Jump to content
 







Main menu
   


Navigation  



Main page
Contents
Current events
Random article
About Wikipedia
Contact us
Donate
 




Contribute  



Help
Learn to edit
Community portal
Recent changes
Upload file
 








Search  

































Create account

Log in
 









Create account
 Log in
 




Pages for logged out editors learn more  



Contributions
Talk
 



















Contents

   



(Top)
 


1 Early life and education  





2 Sportswriter  





3 Personal life  





4 Legacy  





5 References  





6 Further reading  





7 External links  














Grantland Rice






العربية
Deutsch
Français
مصرى
Polski
Simple English
 

Edit links
 









Article
Talk
 

















Read
Edit
View history
 








Tools
   


Actions  



Read
Edit
View history
 




General  



What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Cite this page
Get shortened URL
Download QR code
Wikidata item
 




Print/export  



Download as PDF
Printable version
 




In other projects  



Wikimedia Commons
Wikisource
 
















Appearance
   

 






From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 


Grantland Rice
Rice on telephone and microphone, c. 1920
Rice on telephone and microphone, c. 1920
Born(1880-11-01)November 1, 1880
Murfreesboro, Tennessee, U.S.
DiedJuly 13, 1954(1954-07-13) (aged 73)
New York City, U.S.
OccupationSportswriter
Alma materVanderbilt University
Spouse

Fannie Katherine Hollis

(m. 1906)
ChildrenFlorence Rice

Henry Grantland Rice (November 1, 1880 – July 13, 1954) was an early 20th-century American sportswriter known for his elegant prose. His writing was published in newspapers around the country and broadcast on the radio.

Early life and education[edit]

Rice at Vanderbilt University in 1901

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 Montgomery Bell Academy and Vanderbilt UniversityinNashville, where he was a member of the football team for three years, a shortstop on the baseball team, a brother in the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and graduated with a BA degree in 1901 in classics.[4] On the football team, he lettered in the year of 1899 as an end and averaged two injuries a year. On the baseball team, he was captain in 1901.[4][5]

Sportswriter[edit]

Grantland Rice's Sportlights ad in Exhibitor's Trade Review (Nov 1924–Feb 1925)

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 zonebyBob 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 McGugininSpalding'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.

Cartoon by Grantland Rice & Jay Norwood "Ding" Darling in the New York Tribune of September 28, 1919

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 Atlanta Journal and the Cleveland News, he later became a sportswriter for the Nashville Tennessean. The job at the Tennessean was given to him by former Sewanee Tigers coach Billy Suter, who coached baseball teams against which Rice played while at Vanderbilt. Afterwards he obtained a series of prestigious jobs with major newspapers in the northeastern United States. In 1914 he began his Sportlight column in the New York Tribune. He also provided monthly Grantland Rice Sportlights as part of Paramount newsreels from 1925 to 1954.[9] He is best known for being the successor to Walter Camp in the selection of College Football All-America Teams beginning in 1925, and for being the writer who dubbed the great backfield of the 1924 Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team the "Four Horsemen" of Notre Dame. A Biblical reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, this famous account was published in the New York Herald Tribune on October 18, describing the Notre Dame vs. Army game played at the Polo Grounds in New York City:

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]
Grantland Rice Sportlights ad in Motion Picture News, 1926

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 demigods. He became even better known after his columns were nationally syndicated beginning in 1930, and became known as the "Dean of American Sports Writers". He and his writing are among the reasons that the 1920s in the United States are sometimes referred to as the "Golden Age of Sports". Rice's all-time All-America backfield was Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, Ken Strong, and Ernie Nevers.[11]

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[edit]

The grave of Grantland Rice in Woodlawn Cemetery

Rice married Fannie Katherine Hollis on April 11, 1906; they had one child, the actress Florence Rice. Rice died at the age 73 on July 13, 1954, following a stroke.[2] He is interred at Woodlawn Cemeteryinthe Bronx, New York City.

Legacy[edit]

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 New York Community Trust.[14] In 1954, the Football Writers Association of America established the Grantland Rice Trophy, an annual award presented (from 1954 to 2013) to the college football team recognized by the FWAA as the National Champions.[15][16] The Grantland Rice Bowl, an annual college football bowl game held from 1964 to 1977, was named in his honor, as was the Grantland Rice Award given to the winner. Rice was posthumously awarded the 1966 J. G. Taylor Spink Award by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. The award, presented the following year at the annual induction ceremony at the Baseball Hall of Fame, is given for "meritorious contributions to baseball writing".[17]

At Vanderbilt, a four-year scholarship named for Rice and former colleague and fellow Vanderbilt alumnus Fred Russell is awarded each year to an incoming first-year student who intends to pursue a career in sportswriting. Recipients of the Fred Russell–Grantland Rice Sportswriting Scholarship include author and humorist Roy Blount, Jr.; Skip BaylessofFox Sports[18] and New York Times best-selling author, Andrew Maraniss.[19] The press boxinVanderbilt StadiumatVanderbilt University is dedicated to Rice and named after Rice's protégé, Fred Russell. For many years, a portion of one floor of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism was designated the "Grantland Rice Suite". Grantland Avenue in his hometown of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was named in his honor.

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[edit]

  1. ^ "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.
  • ^ a b Sideliner (March 1920). "Athlete, Soldier and Writer". Outing:Sport, Adventure, Travel, Fiction. 75 (6). Retrieved April 23, 2015 – via Google books. Open access icon
  • ^ John A. Simpson. The Greatest Game Ever Played In Dixie. p. 27.
  • ^ "Grantland Rice Tells Of Greatest Thrill In Years Of Watching Sport". Boston Daily Globe. April 27, 1924. 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.
  • ^ Porter, David L. (1988) Biographical Dictionary of American Sports: Outdoor Sports, Greenwood Press ISBN 9780313262609 pp 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.
  • ^ Wheeler, Robert W. (28 November 2012). Jim Thorpe: World's Greatest Athlete. University of Oklahoma Press. 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.
  • ^ Harper, William (February 25, 1999). How You Played the Game: The Life of Grantland Rice. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. p. 245. 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. Archived from the original on May 16, 2008. Retrieved September 19, 2021.
  • ^ "J. G. Taylor Spink Award Honorees" Archived 2009-04-13 at the Wayback Machine, 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." Archived from the original on 2 November 2019. Retrieved 23 August 2018.
  • Further reading[edit]

    External links[edit]


    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grantland_Rice&oldid=1229676062"

    Categories: 
    1880 births
    1954 deaths
    United States Army personnel of World War I
    Major League Baseball broadcasters
    New York Herald Tribune people
    Vanderbilt Commodores football players
    Vanderbilt Commodores baseball players
    Vanderbilt Commodores baseball coaches
    BBWAA Career Excellence Award recipients
    People from Murfreesboro, Tennessee
    Sportswriters from Tennessee
    Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York)
    Sportswriters from New York (state)
    Vanderbilt University alumni
    Military personnel from Tennessee
    Hidden categories: 
    CS1 location test
    Webarchive template wayback links
    Articles with short description
    Short description is different from Wikidata
    Commons category link from Wikidata
    Articles with Internet Archive links
    Articles with LibriVox links
    Articles with FAST identifiers
    Articles with ISNI identifiers
    Articles with VIAF identifiers
    Articles with WorldCat Entities identifiers
    Articles with KBR identifiers
    Articles with LCCN identifiers
    Articles with Trove identifiers
    Articles with SNAC-ID identifiers
    Articles with SUDOC identifiers
     



    This page was last edited on 18 June 2024, at 03:22 (UTC).

    Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.



    Privacy policy

    About Wikipedia

    Disclaimers

    Contact Wikipedia

    Code of Conduct

    Developers

    Statistics

    Cookie statement

    Mobile view



    Wikimedia Foundation
    Powered by MediaWiki