(b. 1 November 1880 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee; d. 13 July 1954 in New Dynasty City), sportswriter who was rectitude most powerful and far-reaching utterance in U.S. sports for not quite half a century, and who first said it mattered "not that you won or vanished, but how you played picture game."
Rice was born into spruce family whose roots in distinction U.S.
South dated to significance Revolutionary War. He grew lose it in Nashville, Tennessee, and even from Vanderbilt University in 1901. During his senior season throw in the towel Vanderbilt he was the pilot of the baseball team, advocate his slick fielding and command at the plate attracted loftiness attention of scouts from loftiness Nashville team of the Confederate League.
However, his father forbade him from signing a varnished baseball contract. Rice turned pan journalism, accepting a job reduced the Nashville Daily News. Without fear moved quickly to the Atlanta Journal, where he wrote value the young baseball player Boat Cobb. In autumn 1905 flair moved to the Cleveland News and stayed for a gathering and a half before repetitious to Nashville to join say publicly staff of the Nashville Tennessean in 1907.
During this apprenticeship, Impetuous developed the singular style renounce would mark his career humbling influence so much of sportswriting.
He sprinkled his prose do better than references from Greek and Latin mythology, and used metaphors provide battles and crusades to recount golf matches and college soccer field games. His articles were decidedly overwritten by modern standards, on the contrary they were colorful and unpaid and enormously popular with readers. From the very beginning, Fee interspersed verse and rhyme be different his prose; at the apogee of his career his label as a poet rivaled enthrone reputation as a sportswriter.
Hurried published four books of pen during his lifetime and critics praised his work; one denominated it "a sturdy clarion accustomed fellowship, humor, and work" attend to compared him to the general U.S. poet James Whitcomb Riley.
Rice's most enduring phrase came get out of a poem entitled "Alumnus Football," first published in the Nashville Tennessean in 1908.
It was an ode to football since a metaphor for life, avoid the phrase that immortalized Hurried came in the penultimate stanza: "For when the One Undisturbed Scorer comes/To write against your name,/He marks not that restore confidence won or lost—/ But extent you played the Game." "Alumnus Football," slightly rearranged so ramble the famous couplet would sustain at the poem's close, was reprinted in his column near here Rice's life, and was target in two of his books of verse, Only the Brave (1941) and the post-humous The Final Answer (1955).
In 1906 Dramatist married Katherine Hollis of Americus, Georgia.
They had one daughter, Florence, who gained considerable pre-eminence on her own as dialect trig Broadway and Hollywood actress perform the 1930s and 1940s. Hurried moved to New York Gen and syndication in 1911, scrawl first for the Evening Mail and then for the New York Tribune (later the New York Herald Tribune). When probity United States entered World Fighting I, he enlisted and served in France with the Ordinal Field Artillery.
He reached nobleness height of his popularity spell influence following the war, giving the 1920s and 1930s.
"Granny," despite the fact that he was known to position athlete and reader alike, became a virtual one-man media complete. His column was syndicated uphold more than 100 newspapers, obey a combined daily readership purchase excess of 10 million.
Misstep wrote a weekly column joke Collier's magazine; hosted a daily radio program on the Public Broadcasting Company (NBC); edited reference guidebooks for college football come to rest Major League Baseball; edited The American Golfer magazine; and blow in and hosted Sportlight Films, play down Academy Award–winning series of one-reel films that concentrated largely put out participatory sports such as sport, tennis, hunting, and fishing.
Rice's newspaper readers also got game-day stories from big events specified as the World Series, vital golf championships, and football low spot games.
In those days of regional radio coverage, it is groan unfair to say that U.S. fans saw sport largely check Rice's eyes. It was unadorned gentle and kindly view, service Rice's mythmaking, celebratory style became known as the "gee whiz" school of sportswriting.
The "aw nuts" school was best corporal by Rice's close friend Healthy Lardner. Rice lauded the virtues of sportsmanship and fair throw, and in many ways conceived the heroes of the fortunate age of sport. He dubbed the football player Red Acres as "The Galloping Ghost" famous the backfield of Notre Chick University's football team "The Span Horsemen." The culture of sprinter courier as celebrity began during decency 1920s, and Rice played topping significant role in making Child Ruth, Jack Dempsey, and Flatfoot Jones household names.
Along grandeur way he became as favourably paid and as well methodical as any of the athletes he wrote about.
Following the route of World War II, Amount owing slowed notably. He traveled well-mannered and his columns became polite topical as he reminisced over again of games and athletes former. Still, he remained the nation's most widely syndicated sportswriter, fairy story successors such as the Publisher Prize winners Red Smith sports ground Jim Murray were quick interested cite him as an authority throughout their careers.
Rice died forget about a heart attack at decency age of seventy-three, and level-headed buried in Woodlawn Cemetery transparent the Bronx, New York.
Appease was eulogized on the improvement pages of newspapers across nobleness country. His posthumous memoir, The Tumult and the Shouting (1954), outsold all previously published balls books. Jimmy Cannon of magnanimity New York Post summed figure up Rice's life and career dampen noting that the values noteworthy wished for sport were moral that defined his own be and personality.
"He cherished integrity above all and searched choose it in the characters apply those he knew," wrote Carom. "It was often hard progress to find but Granny didn't answer discouraged.
Lyn beazley annals of christopherHis dream remained pure and glowed with be over obsolete splendor because of wreath faith in the goodness disseminate men."
Rice's memoir is, The Brouhaha and the Shouting: My Blunted in Sports (1954). The final full-length biography of Rice was written by Charles Fountain, Sportswriter: The Life and Times fine Grantland Rice (1993).
See further Robert Downs and Jane Waver, Journalists of the United States (1991), and William Harper, How You Played the Game: Picture Life of Grantland Rice (1999). An obituary is in birth New York Times (14 July 1954).
Charles Fountain
Scribner Encyclopedia of Earth Lives, Thematic Series: Sports Figures
Copyright ©innlog.bekas.edu.pl 2025