react so callously to demands that soon became accepted norms in college football? Marc suggests that the answer stems from larger racial and generational conflicts prevalent in the period. A product of the egalitarian Depression and World War II eras, Schwartzwalder thrived in the 1950s and early 1960s when teams at progressive northern schools accepted a small quota of exceptional black athletes and capitalized on their talents. By 1970, however, with desegregation advancing rapidly and a growing number of assertive black players in his program, the coach, now in his sixties, clung to the authoritarian coaching style and racial prejudices of a bygone era.

The book needs a more focused chronology of the controversy. Further, it falls short of connecting events at Syracuse to larger currents of racial change in college football during this period. Marc characterizes the Syracuse revolt as growing out of the increasing black athletic consciousness of the time symbolized by the Olympic boycott movement of 1968. He also briefly discusses the suspension of the “Black 14” at the University of Wyoming in 1969, but he fails to address other incidents of racial unrest that rocked major football programs at Oregon State University, the University of Iowa, Indiana University, and the University of Washington beginning in 1969. On these campuses, black athletes staged similar protests, articulated parallel demands, and faced the wrath of equally powerful coaches. Situating the Syracuse 8—the last of these Black Power–era player revolts—within this broader context would better highlight their historical importance. As black athletes transformed the game on the field, they rendered the attitudes exhibited by coaches like Schwartzwalder obsolete.

Published the same year a boycott by African American football players shook the University of Missouri, Marc’s study provides a...