Sully’s Sports: Bobby Ramos fights to keep the story of John Godbolt alive

The Syracuse 8

By ROB SULLIVAN

If you know Bobby Ramos, you know his passion And Bobby is passionate about many, many things.

A retired Stratford police officer, he was well-known for delivering crime tips on WICC morning radio. He is probably better known for his long running sports talk show “Bobby and the Bird: Sports Talk in Black and White,” also on WICC and co-hosted with John “Bird” Crowe. Bobby is also passionate about the seemingly endless charitable causes he is involved.

He was the local media’s go-to guy when the great Muhammad Ali passed away. Mr. Ramos has been long time devotee of the champ and took a host of local youth to Louisville a few years back to The Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville. So who else would you want to comment on The Champ’s impact other than Bobby Ramos?

Most recently he has championed the memory of the famed “Syracuse 8” and in particular Bassick High School graduate John Godbolt.

The former Lion standout had lettered in baseball, football, basketball and track in high school and earned his ticket to the big time at Syracuse University after growing up in Bridgeport’s Father Panik Village. Godbolt and seven African American teammates were eventually blackballed for protesting the racist team policies of football coach Ben Schwartzwalder. The story of the Syracuse 8 has been told in “Leveling the Playing Field,” by David Marc. The book inspired Bobby Ramos to spread the saga of the Syracuse 8.

Ramos presented two programs about John Godbolt and the Syracuse 8 in Bridgeport in May, at Bassick High School in front of 250 students and at the University of Bridgeport, where the public was invited. Ironically the book was published by Syracuse University Press.

Back to Godbolt.

As a sophomore running back in 1968, Godbolt averaged 4.7 yards per carry for 321 yards on 68 carries and six touchdowns. He also caught seven passes for an average of 9.7 yards per catch. After his performance that year, Godbolt earned comparisons to the legendary Jim Brown, Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis and New Haven’s own Floyd Little. All three were great Syracuse running backs. Brown and Davis are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and Davis died tragically young of leukemia in 1963.

In 1969, Godbolt’s statistics dropped significantly. He carried the ball on 35 times mostly coming off the bench. He scored his only two touchdowns of the season in the one game he started in a 43-7 road win at Wisconsin. Schwartzwalder put him back on the bench the following week despite his standout performance.

Ramos believes that Schwartzwalder was racist and also had it in for Godbolt because he reminded him of Jim Brown. In other words, his coach felt he was cocky.

“Schwartzwalder had a rule that no more than two blacks could play simultaneously on either offense or defense,” said Ramos. “But injury to a white player forced him to use Godbolt extensively against Wisconsin.”

In 1970, Godbolt joined seven other African American players in a boycott of spring practice until their demands were met. The Orangemen who joined Godbolt in the boycott, John Lobon, Greg Allen, Alif Mohammed, Bucky McGill, Duane Walker, Richard Bulls and Dana Harrell became known as the Syracuse 8.

By today’s standards the group’s demands seem perfectly reasonable: access to the same academic tutoring made available to their white teammates; better medical care for all team members; starting assignments based on merit rather than race; and an effort to integrate the coaching staff, which had been all-white since 1898. But Schwartzwalder was having none of it.

In October 2006 Brown told the New York Times, “I was there trying to work it out. I was there to help resolve it. I listened to them and they made all the sense in the world, so I went to Ben and tried to represent the fact that these youngsters were making sense and he should take into consideration what they were doing. Ben had no clue, he had no understanding of what they were doing. He told them they were football players; they weren’t black and all that other stuff, they were football players. He didn’t budge.”

The school's chancellor agreed with his foot ball coach and the eight players football careers were effectively over. For Godbolt it was a blow from which he would never recover.

According to his teammates Godbolt became withdrawn, hardly communicating and sitting in his room with his shades drawn. After he left Syracuse he vanished from his teammates lives and also disappeared from society, perhaps dreaming of what might have been. Ramos theorized that he may have had undiagnosed clinical depression, a term that wasn't on anyone's radar charts in 1970.

The good news is the Syracuse 8 received justice in 2006. Chancellor Nancy Cantor arranged for the "8" to be recognized at halftime of the Syracuse/Louisville game and presented with letterman’s jackets. They were also awarded the university’s Chancellor’s Medal for Extraordinary Courage and received a formal apology from the university.

The tragic news is that Godbolt was not there. His teammates received word that he died about three months prior to the ceremony in the Miami, Florida area. No one knows how he died or what he was doing in Miami. All anyone knows for sure is that he took his dreams with him to the grave.