A statue honoring Johnny Bright is set to be unveiled at Drake University, celebrating the legacy of the Bulldogs’ standout running back. (Photo: Jane Burns) By Jane Burns But for one horrific punch in the face, a Drake Bulldog might have won a Heisman Trophy many years ago. Instead, the player be came a beloved educator and had a two-year college named in his honor. At 11:30 a.m. Friday, Drake officials plan to unveil a statue to honor Johnny Bright, the man who was a legend on the football field and in education. At the southeast corner of Drake Stadium, near 27th Street and Forest Avenue, a nearly 7-foot bronze statue will celebrate the athlete Bright was and the educator he became. The previous evening, at 7:30 Thursday, the Varsity Cinema will screen the 2022 documentary, “The Bright Path: The Johnny Bright Story.” (Admission is free, but tickets are required. To reserve one, email Tim Tesar at [email protected].) For many, Bright’s story centers on an infamous play that derailed Bright’s phenomenal senior college season of 1951. A punch in the face, alleged to be racially motivated, was captured in a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning photos in the Des Moines Register. But the story didn’t end there. “The reason why Johnny Bright’s name is on our two-year college at Drake is not because of who he was as a football player,” Drake Athletic Director Brian Hardin said. “The reason he’s been honored in Canada is not because of what he did in the Canadian Football League. And that’s part of why I want to make sure that our student athletes and others know that you’re not defined by just being an athlete.” Hardin and other university leaders hope the new statue will elevate the lesser-known parts of Bright’s remarkable life, which ended in 1980. He was 53 when we suffered a fatal heart attack during knee surgery for injuries related to his football career. Bright came to Drake on a basketball and track scholarship and joined the football team. Playing halfback and quarterback, he led the nation in total yards his sophomore and junior years. He was one of the first Black college football players to rise to national prominence and entered his senior season as a top contender for the Heisman, which honors the best player in college football. This 1951 Des Moines Sunday Register headline and Pulitzer Prize-winning photos captured the day Drake legend Johnny Bright suffered a broken jaw during a game against Oklahoma AM. (Photo: Des Moines Register/Drake University Archives and Special Collections) On Oct. 20, 1951, Drake traveled to Stillwater, Oklahoma, to play Oklahoma AM (now Oklahoma State). The Oklahoma AM student newspaper and the local newspaper reported that there had been conversations about how the team would be targeting Bright. That they did. On Drake’s first possession of the game, Bright handed the ball off to a teammate and lingered in the backfield away from the action. Oklahoma AM’s Wilbanks Smith went after him anyway, running through the line and punching Bright in the face. Bright got up and threw a 61-yard touchdown on the next play. It was one of three punches Bright took, and he was knocked unconscious three times in the first 7 minutes of the game. Football players’ helmets did not have faceguards then, so a player’s face was an easy target. “There’s no way it couldn’t have been racially motivated,” Bright told the Des Moines Register in 1980. Two Register photographers, Don Ultang and John Robinson, were at the game. Their photos of that brutal first punch won a Pulitzer Prize. That first punch broke Bright’s jaw and his football season was over. But his story was not. Bright eschewed the NFL to play in the Canadian Football League. His football success continued and while playing primarily for the CFL team in Edmonton, Bright became a Hall of Famer. Then he set out to do what he had come to Drake to do in the first place: teach. “The thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that he was an education major at Drake in the School of Education,” said Megan Brown, dean of the John Dee Bright College at Drake. “He had a lifelong ambition to teach and give back to his community that way.” In 2020, Drake established Bright College to offer two-year associate degrees in an interdisciplinary program. It wasn’t the first thing to be named after Bright. After his pro football career ended, Bright stayed in Edmonton, where he became a teacher, a coach and a junior high school principal. The city is now home to a Johnny Bright School for grades K-9, as well as a Johnny Bright Park. Bright serves as an example of resilience for the students at his namesake college, Brown said. Many come from various racial, socio-economic, gender and age backgrounds and have overcome great odds to come to college. “What I’ve heard about [Bright] from his family, from people who did know him and from people who have researched his life, it seems he would really approve of the kind of work we’re doing,” Brown said. Hardin hopes the statue will remind anyone who passes by it about Bright and his resilience. “Johnny never allowed football or any situation to define him,” Hardin said. “And my hope, our hope, is that this statue will allow folks to understand who he was, appreciate who he was and maybe draw inspiration from it to take in their own life.” ...read more read less