I was given and just finished reading Walk On: My Reluctant Journey to Integration, Thomas Gossom's account of his time at Auburn.
For those without the historical base, Gossom was one of the first blacks to play on the Auburn football team and the first black athlete to graduate. The book give a season-by-season retrospective of the challenges he faced and the difficulties experienced as he and a handful of others helped foster massive societal change. He was part of two pretty entertaining teams: The 1972 Amazins and a 1974 team that beat Bama and Bahr were it not for an official that didn't even have a view of the play calling back a touchdown.
The play is below. The Bama defender knew he was beaten and launched himself at Gossom (interference) hitting him near the sideline. I saw this from every angle available live. Gossom highstepped and leg whipped out of the hit. He did not go out of bounds. The ref trailing the play, on the sidelines, watched it and made no call. The flag? It came from the far side of the field from a referee whose view of the play was blocked by numerous players and who could not have seen Gossom's feet. It was a life changing moment. It would have broken up the nine-game streak, it would have kept Bama from playing Notre Dame (and losing) for the national title. But I digress...
Back to the book. Unfortunately, it's not very good. I've heard Gossom is a good speaker. He's done a little acting. I actually and coincidentally ran across him battling the black winged whatzit in Jeepers Creepers 2 today.
His writing, though, is very dry, very leaden, very bland, very stale. It's too staccato, too matter-of-fact.
For instance when he could have said something like: It had already gotten dark when Henry and I returned to the athletic dorm, so we decided to sneak out and head up the road to Tuskeegee where the girls were numerous and fun. He'd say: It was dark, so Henry and I went to Tuskeegee to look for girls. The book was also replete with grammatical errors and words that didn't fit. Example: After a great play, he grinned and gave me some skin came out as After a great play, he grinned and game me some skin... I ran across that kind of thing in numerous places.
Considering the emotional turmoil of that time, he could have written an emotionally powerful book that contrasted his reality to that of others. Instead he essentially just talked about people using the "n-word" (he didn't even have the intellectual honesty to use the term, how there weren't many blacks at Auburn to socialize with,which of his girlfriends were good at the sex, how he had to shave and get haircuts and how Shug never really related to the players. It didn't resonate and I wanted it to be so much more.
Gossom and Sedrick McIntyre were some of my favorite players when I was a kid. Reading this book gave me the same kind of "I sorta wish I hadn't" feeling I got out of reading the autobios of Ace Frehley and Peter Criss.
Auburn gets cheated by Bama refs:
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