A coat drive spearheaded by the Mississippi State University athletics department netted thousands of coats and jackets to help those affected by Hurricane Katrina cope with winter weather.

As part of the MSU Warms the Coast coat drive, the Mississippi State athletics department in about two months collected more than 6,000 coats and jackets that were directed to the Gulf Coast region.

Mississippi State Athletics Director Larry Templeton and head football coach Sylvester Croom led the effort initially meant to help children but was expanded to adults as donations mounted. In addition to gathering items at two home football games, Templeton also asked fellow Division I ADs for help.

“The next thing I know, coats started coming by the cases,” he said.

More than 80 schools responded to Templeton’s invitation to participate in the drive. The donations were delivered to schools, community organizations and regional distribution centers.

Book chronicles Garrett’s groundbreaking career

The late Bill Garrett, the former Indiana University, Bloomington, all-American student-athlete who broke the Big Ten Conference color barrier in basketball in the late 1940s, is the subject of a Simon & Schuster book to be released next month.

In “Getting Open: The Unknown Story of Bill Garrett and the Integration of College Basketball,” father-daughter co-authors Tom Graham and Rachel Graham Cody record the story of Garrett, who broke the gentlemen’s agreement among Big Ten basketball coaches to refrain from recruiting African-American players when he earned a spot on Indiana’s basketball squad in 1947. Garrett was forced to walk on, but he went on to become an all-American center for the Hoosiers and open the door to the integration of the conference and the Midwest.

The book not only chronicles Garrett’s journey and his effect on the integration of college basketball, but it also reveals just how difficult change was to accomplish during that era.

One of three black starters for the 1947 Shelbyville (Indiana) High School state championship team from a town that — like much of the country at the time —  was still segregated, Garrett went largely unrecruited out of high school. The 1947 Mr. Basketball for the state of Indiana had planned to attend Tennessee State University. However, with assists from the leader of the largest black YMCA in the world at the time, which was located in Indianapolis, and the president of Indiana, Garrett ended up as a  Hoosier from 1947 to 1951.

“Bill Garrett is a perfect example of the forgotten people who made advances before the civil-rights movement,” said Graham. “Before the civil-rights movement coalesced into an organization, there were individuals who were making breakthroughs and, in doing so, were paying heavy prices for it. Bill Garrett is an example of such a person.”

Garrett was 45 when he died of a heart attack.

A private reception to promote the book and to celebrate Black History Month will be held February 28 at the NCAA Hall of Champions in Indianapolis.

Eastern Illinois boasts NFL coaching credentials

What do Sean Payton, Mike Shanahan and Brad Childress have in common besides being head coaches for the NFL’s New Orleans Saints, Denver Broncos and Minnesota Vikings?

Those three, along with New York Jets offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger and Cleveland Browns defensive line coach Randy Melvin, come from the same football program at Eastern Illinois University.

Payton was an all-American quarterback for the Panthers in the mid-1980s and still holds 11 school passing records. Shanahan, also a quarterback for the program in the early 1970s, was offensive coordinator for the school’s 1978 NCAA Division II national championship team. Childress was a 1988 graduate of Eastern Illinois, while three-time baseball letter-winner Heimerdinger still holds the school record for career stolen bases. Panthers all-American defensive lineman Melvin was a member of the 1978 national-championship squad.