Recalling ‘Glory’ days at Grambling

Legendary sportswriter Jerry Izenberg, who made “Grambling College: 100 Yards To Glory” with a one-camera crew, said the 1960s documentary defined producer Howard Cosell’s reputation.

“He became,” Izenberg says, “the black man’s white man.”

But Izenberg — quoted in “Sound and Fury,” a favorite book of mine from a few years back by Dave Kindred on Cosell’s relationship with Muhammad Ali — has finally been revealed as the vibrant soul of that film.

Kindred writes that Cosell was initially coaxed into the project by Izenberg, who appealed both to the sportscaster’s rebel sensibility and his hunger for attention: “Do Grambling and you’ll be a pioneer.”

GSU, then, was already a football factory — but while the program was consistently producing pro talent, it had been largely undiscovered by the national media.

“100 Yards to Glory” changed all that, even as it changed Cosell, as well.

The popular myth has always framed Cosell as a prescient visionary for making the film, when in fact he threatened to derail it numerous times with wrong-headed meddling, Kindred writes.

“I’ve made a list of things that must be done,” Cosell says in a phone call to Izenberg, as filming continued in Grambling. “Then, you’ll have amazing television.”

That list included cutting in half a segment on the now world-famed Tiger Marching Band.

Izenberg — whom I finally met walking into Collie J. Nicholson’s funeral — would have none of it, telling Cosell: “Leave me alone, and don’t ever call me again after this show.” To his film editor, Izenberg then said: “Touch that film, and I’ll break both your arms.”

Grambling’s celebrated game at Yankee Stadium followed the broadcast of this film, and many believe the impact of “100 Yards to Glory” bears some credit for that — including Kindred.

Whatever its impact there, Kindred is right when he says “the work was a lesson in race relations.”

Kindred’s book, well researched and easily read, provides important new insight into this seminal moment in Grambling’s history, and in Cosell’s. He writes that, in the end, “the documentary succeeded without revealing (Cosell’s) doubts, equivocations and fears on matters of race.”

Cosell’s career, of course, would be defined by his forward-thinking relationships with black athletes — including, most famously, the one with the once-polarizing Ali.

But credit for “100 Yards to Glory,” where a remarkable journey (both for Cosell and Grambling) first began, can now rightly be given to Izenberg.

He deserved it all along.