By Steve Grinczel, MSUSpartans.com Online Columnist | @GrinzOnGreen Carl "Buck" Nystrom didn't know it at the time, but from 1951-56 he was being groomed as an emissary for Michigan State football of the future. Today, the member of MSU's newest Hall of Fame class is an ambassador for the Spartans' storied past.
Nystrom joined MSU as a walk-on from Marquette Graveraet High School, where he was an all-state fullback. As red-shirt sophomore in '53, he was a backup offensive guard on legendary coach Biggie Munn's seventh, and last, Spartan team. In Michigan State's Big Ten debut season, it extended a win streak spanning four years to 28 games, finished with a 9-1 record, captured a co-conference championship and beat UCLA, 28-20, in the Rose Bowl. "I was playing maybe 10-15 minutes per game, behind a couple of guys at the guard position," Nystrom said from his Upper Peninsula home. The following season, Nystrom's position coach, Duffy Daugherty, succeeded Munn, who moved into the athletic director's office. Michigan State struggled to a 3-6 record and 1-5 league finish, but something special was in the East Lansing air. "In '54, I was No. 2 behind a kid named Ferris Hallmark, who was a senior," Nystrom said. "He hurt his knee in the Iowa (season-opening) game and I jumped up into that position, had my first start against Wisconsin and from there on I was first-unit player.
We had a little bit of rough time in Duffy's first season as coach, but at the end of the fall term we always elected our captains for the following year and I got elected by my teammates." In '55, Nystrom helped MSU again beat UCLA in the Rose Bowl, 17-14, finish 9-1 and win its third national championship. "We only had 13-15 seniors, but they were all good players and we really turned the program around from the previous year," he said. "I was very fortunate to not only have a great season along with my teammates, but I made All-American and Academic All-American and was voted Most Valuable Player by my teammates. So everything just fell into place for me to have an opportunity to be earmarked for this honor, but we had a lot of players in the '50s that could be in this Hall of Fame." A middle guard on defense, Nystrom played all 60 minutes in the 21-7 victory over No. 4 Notre Dame ("I was unbelievably tired," he said in a previous interview with The Marquette Mining Journal).
Daugherty called him the best guard he ever coached and he was the first Spartan to earn All-America and Academic All-America accolades. "Good things happened to me, but you've got to remember, the '50s and '60s were probably the highlight of Michigan State football," he said. "When between Biggie and Duffy you win six national championships, a couple of Big Tens, some Rose Bowls and have a winning streak that's never been duplicated at Michigan State, my era of football was outstanding."
One of the best parts of being inducted into the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame, Nystrom said, is the chance to keep his teammates and those teams relevant with contemporary fans. "There's no question about it," Nystrom said. "I think the university has done a good job to consistently pinpoint those successes we had. Every once in a while they'll bring some of our players to the forefront and highlight those decades by talking about them and what a tremendous impact football had on the university and what it has become." The Washington Redskins selected Nystrom in the 30th round of the 1956 draft. However, he passed up a chance to play in the NFL because he considered himself too small, at 5-foot-10, 194 pounds, to play professionally. So he embarked on a 58-year high-school and collegiate offensive line coaching career that included three stints at MSU (in '58 as the freshman team coach and in '72 under Daugherty, and from '83-86 with then head coach George Perles).
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In addition to being part of three national championships as a player - he pointed out that he was ineligible as a true freshman on MSU's 9-0 team in '51 under NCAA rules of the day and was a redshirted backup on the undefeated '52 team - and three as an assistant coach (Division II with North Dakota State in '65 and Northern Michigan in '75, and Division I with Oklahoma in '68). Eight years before he died in 2013, former Oklahoma head coach Chuck Fairbanks, Nystrom's former MSU teammate, told the Mining Journal: "He's the greatest line coach who ever coached in high school or college football, without question or exception. He's just so special. There's no one better in his ability to teach young players how to play. He's the unqualified best. He never lost his passion to coach kids." Throughout his career, Nystrom has employed principles and techniques he first learned at Michigan State, and still does when volunteering his retirement time with Marquette-area high school teams and running his four offensive line camp each summer. And so, when Nystrom called MSU head coach
Mark Dantonio the week of the Oregon game, it was the closest Dantonio could have come to having a conversation with his revered predecessors, Biggie Munn and Duffy Daugherty. "I wished him the best of luck, and then we got to talking about football and I told him how well I thought Michigan State looked the first game (against Jacksonville State) mechanically and technically," Nystrom said. "
You know, you can talk about having a 1,000 plays in your playbook, and all those things are necessary, but when it really comes down to nut-cracking, it doesn't matter what system you're running. "
Have you got good fundamentals? Good mechanics? It still really comes down to, can you block and tackle? Those are the things we really learned well during my time at Michigan State. If you can block and tackle you'll make a lot of systems go. I don't think there was a guy on Biggie's staff that never became a head coach and there were only one or two off of Duffy's that didn't."
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Nystrom played his final down 59 years ago, but he can't help but be impressed with the consistency Dantonio has developed in his eight seasons. One question that remains to be answered is, who will be the current Spartans' Buck Nystrom to be inducted in MSU Hall of Fame class of 2073? "Mark has done an outstanding job," Nystrom said. "They've got the right guy, and he's not only a good football man, but a humanitarian, particularly with the kids. Mark is coming along really great, he's had some nice years and this last Rose Bowl capped it off. I hope now he can win the national championship. "That would bring it full circle for guys like me."
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