18 Facts About Grantland Rice

Henry Grantland Rice was an American sportswriter known for his elegant prose.

Grantland Rice's writing was published in newspapers around the country and broadcast on the radio.

Grantland Rice attended Montgomery Bell Academy and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, 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.

Grantland Rice was an advocate for the emerging game of golf in the United States.

Grantland Rice became interested in the sport in 1909 while covering the Southern Amateur at the Nashville Golf Club.

The job at the Tennessean was given to him by former Sewanee Tigers coach Billy Suter, who coached baseball teams against which Grantland Rice played while at Vanderbilt.

Grantland Rice provided monthly Grantland Rice Sportlights as part of Paramount newsreels from 1925 to 1954.

Grantland Rice 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.

Grantland Rice became even better known after his columns were nationally syndicated beginning in 1930, and became known as the "Dean of American Sports Writers".

On his return from the war, Grantland Rice discovered that his friend had lost all the money in bad investments, and then had committed suicide.

Grantland Rice accepted the blame for putting "that much temptation" in his friend's way.

Grantland Rice then made monthly contributions to the man's widow throughout his life.

Unlike many writers of his era, Grantland Rice defended the right of football players such as Grange, and tennis players such as Tilden, to make a living as professionals, but he decried the warping influence of big money in sports, once writing in his column:.

Grantland Rice married Fannie Katherine Hollis on April 11,1906; they had one child, the actress Florence Grantland Rice.

Grantland Rice died at the age 73 on July 13,1954, following a stroke.

Grantland Rice is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City.

The press box in Vanderbilt Stadium at Vanderbilt University is dedicated to Grantland Rice and named after Grantland Rice's protege, Fred Russell.

Grantland Rice was mentioned in an I Love Lucy episode entitled "The Camping Trip", and was portrayed by actor Lane Smith, a native of Tennessee, in The Legend of Bagger Vance.