Grantland Rice
Grantland Rice | |
---|---|
Born | Murfreesboro, Tennessee, U.S. | November 1, 1880
Died | July 13, 1954 New York City, U.S. | (aged 73)
Occupation | Sportswriter |
Alma mater | Vanderbilt University |
Spouse |
Fannie Katherine Hollis
(m. 1906) |
Children | Florence Rice |
Henry Grantland Rice (November 1, 1880 – July 13, 1954) was an early 20th-century American
Early years
Rice was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the son of Bolling Hendon Rice, a cotton dealer,[1] and Mary Beulah (née Grantland) Rice.[2] His grandfather Major H. W. Rice was a Confederate veteran of the Civil War.[3]
Rice attended
Sportswriter
In 1907, Rice saw what he would call the greatest thrill he ever witnessed in his years of watching sports during the Sewanee–Vanderbilt football game: the catch by Vanderbilt center Stein Stone, on a double-pass play then thrown near the end zone by Bob Blake to set up the touchdown run by Honus Craig that beat Sewanee at the very end for the SIAA championship.[6] Vanderbilt coach Dan McGugin in Spalding's Football Guide's summation of the season in the SIAA wrote, "The standing. First, Vanderbilt; second, Sewanee, a mighty good second;" and that Aubrey Lanier "came near winning the Vanderbilt game by his brilliant dashes after receiving punts."[7] Rice coached the 1908 Vanderbilt baseball team.
Rice was an advocate for the emerging game of golf in the United States. He became interested in the sport in 1909 while covering the Southern Amateur at the Nashville Golf Club. It was not his first golf event, but it was the one that seemed to pull him toward the game.[8]
After taking early jobs with the
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.[10]
— Grantland Rice, October 18, 1924[10]
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, as 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 of
His sense of honor can be seen in his own actions. Before leaving for service in World 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.[12] Rice then made monthly contributions to the man's widow throughout his life.[13]
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 Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Bobby Jones, Bill Tilden, Red Grange, Babe Didrikson, and Knute Rockne. 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.
Personal life
Rice married Fannie Katherine Hollis on April 11, 1906; they had one child, the actress
Legacy
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 with the
At Vanderbilt, a four-year scholarship named for Rice and former colleague and fellow Vanderbilt alumnus
Rice was mentioned in an I Love Lucy episode entitled "The Camping Trip", and was portrayed by actor Lane Smith, also a native of Tennessee, in The Legend of Bagger Vance. On June 8, 2011, ESPN's Bill Simmons launched a sports and popular culture website titled Grantland, a name intended to honor Rice's legacy.[20] It operated for a little more than four years until being shuttered by ESPN on October 30, 2015, several months after Simmons's departure.[21]
References
- ^ "Obituary Notes", The New York Times. October 9, 1917. Accessed on June 29, 2009.
- ^ a b "Grantland Rice Dies at the Age of 73", The New York Times, July 14, 1954. Accessed on December 27, 2012.
- ^ "Major H.W. Grantland dies", The New York Times, February 18, 1926. Accessed on June 29, 2009.
- ^
- ^ John A. Simpson. The Greatest Game Ever Played In Dixie. p. 27.
- ProQuest 497709192.
- ^ Dan McGugin (1907). "Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association Foot Ball". The Official National Collegiate Athletic Association Football Guide. National Collegiate Athletic Association: 71–75.
- ^ Hardin, Robin (2004). "Crowning the King: Grantland Rice and Bobby Jones". Georgia Historical Quarterly. 88 (4): 511–529. Retrieved 15 February 2018.
- ISBN 9780313262609pp 88–90
- ^ a b Rice, Grantland (October 19, 1924) [Written October 18]. Written at Polo Grounds, New York. "Cadets Prove No Match for Speedy Backs: Miller, Layden, Crowley, and Stuhldreher Form Greatest Backfield". The South Bend Tribune. South Bend, Indiana. Retrieved November 4, 2022.
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.
- ISBN 9780806187327. Retrieved 23 August 2018 – via Google Books.
- ^ Rice, Grantland (January 27, 1955). "War Interrupted Writing Career". Democrat and Chronicle. Rochester, New York. Retrieved February 4, 2017 – via newspapers.com.
- ISBN 978-0826212047.
- ^ "$50,000 Fund Created", The New York Times, May 3, 1951. Accessed on June 29, 2009.
- ^ "Grantland Rice Award Established in Football", The New York Times, August 14, 1954. Accessed on June 29, 2009.
- ^ "Grantland Rice National Championship Trophy". sportswriters.net. Football Writers Association of America. Retrieved September 19, 2021.
- ^ "J. G. Taylor Spink Award Honorees", Baseball Hall of Fame. Accessed on June 30, 2009.
- ^ http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Admissions/Archive02262007/07RussellRice.pdf Archived 2020-05-22 at the Wayback Machine "The Fred Russell–Grantland Rice Sportswriting Scholarship" (PDF), Vanderbilt University. Accessed on June 29, 2009,
- ^ "Vanderbilt Student Media Hall of Fame/ Inductees". vandymedia.org. Vanderbilt Student Communications. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
- ^ ESPN MediaZone (2011). All-Star Roster of Writers and Editors to Join New ESPN Web Site Archived 2011-04-30 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved May 3, 2011.
- ^ "ESPN Statement Regarding Grantland - ESPN MediaZone U.S." Retrieved 23 August 2018.
Further reading
- Fountain, Charles (November 11, 1993). Sportswriter: The Life and Times of Grantland Rice. ISBN 978-0195061765.
- Harper, William (February 25, 1999). How You Played the Game: The Life of Grantland Rice. ISBN 978-0826212047.
- Inabinett, Mark (December 21, 1994). Grantland Rice and His Heroes: The Sportswriter as Mythmaker in the 1920s. ISBN 978-0870498497.
- Rice, Grantland (1954). The Tumult and the Shouting. Phillies Sports Library. ASIN B0007H313Y.
- Rice, Grantland (December 30, 2004). Base-Ball Ballads: Grantland Rice (McFarland Historical Baseball Library). C H Wellington (Illustrator). McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0786420384.
- Rice, Grantland (August 30, 2012). Songs of the Stalwart (Classic Reprint). Forgotten Books. ASIN B0099GNMZG.
- Rice, Grantland (June 14, 2014). Casey's Revenge. Jim Hull (Illustrator). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1499593587.
External links
- Works by or about Grantland Rice at Internet Archive
- Works by Grantland Rice at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- J. G. Taylor Spink Award – 1966 winner
- Alumnus Football by Grantland Rice
- The Answer by Grantland Rice