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Alabama: How the Crimson Tide Took Over College Football (Part 1) · The Chuck ToddCast

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dynastic. I'm Jay and Day and I'm Chuck Todd.
0:04
Speaker 1: And in today's episode, we're going to get into a
0:07
Speaker 1: deep dive of the University of Alabama the Crimson Tide,
0:11
Speaker 1: and Chuck is going to take everything within me not
0:14
Speaker 1: to say Alabama and channel my inner Keith Jackson every
0:18
Speaker 1: time I say Alabama, Look, Keith Jackson.
0:22
Speaker 2: This is our first foray into college football. I will
0:26
Speaker 2: fully confess this is my my deepest passion of a
0:30
Speaker 2: sport and the beauty of going into Alabama. In some ways,
0:33
Speaker 2: this is when people try to understand the South and
0:37
Speaker 2: college football. You can't talk about it unless you're unless
0:43
Speaker 2: you understand, frankly, the birth of Alabama football, which is
0:46
Speaker 2: why we thought, more so than even Notre Dame, that
0:50
Speaker 2: Alabama should be the first college football program.
0:53
Speaker 1: We tackle absolutely, Chuck. You know in certain parts of
0:57
Speaker 1: the country, namely the South, and people say LA. They're
1:01
Speaker 1: talking about lower Alabama. But a little surprisingly in this
1:04
Speaker 1: Alabama themed episode, when I say the opening scene is
1:07
Speaker 1: said in LA, I mean Los Angeles. Maybe it's not
1:10
Speaker 1: so surprising if you know where I'm from. Specifically, this
1:13
Speaker 1: scene takes place at LAX the sprawling city's sprawling airport.
1:18
Speaker 1: It's nineteen seventy. That year the NCLA added an eleventh
1:22
Speaker 1: game to the college football schedule, and most schools use
1:25
Speaker 1: that as an opportunity to add a cupcake component and
1:28
Speaker 1: pick up an easy w Alabama's Paul bar Bryant had
1:32
Speaker 1: a different idea, so he flew to LA to meet
1:35
Speaker 1: with his good friend John McKay, the coach at USC.
1:38
Speaker 1: McKay drove to the airport to meet him. They get
1:41
Speaker 1: together at the airport Loune for Western Airlines. It's a
1:44
Speaker 1: now defunct carrier with white and red planes, similar to
1:47
Speaker 1: the planes for the also now defunct TWA. It's little
1:50
Speaker 1: aviation history for you there in the meeting, Brian Sales McKay,
1:54
Speaker 1: I'd like to give you one hundred and fifty thousand
1:57
Speaker 1: dollars to come to Birmingham to play us in the
1:59
Speaker 1: opener this year. Okay, poffs on a cigar, of course,
2:02
Speaker 1: you could smoke in indoor at the airport lounges back then.
2:06
Speaker 1: That's pretty good, Paul, What if are for you two
2:09
Speaker 1: fifty and you come back and play us the following
2:11
Speaker 1: year in LA? They shake hands and the deal is done.
2:16
Speaker 2: Not only he drawn on a cigar, Bryant likely drawing
2:19
Speaker 2: on a Chesterfield. If you if you know your Bear
2:23
Speaker 2: Bryan history. Look, the two schools hadn't faced each other
2:26
Speaker 2: since the nineteen forty six Rose Bowl, and I'll tell
2:30
Speaker 2: you this was something that even I didn't fully appreciate.
2:33
Speaker 2: The Rose Bowl plays a much bigger part in the
2:36
Speaker 2: history of Alabama football than you might realize, and we're
2:39
Speaker 2: going to get into that later on. But that handshake
2:42
Speaker 2: set into motion perhaps among the most pivotal moments in
2:46
Speaker 2: the history of Alabama football. Seeking a rematch with USC
2:50
Speaker 2: was somewhat of a risk for Bryant. It wasn't just
2:53
Speaker 2: a rematch, this sort of home and home, although some
2:55
Speaker 2: would say it was a calculated risk. USC was coming
2:58
Speaker 2: off a ten oho to one season. Also, at the time,
3:01
Speaker 2: the Stalwarts and Alabama were resistant to playing teams with
3:04
Speaker 2: black players. USC had a fully integrated roster that featured
3:09
Speaker 2: an all black offensive backfield. Yes, that included quarterback Jimmy Jones,
3:13
Speaker 2: who in nineteen sixty nine became the first black quarterback
3:16
Speaker 2: to appear on a Sports Illustrated magazine cover. The Crimson
3:21
Speaker 2: Tide didn't have any black players on the roster before
3:24
Speaker 2: that first meeting, although they had. Alabama had just signed
3:26
Speaker 2: its first black football recruit, a running back named Wilbur Jackson,
3:30
Speaker 2: and it wasn't the first time a integrated team had
3:34
Speaker 2: played in Alabama against Alabama the year season before, Tennessee
3:38
Speaker 2: had already integrated. That was sort of part of the
3:40
Speaker 2: issue here with Alabama. They were one of the last
3:43
Speaker 2: teams in the SEC to integrate, and in fact, Alabama's
3:47
Speaker 2: lack of integration might explain how it had fallen from
3:51
Speaker 2: college football's elite in the mid sixties to where they
3:54
Speaker 2: were at the end of that decade. The Tide went
3:57
Speaker 2: from an undefeated season in sixty six to a six
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Speaker 2: and five record in sixty nine, which of course had
4:03
Speaker 2: Bryant contemplating all sorts of future endeavors. Okay, yeah.
4:08
Speaker 1: Following that nineteen sixty nine season, Bryant met with Miami
4:12
Speaker 1: Dolphins owner Joe Robbie, who offered him the head coaching
4:15
Speaker 1: job of the Dolphins. They actually came to a verbal agreement.
4:18
Speaker 1: It was a five year, one point seven million dollar
4:21
Speaker 1: deal that included stock options in a car. The Dolphins
4:25
Speaker 1: even threw in an extra ten thousand dollars to cover
4:27
Speaker 1: expenses for Brian's wife to travel back and forth from
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Speaker 1: Miami to Birmingham. All that was left was for Bryant
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Speaker 1: to tell the folks at Alabama that he was leaving,
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Speaker 1: which he fully intended to do.
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Speaker 2: He did. In fact, he goes to the Board of Trustees.
4:40
Speaker 2: By the way, there was actually leave it to Alabama football,
4:43
Speaker 2: right recency bias. There was a growing minority in the
4:48
Speaker 2: Alabama booster world of saying, hey, has the game passed
4:52
Speaker 2: Bryant by? He was, you know, these last couple of
4:56
Speaker 2: years were weeks, so he thought. Brian actually thought that
4:59
Speaker 2: the Bord Trustees was just going to let him out
5:01
Speaker 2: of his contract and he was going to be the
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Speaker 2: Dolphins coach. And by the way, this is two years
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Speaker 2: before the Dolphins ended up going undefeated. He might have
5:08
Speaker 2: ended up becoming a legendary NFL coach, but instead ja
5:12
Speaker 2: the Board of Trustee said we'll let you out of
5:14
Speaker 2: the contract on one condition. He had a ten year contract,
5:17
Speaker 2: still ten more years on his contract. On one condition,
5:20
Speaker 2: you got to find us an equivalent. So Bear Bryant
5:24
Speaker 2: makes the first call to John McKay and basically says,
5:28
Speaker 2: you got it. You got twenty four hours to say
5:30
Speaker 2: you're going to take this job for me. McKay wasn't
5:33
Speaker 2: ready to have that conversation. Perhaps he didn't want to
5:35
Speaker 2: live in Tuscaloosa, LA. To Tuscaloosa might be a tough
5:39
Speaker 2: sell to the entire McKay family. Well, needless to say,
5:42
Speaker 2: a week later, I think it was at the Senior Ball,
5:44
Speaker 2: which of course was hosted in Alabama, Brian turns the
5:49
Speaker 2: job down.
5:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he gone so far as to consult with
5:53
Speaker 1: Joe Naman, to his former quarterback who is now a
5:55
Speaker 1: professional football player, and you know, asked him what he
5:58
Speaker 1: thought about it, and Nayman said, you know that Name
6:00
Speaker 1: It boys. You know they got Bob Greasy is the
6:02
Speaker 1: best quarterback, one of the best quarterbacks. They got Larry Zanka.
6:05
Speaker 1: It's a good team.
6:06
Speaker 2: Well, not only that, I'm going to show my Miami bias.
6:09
Speaker 2: Here calls up Howard Schnellenberger, who of course was one
6:12
Speaker 2: of the guy who actually recruited Name It to Alabama.
6:15
Speaker 2: Shanellenberger is an assistant at the Rams. Because Bryant wants
6:19
Speaker 2: to know is is he getting a good franchise or
6:21
Speaker 2: a loser franchise? And no, no, no, this team, this
6:24
Speaker 2: team's got a lot of great young players. This is
6:26
Speaker 2: a good gig. Again, this is seventy Dolphins would go
6:30
Speaker 2: to back to back Super Bowls. I think, the undefeated season,
6:34
Speaker 2: you know, all of those things. What a sliding doors
6:38
Speaker 2: moment for the runner up, Don Shula.
6:41
Speaker 1: Huh it was, you know. And but also looking back,
6:47
Speaker 1: it shouldn't have been that surprising that he stayed. I mean,
6:49
Speaker 1: the NFL had just gotten to the top of the
6:53
Speaker 1: American sports pyramid at the end of the sixties, right,
6:56
Speaker 1: you had the Landmark TV deal in the mid sixties,
6:58
Speaker 1: So the NFL as baseball. But really, prior to that time,
7:02
Speaker 1: college football had ranked ahead of the NFL and baseball
7:06
Speaker 1: had been ahead of the NFL. So you know that
7:09
Speaker 1: generation Bryant was born in.
7:12
Speaker 2: We should remember a team all of our listeners, know
7:15
Speaker 2: you you love looking at these at these moments generationally
7:19
Speaker 2: like this, And I thought it was interesting Osborne, Bowden, Bryant,
7:23
Speaker 2: you know, Paterno, all of a certain area. Maybe they're
7:27
Speaker 2: slightly younger than Bear, but not too much younger than Bear,
7:29
Speaker 2: but all all sort of said, no.
7:31
Speaker 1: Huh, yeah, they're born you know, guys born in nineteen
7:34
Speaker 1: thirteen and the twenties and maybe even the early thirties.
7:38
Speaker 1: Like back then, those guys tended to stay right. You know,
7:42
Speaker 1: it's that next generation that often does make the leap.
7:45
Speaker 2: Right, absolutely so, the next generation or generations, you know,
7:50
Speaker 2: they would make the leap, including John McKay right, who
7:54
Speaker 2: was ten years younger than the Bear. He ended up
7:56
Speaker 2: coaching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and their inaugural season in
7:59
Speaker 2: seventy six. Oh, not only that, is it the greatest
8:04
Speaker 2: quote I don't mean to digress here, but the greatest
8:06
Speaker 2: quote of all time.
8:07
Speaker 1: You know.
8:08
Speaker 2: It was something about, you know, are are you struggling,
8:12
Speaker 2: coach McKay with executing your offense?
8:14
Speaker 1: I think about the team's execution.
8:21
Speaker 2: One of the all time great coach speaks ever at
8:25
Speaker 2: that point. But you're right, By the eighties, the NFL
8:28
Speaker 2: could lure away these college coaches, right, Jimmy Johnson leaves Miami,
8:32
Speaker 2: Steve Spurrier leaves UH South Carolina, Nick Saban leaves l
8:36
Speaker 2: s U Right. And of course it's by the way,
8:39
Speaker 2: the other thing about this episode that was fascinating is
8:42
Speaker 2: that the two most legendary coaches in the history of
8:44
Speaker 2: Alabama football both agreed to coach the Miami Dolphins at
8:47
Speaker 2: one point in their careers. One actually did coach, the
8:51
Speaker 2: other one never did. With with what we just told
8:55
Speaker 2: you about the bear, but of course Nick Saban another
8:57
Speaker 2: sliding doors moment there Brian Dolphin's decision. Dolphins hired Don Shula,
9:04
Speaker 2: and there you go.
9:05
Speaker 1: You always have to make Miami the focal point, don't you, Chuck.
9:08
Speaker 1: You just couldn't help it.
9:09
Speaker 2: People have to understand in this case though, Miami the
9:11
Speaker 2: bridesmaid on this one.
9:14
Speaker 1: But that Dolphins connection does bring us to Nick Saban
9:17
Speaker 1: And what I think is the real link between these
9:19
Speaker 1: two and the through line for this episode, and that's
9:22
Speaker 1: Alabama's had two all time great college football coaches who
9:27
Speaker 1: not only got to leave the game on their own terms,
9:29
Speaker 1: they got to leave Alabama on their own terms after
9:32
Speaker 1: lengthy tenures. There you know, the nature of being a
9:35
Speaker 1: college football coach can be perilous, no matter what your accomplishments.
9:38
Speaker 1: Think about it. You're helld responsible for the decision making
9:40
Speaker 1: of adolescents. You're the figurehead of a university. Not even
9:44
Speaker 1: winny more games than anyone at your level can grant
9:47
Speaker 1: you immunity if things go bad, which was ultimately the
9:50
Speaker 1: fate for Joe Paterno, who's forty six years at Penn
9:53
Speaker 1: State came to an inglorious end when he's caught up
9:56
Speaker 1: in the Jerry Sandusky scandal. You know, when you think
9:59
Speaker 1: of what he hayes, this is your first thought, the
10:00
Speaker 1: two hundred and five games that he won at Ohio State,
10:03
Speaker 1: or the punching threw at a Clemson player in the
10:05
Speaker 1: Gator Bowl that led to his fire end the next day.
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Speaker 1: Right Well, when Bryant retired in nineteen eighty two after
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Speaker 1: twenty five years of Alabama, even though he's coming off
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Speaker 1: his worst record in a dozen seasons, his retirement is
10:16
Speaker 1: still about his declining health. There wasn't this great move
10:20
Speaker 1: to Alston right. In fact, he died just a month
10:23
Speaker 1: after leaving the job, so it's really his last stage.
10:26
Speaker 1: Staban lasted seventeen years at Alabama. Not only did he
10:29
Speaker 1: live up to the standards of Brian, you could argue
10:30
Speaker 1: he surpassed him, and his departure really had more to
10:33
Speaker 1: do with the reaction of the changing landscape of college
10:36
Speaker 1: football in the NIL era than it did with any
10:38
Speaker 1: scandal or drop off. The six coaches at Alabama. Between
10:42
Speaker 1: Brian and Saban they lasted just four years on average.
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Speaker 1: So it tells you not everyone can win at Alabama,
10:48
Speaker 1: and sometimes even winning isn't enough at Alabama.
10:52
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting and there's some tension in my
10:56
Speaker 2: own brain on this JAA that I will confess to,
10:59
Speaker 2: which is, you know, when you look at and I
11:01
Speaker 2: sort of hinted at it at the top, Notre Dame
11:03
Speaker 2: or Alabama, right, is what is the foundational college football power?
11:08
Speaker 2: And look, it's clear Notre Dame created the national appetite,
11:14
Speaker 2: but Alabama sort of, you know, took it and frankly
11:19
Speaker 2: gave an identity to an entire region that was still
11:25
Speaker 2: struggling with its identity forty fifty sixty, sometimes one hundred
11:30
Speaker 2: years after the Civil War. But that it is. What
11:36
Speaker 2: is also interesting to me about Alabama is unlike Notre Dame,
11:39
Speaker 2: where their floor is always high, at Alabama, if you've
11:43
Speaker 2: not had a great coach, they've had zero to ten seasons. Right,
11:48
Speaker 2: And you look of the six coaches in the in
11:50
Speaker 2: the quote buffer zone here, Jeane Stallings lasted the longest
11:53
Speaker 2: because he won a title and he was a bear
11:55
Speaker 2: guy that mattered a little bit and he won eighty
11:58
Speaker 2: one percent of his games at Alabama, but it only
12:00
Speaker 2: bought him seven years. A little bit of scandal in
12:02
Speaker 2: the NCAA stuff happened Ray Perkins, who literally he got
12:06
Speaker 2: poached from the New York Giants. Right, this is how
12:08
Speaker 2: big the Alabama job was. He left the pros right
12:12
Speaker 2: to take the Alabama job, just like Nicksaban did. Perkins
12:16
Speaker 2: is the immediate successor standalone, if you don't count national
12:21
Speaker 2: titles nineteen five and one over his last two seasons,
12:24
Speaker 2: won Bowl games after both of them. Pretty good, but
12:26
Speaker 2: he knew people weren't happy. The minute he got an
12:28
Speaker 2: offer to go to the Tampa Bay Bucks, he grabbed it,
12:31
Speaker 2: even though it was probably the worst the NFL. Yeah,
12:34
Speaker 2: they were two and fourteen the year before Perkins gets there,
12:36
Speaker 2: So why do you leave Alabama for that? Well? He
12:39
Speaker 2: later Total Sports writer that if he had kept coaching
12:41
Speaker 2: at Bama under Bryan's shadow, he would have died. He
12:44
Speaker 2: thought it was He thought it was that hard. I
12:46
Speaker 2: mean Perkins, I mean the first thing Ray Perkins did,
12:50
Speaker 2: and when he becomes coach, and of course he becomes coach,
12:54
Speaker 2: and within the first month that he becomes coach Briant dies.
12:58
Speaker 2: In fact, he saw Perkins would visited Bryant the day
13:03
Speaker 2: Bryant died. Bryant, you know, collapses, is in the hospital,
13:07
Speaker 2: looks like he's going to recover. Perkins comes visit and
13:10
Speaker 2: visit him that morning, and Bryant barrates him for visiting
13:15
Speaker 2: him and not being on the recruiting trail of course.
13:18
Speaker 2: And Bryant has another heart attack while eating lunch in
13:21
Speaker 2: his hospital bed and he passes. But that spring practice,
13:25
Speaker 2: Perkins takes down the infamous tower, right, And what's funny
13:28
Speaker 2: about that tower, ja is the tower that Bear Bryant
13:33
Speaker 2: used to oversee and watch football practice. If you've watched
13:37
Speaker 2: any movie over in the sixties and seventies depicting football
13:41
Speaker 2: in general, you would that tower would be a symbol.
13:44
Speaker 2: And it turns out it it goes back to Bear.
13:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's perch. Let's go back to nineteen seventy in
13:51
Speaker 1: that game that Bryant and McKay agree to why Not
13:55
Speaker 1: being a season opener, played in Legion Field in Birmingham,
13:58
Speaker 1: and it was one of the first times any graded
14:01
Speaker 1: college football team played in the state of Alabama. It's
14:03
Speaker 1: still a novel concept.
14:05
Speaker 2: Like I said, Tennessee had the year before Tennessee had
14:09
Speaker 2: wasn't a fully integrated squad, but they did have black
14:11
Speaker 2: players that came to Legion Field.
14:14
Speaker 1: But some of the black players on USC brought guns
14:17
Speaker 1: with them in case anything went down, like very very
14:19
Speaker 1: fearful about going to the heart of the South. Turns
14:24
Speaker 1: out they didn't need the weapons because the only thing
14:27
Speaker 1: that went down was a Crimson tide by score forty
14:29
Speaker 1: two to twenty one at the hands of the Trojans.
14:32
Speaker 1: All six USC touchdowns were scored by back players, including
14:35
Speaker 1: two by running back Sam Cunningham. Now, the lore of
14:39
Speaker 1: the game has it that afterward, Bear Bryant comes into
14:41
Speaker 1: the USC locker room brings Randall Cunningham to show him
14:44
Speaker 1: off to his Alabama players. Brian supposedly told his team
14:48
Speaker 1: something the effect of this is what a real football
14:51
Speaker 1: player looks like the chuck. As a journalist, you know
14:54
Speaker 1: that every story should be verified by at least three sources,
14:57
Speaker 1: and you won't be able to find three people who
15:00
Speaker 1: can swear that that's how it actually happened. So it
15:03
Speaker 1: appears that this belongs to that Ethos Espous in the
15:06
Speaker 1: movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Balance when the legend
15:09
Speaker 1: becomes facked print the legend, this legend had unprinted again
15:13
Speaker 1: in the old again.
15:14
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean look, Jerry Claiborne, who played under Bear,
15:19
Speaker 2: was an assistant, played with Bear, under assistant coach with him,
15:21
Speaker 2: future head coach Kentucky Football. A couple other places, he's
15:25
Speaker 2: quoted in the Chasing the Bear book as saying Sam
15:30
Speaker 2: Cunningham did more for civil rights in sixty minutes than
15:33
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King Junior did in twenty years, referring to
15:35
Speaker 2: that game. And that's a flippant remark and obviously full
15:41
Speaker 2: of hyperbole, but that is the legend of that game, right,
15:46
Speaker 2: whether it goes back to the right, the perception is
15:50
Speaker 2: it that was the moment, whether whether it was really
15:53
Speaker 2: the moment or not, is why you're listening to this podcast.
15:59
Speaker 1: You know as possible that you know some theories that
16:02
Speaker 1: Bair didn't want to send a message to his team.
16:04
Speaker 1: You know, they really wanted to make it clear to
16:06
Speaker 1: the Alabama fans right that Here's here's what you guys
16:09
Speaker 1: are missing by not having you. You're clinging to these
16:11
Speaker 1: old ways and it's costing us. Right. We're getting beat
16:14
Speaker 1: our scores, getting double up. You know, we'll never know
16:17
Speaker 1: for sure because neither Brian nor manckay ever talked about
16:20
Speaker 1: their motivations behind the agreement. They The only details we
16:23
Speaker 1: have on that meeting at the airport comes from USC
16:26
Speaker 1: assistant coach Dave Ferdig who was there. It was retold
16:30
Speaker 1: in the story Turning of the Tide, a book by
16:33
Speaker 1: Don Jaeger that's kind of centers on that game.
16:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously, what we do know is there this that
16:39
Speaker 2: John McKay cherished a picture that was taken after the game,
16:43
Speaker 2: and it's of him and Brian chicken hands. Brian, of
16:46
Speaker 2: course everybody knows, is smiling in the photo, which is
16:49
Speaker 2: unusual for Bryant after a loss like that, right, double
16:53
Speaker 2: digit loss, first game of the year. You're sitting there going,
16:56
Speaker 2: what's that smile about? And of course it's been open
16:59
Speaker 2: to eternal and interpretations like the Mona Lisa painting, if
17:04
Speaker 2: you will, you know, Jay, the fact that it meant
17:07
Speaker 2: so much to McKay says something, does it not?
17:10
Speaker 1: Yeah? And he was a part of history too on
17:13
Speaker 1: his end, right, and this is his good friend and
17:16
Speaker 1: he was able, you know, to help him, help him out,
17:18
Speaker 1: and you know, made some money in the process too, right,
17:23
Speaker 1: you know. So I wonder going back to that smile
17:25
Speaker 1: and what Bryan could have been thinking at that moment,
17:27
Speaker 1: you know, And in my mind, I like to think
17:30
Speaker 1: that he has some type of inkling at what's going
17:33
Speaker 1: to come. That Alabama would go from having no black
17:35
Speaker 1: players on the field that day to having seventeen on
17:37
Speaker 1: the roster. By the end of the decade, the Crimson
17:40
Speaker 1: Tide would win three national championships in the nineteen seventies
17:43
Speaker 1: and in nineteen eighty one he would break the record
17:45
Speaker 1: for coaching victories and NCAA's top division. That the Alabama
17:49
Speaker 1: Crimson Tide would truly become dynastic. Okay, Chuck, Let's take
17:54
Speaker 1: a look inside the Alabama trophy case for starters. Alabama
17:58
Speaker 1: claims eighteen nationals championships, although the NCAA only officially recognizes
18:03
Speaker 1: sixteen of them. There are two in nineteen thirty four
18:06
Speaker 1: and nineteen forty one that were awarded by services that
18:09
Speaker 1: the NCAA does not recognize.
18:12
Speaker 2: Honestly, Ja, it is there. It is so funny.
18:17
Speaker 1: You know.
18:17
Speaker 2: This is one where it doesn't matter how much AI
18:20
Speaker 2: takes over the world. It doesn't matter if you're using
18:23
Speaker 2: a Google search. If you go into old microfish, you
18:27
Speaker 2: use sports information directors. There are so many entities that
18:31
Speaker 2: awarded national championships in college football throughout the twentieth century
18:36
Speaker 2: that you can't ever find an agreed upon number. How
18:41
Speaker 2: many did Alabama have? How many there were things? Trust me,
18:45
Speaker 2: as a Miami fan, there are five that are recognized.
18:49
Speaker 2: I think Miami claims to others as well, thanks to
18:52
Speaker 2: these all the quirky natures. But look, the AP started
18:56
Speaker 2: crowning national champs in nineteen thirty six. Before that, the NCAA,
19:01
Speaker 2: the champions were named through an amalgam of retroactive historian selections.
19:08
Speaker 2: I just contempt mathematical formulas. So you think we've been
19:13
Speaker 2: doing the BCS garbage and all of this stuff we've
19:15
Speaker 2: been figuring out was a recent thing. This goes back
19:18
Speaker 2: to the nineteen thirties, folks. This is how convoluted Trying
19:21
Speaker 2: to figure out who's the best team in college football
19:24
Speaker 2: has constantly been a source of frustration. They've tried mathematical formulas,
19:29
Speaker 2: newspaper writers, organizational consensus. We did, yeah, the coaches poll,
19:35
Speaker 2: launching in nineteen fifty. We thought, well, coaches know best, right,
19:39
Speaker 2: and of course now we've learned most of those coaches
19:41
Speaker 2: polls were filled out by interns and assistant coaches. But
19:44
Speaker 2: for what it's worth, from then on and NCUBA recognized
19:47
Speaker 2: the winners of both polls AP and U and the
19:49
Speaker 2: coaches poll which was UPI back in the day as
19:52
Speaker 2: national champions. The two from nineteen fifty, the two poles
19:56
Speaker 2: disagreed eleven times. Now these days you don't have have
20:00
Speaker 2: polls determining who the national champion is. The NCAA finally
20:05
Speaker 2: figured out how to have some form of a playoff,
20:09
Speaker 2: though they did use a committee determine who gets to
20:11
Speaker 2: be in the playoff, and that of course creates its
20:14
Speaker 2: own frustrations and disputes, but still it is worth noting. Look,
20:19
Speaker 2: Alabama has the most among the most, but here's those
20:25
Speaker 2: two disputed ones are important because if you deny them
20:28
Speaker 2: the disputed titles, Alabama then is second in national championships.
20:34
Speaker 2: And which school, ja do you think has more national
20:36
Speaker 2: title championships than Alabama? It is not Notre Dame. It
20:40
Speaker 2: is of course not Ohio State because they don't have
20:43
Speaker 2: that many. It is not Michigan, though it's sneakier up
20:47
Speaker 2: there than you realize it is, of course Yale, which
20:50
Speaker 2: I knew. You knew they won the title eighteen times.
20:55
Speaker 2: The elis of course, the last time was ninety nine
20:58
Speaker 2: years ago. Princeton is third on the list for what
21:01
Speaker 2: it's worth, but their championship was it's not one hundred
21:04
Speaker 2: and four years ago. So look, this is one of
21:07
Speaker 2: those where we're gonna have diehard Alabama fans. You said,
21:10
Speaker 2: how many? You know it's really this. They've written books
21:14
Speaker 2: on one that they thought they should have had, the
21:16
Speaker 2: missing ring. We're going to get into that because there's
21:18
Speaker 2: more to that one than you might realize. And then
21:21
Speaker 2: they got awarded titles before the bowl game that they
21:24
Speaker 2: would lose. So it is I think the single most
21:29
Speaker 2: frustrating aspect of college football is this who's got the
21:33
Speaker 2: most titles? You need to sit down and relax because
21:36
Speaker 2: you almost need a separate three hour podcast to explain that.
21:39
Speaker 1: Well. The crazy thing is even Alabama was only counting
21:42
Speaker 1: six for a long time. And then there's sports information
21:44
Speaker 1: directors going through the archives and you just put like
21:47
Speaker 1: in the back of the media guide or the game programs,
21:50
Speaker 1: like now we're going to add these five from back
21:53
Speaker 1: in the day, so it's a letter, and then they
21:55
Speaker 1: won the next one, and all of a sudden, we've
21:57
Speaker 1: got twelve national championships, you know, so like doubled just
22:00
Speaker 1: through some accounting in a matter of a few years.
22:04
Speaker 1: One thing that is not disputed. Alabama can claim four
22:07
Speaker 1: Heisman Trophy winners, starting with Mark Ingram in two thousand
22:11
Speaker 1: and nine and Derek Henry in twenty fifteen, and back
22:13
Speaker 1: to back with Davonte Smith in twenty twenty and Bryce
22:15
Speaker 1: Young in twenty twenty one. And I'm surprised with Alabama's
22:18
Speaker 1: rich history great players that A they only have four
22:22
Speaker 1: b none before the twenty first century, and shuck got
22:26
Speaker 1: looked it up. Joe Namath and Ken Saylor didn't even
22:28
Speaker 1: finish in the top ten in the Heisman budus.
22:30
Speaker 2: I floated theory by you?
22:32
Speaker 1: Ok?
22:32
Speaker 2: Can I float the theory by you? Where is that
22:35
Speaker 2: Heisman Trophy presentation?
22:38
Speaker 1: It was the Downtown Athletic Club, New York City, New York,
22:40
Speaker 1: New York.
22:41
Speaker 2: Huh. You think Southern football programs had an extra hurdle. Yeah,
22:47
Speaker 2: back in the seas and sixties, that's right. We know this,
22:50
Speaker 2: and Western too, right, that's right. So there was always
22:54
Speaker 2: this kind of East coast, northeast, Midwest bias to the men.
23:01
Speaker 1: You can.
23:01
Speaker 2: There's a variety of explanations for it, and we're going
23:03
Speaker 2: to delve into one of them when we talk about
23:05
Speaker 2: this so called missing missing ring on that. But it
23:08
Speaker 2: is one of the more unique things. You're like, WHOA, really,
23:10
Speaker 2: Alabama only has four on that one. You could argue
23:16
Speaker 2: that you that perhaps that might be a reason and
23:21
Speaker 2: maybe maybe deserved on that one. Two of the top
23:24
Speaker 2: five all time leaders though in major college football coaching
23:27
Speaker 2: victories both are at Alabama, right you. Bear Bryant is
23:30
Speaker 2: currently third with three hundred and twenty three victories. He's
23:33
Speaker 2: behind Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden. Nick Saban is fifth
23:37
Speaker 2: with two ninety seven. Can you believe Nick Saban didn't
23:41
Speaker 2: want to get to three hundred on that one? Anyway?
23:43
Speaker 2: Saban is tops among coaches with seven national championships, six
23:47
Speaker 2: of them in Alabama, one at LSU. Brian is second,
23:50
Speaker 2: with all six, of course being at Alabama.
23:54
Speaker 1: Alabama has won thirty SEC championships, including eleven since the
23:58
Speaker 1: SEC Championship game format began in nineteen ninety two, as
24:03
Speaker 1: twice as many as the next team Georgia as fifteen
24:07
Speaker 1: interesting quirk. Alabama won two national championships in seasons in
24:10
Speaker 1: which it did not win the SEC championship in twenty
24:13
Speaker 1: eleven and twenty seventeen. Through some of the quirks of
24:16
Speaker 1: that the playoffs in the national championship selection process that.
24:20
Speaker 2: I believe in one of their titles they beat an
24:23
Speaker 2: SEC opponent in order to win. In Georgia, I think
24:26
Speaker 2: to win that national title thanks to the playoff format.
24:30
Speaker 2: According to ESPN as of late twenty twenty five, so
24:33
Speaker 2: this is through last season, we don't have the twenty
24:34
Speaker 2: six season rosters yet. Obviously, Alabama had fifty six former
24:40
Speaker 2: players on NFL rosters, the most among all college programs
24:44
Speaker 2: at the moment. Currently Georgia next with fifty two. Alabama
24:48
Speaker 2: ranked six in terms of college programs with the most
24:51
Speaker 2: NFL players in history. We've actually just played at least
24:55
Speaker 2: one NFL game. Notre Dame, of course, is first on
24:57
Speaker 2: that list. Alabama is tied seven with Syracuse for most
25:03
Speaker 2: former players in the NFL Hall of Fame. Both have eight.
25:07
Speaker 2: Notre Name in Usc have the most with fourteen. But
25:10
Speaker 2: I promise you the last fifteen year run of Alabama
25:14
Speaker 2: in college is going to produce their share of new
25:17
Speaker 2: NFL Hall of Famers. So I have a feeling there
25:20
Speaker 2: in about a decade that number could double. If you
25:23
Speaker 2: know Derrick Henry being first and foremost, Julio Jones, we
25:28
Speaker 2: deal with what could be coming. And with eighty one,
25:32
Speaker 2: Alabama is third behind Ohio State and USC in terms
25:34
Speaker 2: of first round draft picks, and of course that only
25:38
Speaker 2: goes back really until the fifties.
25:41
Speaker 1: Two Alabama players, both quarterbacks, have been the first overall
25:44
Speaker 1: pick in the draft, and no I stayed their name.
25:47
Speaker 1: The first was Harry Gilmer by Washington in nineteen fourty.
25:51
Speaker 1: Harry Gilmer Right, Harry Gilmer then went too many games
25:54
Speaker 1: as the NFL quarterback, but he later made history by
25:57
Speaker 1: coaching the Detroit Lions, become the first number one for
26:00
Speaker 1: all pick to become a head coach. And the second
26:03
Speaker 1: was Bryce Young quarterback in twenty twenty three. And once
26:06
Speaker 1: again name it was on the list. He wasn't even
26:08
Speaker 1: the number one pick in the AFL draft. Right, you
26:10
Speaker 1: could say, ah aha, gotcha, He's drafted in the AFL. No,
26:13
Speaker 1: he went number two. New York Jets took him second
26:16
Speaker 1: behind a wide receiver from Baylor named Harry Elkin, who
26:20
Speaker 1: played a total of seventeen games in the league. Final
26:25
Speaker 1: stat in twenty twenty five, Alabama had the third highest
26:28
Speaker 1: graduation rate ninety eight percent, among all D one college
26:31
Speaker 1: football programs. Only Notre Dame and Northwestern had a higher
26:35
Speaker 1: rate at ninety nine percent. You thought I wouldn't be
26:38
Speaker 1: able to get Northwestern into a conversation about the elite
26:41
Speaker 1: of college football. Well, when it comes to graduating players,
26:44
Speaker 1: Maama mado, Northwestern is elite. Another number.
26:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, I love this one. Go go with this one.
26:54
Speaker 1: Four hundred and three babies were named Bryant born in
26:58
Speaker 1: Alabama between nineteen fifty nine twenty nineteen. That's for in
27:02
Speaker 1: the ESPN citing Social securities database.
27:05
Speaker 2: By the way, you may ask, Kay, how come you
27:07
Speaker 2: didn't mention Bart's Starr. Two things that about Bart Starr
27:11
Speaker 2: that I had to be reminded about. One is he
27:14
Speaker 2: never played for Bear Bryant. He left the year before
27:17
Speaker 2: Bear came to Alabama. And of course he was famously
27:21
Speaker 2: a seventeenth round draft choice of the Green Bay Packers
27:25
Speaker 2: in the NFL. I want to remind you to follow
27:26
Speaker 2: us on social media at Dynastic pod and please follow, like,
27:30
Speaker 2: and review us wherever you listen to your podcast or
27:32
Speaker 2: watch this podcast on our YouTube channel, Like and subscribe.
27:37
Speaker 2: This is how we are able to get bigger audience,
27:40
Speaker 2: so we can keep doing these frankly in perpetuity. All right, Jay,
27:44
Speaker 2: I love you.
27:45
Speaker 1: Well, there's only so many teams we can do, so
27:48
Speaker 1: eventually we'll run out of team.
27:49
Speaker 3: Eventually we'll run out. But we got we got years.
27:51
Speaker 3: We got years to dynasties. All right, So I'm going
27:55
Speaker 3: to going back through the years. Did you know that
27:57
Speaker 3: through the year nineteen thirty one, Obama had won the
28:00
Speaker 3: Rose Bowl Game as many times as USC. This is
28:03
Speaker 3: back in the days before that big ten pack eight
28:06
Speaker 3: agreement that became a big ten pack ten Pac twelve agreement,
28:09
Speaker 3: et cetera. But Alabama had six appearances in Rose Bowl
28:14
Speaker 3: through nineteen forty six. They went four and two in
28:16
Speaker 3: those games.
28:17
Speaker 1: And it really was an opportunity for Alabama to become
28:20
Speaker 1: the standard bearer. You mentioned earlier about how much they
28:23
Speaker 1: meant to the South. This is part of the way
28:25
Speaker 1: that they became essential to the South's identity really through sports.
28:31
Speaker 1: Ahead of Alabama's first Rose Bowl in the nineteen twenty
28:34
Speaker 1: five season, the LA Press had mocked the team as
28:36
Speaker 1: swamp students. The less than Will Rogers dubbed them the
28:40
Speaker 1: Tusca losers. Maybe not one of Will's more clever lines,
28:43
Speaker 1: but coach Wallace Wade was quote taking his boys all
28:48
Speaker 1: the way to California for whipping. As the press put it,
28:51
Speaker 1: the trip included a twenty eight hundred mile train ride
28:54
Speaker 1: with a four hour stop at the Grand Canyon. That's
28:56
Speaker 1: a long way to go to presumably get your butts kicked.
29:00
Speaker 1: Alabama beat Washington twenty nineteen, a win Wade called the
29:04
Speaker 1: greatest Sullivan's career. Damon Runyon, the legendary sports rider, covered
29:08
Speaker 1: the game and called Alabama probably the greatest team that
29:11
Speaker 1: ever came out of the South. The whole South rejoiced
29:14
Speaker 1: in the victory. When the train pulled into New Orleans
29:16
Speaker 1: on the way back to Alabama, there was a huge celebration,
29:20
Speaker 1: and you still hear echoes of it to this day.
29:23
Speaker 1: In the school fight song Yeah Alabama contains a line
29:26
Speaker 1: like remember the Rose Bowl also your Dixie's football pride,
29:31
Speaker 1: so the former. The years of Alabama football were more
29:33
Speaker 1: like the chaotic eighties and nineties than the stability of
29:37
Speaker 1: right in the sixties and seventies though, or Bryant or
29:40
Speaker 1: saving in the two thousands. Chuck.
29:42
Speaker 2: So, my favorite detail of the train ride from essentially
29:46
Speaker 2: from Alabama to LA for that Rose Bowl, that very
29:50
Speaker 2: first one there by the way, they were the fourth choice.
29:53
Speaker 2: They tried to get a bunch of the normal schools
29:55
Speaker 2: I think it was Colgate, a couple others that they
29:57
Speaker 2: tried to get to come Yale said no. The three
30:00
Speaker 2: teams from the East had said no because there was
30:03
Speaker 2: a movement back east that football was a bit too
30:06
Speaker 2: barbaric it would drive people to drink. So there was
30:08
Speaker 2: suddenly this idea that they didn't want to the administrations
30:11
Speaker 2: weren't crazy about it. So Alabama was the fourth choice
30:14
Speaker 2: by the way, that year for the Rose Bowl to
30:19
Speaker 2: play Washington. And the other fun little part of that,
30:25
Speaker 2: Wallace Wade insisted on bringing Alabama water on the train
30:30
Speaker 2: ride because he thought they were going to a foreign
30:33
Speaker 2: country in California and his players might get sick on
30:36
Speaker 2: that California, California water. But look. University of Alabama's first
30:42
Speaker 2: football team formed in eighteen ninety two WG. Little, a Livingston,
30:46
Speaker 2: Alabama native who'd gone off to Phillips Exeter Academy in Massachusetts,
30:50
Speaker 2: came home after his brother's death, and he brought football
30:53
Speaker 2: back with him. Remember it was a real New England
30:55
Speaker 2: driven sport up there. He brought cleed to leather helmet
30:58
Speaker 2: a football. The team was called the Cadets. Alabama at
31:00
Speaker 2: the time was a military school. Ebie Beaumont was the
31:03
Speaker 2: first head coach and he lasted all of one season.
31:07
Speaker 2: Little was the first team captain. First ever game was
31:11
Speaker 2: fifty six to nothing. It was a win over a
31:13
Speaker 2: scratch squad from the Birmingham area High schools. It happened
31:18
Speaker 2: on November eleventh, eighteen ninety two, the very next day.
31:20
Speaker 2: There's no bye weeks, there's no rest. They lost five
31:23
Speaker 2: to four. They got two safeties, three safeties and one
31:29
Speaker 2: field goal.
31:30
Speaker 1: Right.
31:30
Speaker 2: They lost to the Birmingham Athletic Club in their first season.
31:33
Speaker 2: They went too and two. And you know, like so
31:37
Speaker 2: many near miss stories here, interesting origin stories, Alabama football
31:41
Speaker 2: nearly didn't survive its own trustees. In eighteen ninety seven,
31:45
Speaker 2: the university board worried that football's roughness was hurting the
31:50
Speaker 2: school's reputation. They banned the team from playing games off campus,
31:55
Speaker 2: so the season shrank to a single game, and then
31:59
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety eight there's no team at all.
32:05
Speaker 1: So, Sir, I gotta admit that the Bryant part of
32:08
Speaker 1: Alabama's Bryant Denny Stadium is obvious. But until the research,
32:12
Speaker 1: I never knew where the Denny Park came from because
32:15
Speaker 1: I was for doctor George Hutchison aka Mike Denny, who
32:20
Speaker 1: became the university president in nineteen twelve, and he personally
32:24
Speaker 1: recruited the hires who built the program. That was Zen
32:26
Speaker 1: Scott and then Wallace Wade.
32:28
Speaker 2: By the way, I love this. Look at all the
32:30
Speaker 2: guys that have had stadiums named after them that have
32:33
Speaker 2: Wallace Wade. Wallace Wade Stadium named the university. AJA, that's
32:39
Speaker 2: the name of Duke football. Okay, they play at Wallace
32:43
Speaker 2: Wade Stadium. He left Alabama for Duke in Subways, became
32:48
Speaker 2: a legend there. But look, Denny earned his name on
32:52
Speaker 2: that stadium. Denny is the guy that decided that football
32:57
Speaker 2: was going to be essential the cornerstone of the University Alabama.
33:01
Speaker 2: It was going to put the University of Alabama on
33:05
Speaker 2: the national map. He thought that having a nationally recognized
33:10
Speaker 2: football team would bring a different kind of prestige to
33:12
Speaker 2: the university than anything else that was available to him
33:15
Speaker 2: at the time. And he wasn't even a big football man, like,
33:19
Speaker 2: it wasn't like a huge sport for him. But he
33:20
Speaker 2: saw it as an institution builder. And you know, it's
33:25
Speaker 2: interesting with football in the South, and it's one thing
33:28
Speaker 2: you sort of remember there was no professional sports anywhere
33:32
Speaker 2: in the South for the longest time. There's no professional baseball,
33:36
Speaker 2: there was no professional basketball, there was no professional football.
33:40
Speaker 2: So in many ways it I mean, Denny was a
33:44
Speaker 2: visionary in that sense. He saw the opportunity that if
33:49
Speaker 2: professional sports weren't going to come to the South, well,
33:51
Speaker 2: then football could become essentially that it could become could
33:58
Speaker 2: become that thing. And it worked, right. They go on
34:00
Speaker 2: the map nineteen twenty two, they upset Penn in Philadelphia
34:04
Speaker 2: nine to seven, and it becomes sort of the first
34:07
Speaker 2: time Alabama became a national story in a national program.
34:11
Speaker 2: Sportswriter grantmind Rice predicted that Alabama wouldn't even score. There
34:15
Speaker 2: was such a low people didn't have a very good
34:19
Speaker 2: feeling about these Southern programs well until they saw him firsthand,
34:23
Speaker 2: and in fact, then coach En Scott was so sick
34:26
Speaker 2: his own doctor had ordered him to not make the trip,
34:28
Speaker 2: but he went anyway, and he gave a famous now
34:31
Speaker 2: famous pregame speech ending get in there, show them that
34:33
Speaker 2: Alabama has a great football team. Would actually be den
34:37
Speaker 2: Scott's final season. He would die of cancer later that year.
34:41
Speaker 2: But Denny, that's why his name's on the stadium JA
34:46
Speaker 2: because he really it was his vision make the University
34:51
Speaker 2: of Alabama known nationally for football first. This wasn't something
34:55
Speaker 2: that just happened during Bear Bryant. This was intentional. And
34:59
Speaker 2: this goes back to eeteen twelve.
35:01
Speaker 1: And I love that when he hired Scott, Denny was
35:04
Speaker 1: hiring a former Cleveland horse racing rider who had almost
35:08
Speaker 1: no coaching. Bett Greedy took a chance on him. You know,
35:10
Speaker 1: let's talk up to about his sports riders, because not
35:13
Speaker 1: only you know, you mentioned Grandla Rice of course, who's
35:15
Speaker 1: four horseman. The Poxum's lead like really boosted Notre Dame
35:17
Speaker 1: and you could argue the status of college football in America.
35:21
Speaker 1: So not only did an Erstwall sports rider coach Alabama
35:24
Speaker 1: to its breakout win, sports riders responsible for Alabama's team
35:28
Speaker 1: nickname and mascot. The Crimson Tide nickname originated from the muddy,
35:33
Speaker 1: contentious nineteen oh seven tie with Auburn Birmingham ahe Harold
35:37
Speaker 1: sportswriter Hugh Roberts wrote that the quote Alabama players rolled
35:41
Speaker 1: over their opponents like a crimson tide. That same game's
35:45
Speaker 1: disputes were so bitter that Alabama and Auburn didn't play
35:47
Speaker 1: each other again for roughly forty years. Of course, decades later,
35:52
Speaker 1: Crimson Tide made appearance one of my favorite Steely Dan songs,
35:55
Speaker 1: Deacon Blues, which is about a loser who dreams of
35:58
Speaker 1: making it big as a Saxon phone player. And then
36:01
Speaker 1: in this interview from Steely Dan founders Donald Fagan and
36:04
Speaker 1: Walter Becker in the Wall Street Journal in twenty fifteen,
36:07
Speaker 1: they talk about it. Theagan said, ida for a chorus,
36:10
Speaker 1: if a college football team like the University of Alabama
36:12
Speaker 1: Alabama could have a grandiose nickname like the Crimson Tide,
36:17
Speaker 1: then the nerds and the losers should be entitled to
36:19
Speaker 1: grandiose name as well. Becker said, Crimson Tide didn't mean
36:23
Speaker 1: anything to us except the exaggerated grandiosity that's bestowed on winners.
36:28
Speaker 1: Deacon Blues was the equivalent for a loser in our song,
36:32
Speaker 1: and just that that song does flow so well.
36:34
Speaker 2: I don't mean to be a spoil sport here, but
36:37
Speaker 2: as somebody who spends a lot of time on the
36:39
Speaker 2: golf coast, when the tide gets red, that's not a
36:42
Speaker 2: good time to get into the water, and it's not
36:44
Speaker 2: a good time to eat anything that you catch in
36:46
Speaker 2: the water, whether there is a red tide or a
36:48
Speaker 2: crimson tide, but it is I do. The more time
36:52
Speaker 2: I spend in the golf coast and the times we
36:56
Speaker 2: had a red tide warning not that long ago this summer,
37:00
Speaker 2: I am reminded all the time how Alabama got his name. Then,
37:04
Speaker 2: of course there's the famous elephant mascot Big al right.
37:07
Speaker 2: He is a separate origin story from Crimson Tide. After
37:11
Speaker 2: Bama's dominant nineteen thirty win over Ole Miss, yet another
37:15
Speaker 2: sports writer, Ja Everett Strooper described the huge tide squad
37:21
Speaker 2: taking the field. An excited fan reportedly yelled holder horses,
37:26
Speaker 2: the elephants are coming. Well. Strooper ran with red elephants
37:30
Speaker 2: and it eventually would stuck stick. Coach then coach Wallace
37:34
Speaker 2: Wade disliked the elephant mascot. He thought it was demeaning
37:38
Speaker 2: and he preferred to think of his players as quick,
37:41
Speaker 2: cunning cats instead.
37:43
Speaker 1: But sorry, coach Wildcats was already taken as Chicago Tribune
37:48
Speaker 1: sports rider. Another sports rider used it to describe Northwestern's
37:52
Speaker 1: football players in nineteen twenty four, Meet Him to the punch.
37:55
Speaker 2: All right, drink, that's the second Northwestern reference in less
37:58
Speaker 2: than thirty minutes of this episode. Already more than me
38:01
Speaker 2: and my University of Miami references.
38:03
Speaker 1: But I can not be dissed to get any more
38:05
Speaker 1: in here. Unfortunately, we're going to diverge from the Northwestern
38:08
Speaker 1: portion of this podcast. But I'll give Wade this. He
38:12
Speaker 1: oversaw the smoothest coaching transition in Alabama's history. Before the
38:16
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty season, he announced he'd be leaving after the
38:19
Speaker 1: season and go coach at Duke. What if he could
38:21
Speaker 1: have imagined how sirved that premise sounds a century later,
38:24
Speaker 1: leaving Alabama job to go coach at Duke.
38:27
Speaker 2: Hey, they gave him a stadium. Ja, It's Wallas Waite Stadium.
38:30
Speaker 1: It's not a bad I guess if you bless the
38:33
Speaker 1: university with your presence after coming from Alabama. He deserves
38:36
Speaker 1: a stadium name. But you know, Wade did the opposite
38:39
Speaker 1: of a Lane Kiffin though, because he stuck it out
38:41
Speaker 1: through the entire season, winds up leading the team to
38:43
Speaker 1: a ten and oero record, and he personally recommended his successor,
38:47
Speaker 1: Frank Thomas, who went nine to one in his first season,
38:50
Speaker 1: so pretty rare to take over a job of an
38:52
Speaker 1: undefeated team, and then he lived up to it or
38:55
Speaker 1: came as close as you could with the nine to
38:57
Speaker 1: one record.
38:58
Speaker 2: I love this transition to Frank Thomas because it really it,
39:02
Speaker 2: believe it or not, and this is gonna be a
39:04
Speaker 2: lot of fun when we get to the Saban years.
39:06
Speaker 2: But the fact that you can go from Newt Rockney
39:08
Speaker 2: to Bear Bryant in two moves is all thanks to
39:12
Speaker 2: Frank Thomas. Because Frank Thomas played quarterback at Notre Dame
39:15
Speaker 2: under Newt Rockney. Bear Bryant played at Alabama under Thomas.
39:20
Speaker 2: So how about that, right, Bryant, that's a pretty reasonably
39:25
Speaker 2: significant branch on the so called Newt Rockney tree because
39:31
Speaker 2: Bear is definitely a part of the Thomas tree. So
39:35
Speaker 2: on that team that Bear Bryant played on at Alabama,
39:38
Speaker 2: look It's funny man bears his own little Forrest Gump legends.
39:42
Speaker 2: When he was in high school and middle school, he
39:45
Speaker 2: got what he sort of got. He enamored with football
39:47
Speaker 2: in the first place. But what I love about that
39:49
Speaker 2: Alabama team is Bear Bryant was an end on that team.
39:53
Speaker 2: Guess he was on the other end, Don Hudson. Okay,
39:57
Speaker 2: not just anybody. Bear Bright was in the shadow of
39:59
Speaker 2: Donn Hudson as a player. He played under Thomas, and
40:03
Speaker 2: of course Hudson at one time held the NFL record
40:05
Speaker 2: for touchdown receptions at ninety nine. It stood for forty years.
40:09
Speaker 2: He's arguably of his generation. And I'm not a big
40:14
Speaker 2: fan of mixing eras right, Don Hudson's the greatest receiver
40:18
Speaker 2: until we went to the era of Jerry Rice and
40:20
Speaker 2: he became the greatest receiver. But Hudson did hold that
40:23
Speaker 2: moniker at some time. Now. Thomas always had a fondness
40:27
Speaker 2: for Briant because when Bryant played for Thomas, Thomas called
40:30
Speaker 2: him the team's that greatest player. And when Bryant was
40:34
Speaker 2: coaching at Union College making ready for this one hundred
40:37
Speaker 2: and seventy dollars a month, Thomas brought Bryant and gave
40:42
Speaker 2: him a job on the Alabama staff, and after Bryant
40:45
Speaker 2: left to become a head coach at the university level,
40:47
Speaker 2: Thomas would later call with advice send a note. And
40:51
Speaker 2: by the way, Thomas always wanted Bryant as his successor,
40:55
Speaker 2: but that didn't happen right away.
40:59
Speaker 1: So Brian did seem to get the hang of the
41:01
Speaker 1: coaching thing pretty quickly. He only had one losing record
41:03
Speaker 1: in his entire career, and that came ten years in
41:07
Speaker 1: during his first season at Texas A and m Okay.
41:10
Speaker 1: Chuck Paul Bryant was born on September eleventh, nineteen thirteen,
41:15
Speaker 1: the eleventh of twelve children. Grew up in Marl Bottom, Arkansas,
41:19
Speaker 1: and it was a place of limited options right. He
41:21
Speaker 1: remained motivated throughout his life by that fear of having
41:24
Speaker 1: to go back to a life of plowing and shopping
41:26
Speaker 1: cotton for fifty cents a day. When he's a teenager, though,
41:30
Speaker 1: he had the opportunity to make a whole dollar in
41:32
Speaker 1: one minute if he would wrestle a bear that was
41:35
Speaker 1: brought to a theater by a traveling promoter. He didn't
41:38
Speaker 1: make it the whole minute, so he didn't get the money,
41:41
Speaker 1: but he did get a nickname that lasted a lifetime.
41:44
Speaker 1: Now there's also possible that he got the nickname because
41:48
Speaker 1: of his size. He was a guy who was big
41:50
Speaker 1: enough to get noticed by the high school football coach.
41:52
Speaker 1: When he walked by the field during practice. The coach said,
41:55
Speaker 1: he come over here, I want you to play for
41:57
Speaker 1: us inter saing. Brian's father didn't want him to play,
42:00
Speaker 1: He wanted him to help around with the chores, but
42:02
Speaker 1: his mom encouraged him to play. Mom went out and
42:06
Speaker 1: he played on the line in high school and went
42:09
Speaker 1: on in college.
42:10
Speaker 2: Look, there's all sorts of legends about the bear wrestling.
42:14
Speaker 2: He apparently pinned him twice until the promoter pulls the
42:17
Speaker 2: muzzle off. Then the bear apparently bit Bryant on the
42:21
Speaker 2: ear the promoter at bear take off, and guess who
42:25
Speaker 2: never got his one dollar. He never got the dollar.
42:29
Speaker 2: He never got his dollar for wrestling that bear. But
42:32
Speaker 2: I'm guessing that the that that bear nickname has sort
42:36
Speaker 2: of maybe monetized itself over the years. So when Bryant
42:40
Speaker 2: was an assistant coach at Alabama, he was on the
42:42
Speaker 2: verge of getting that head coaching job, and then he
42:47
Speaker 2: was going to get a job at in Arkansas Pearl
42:48
Speaker 2: Harpin Pearl Harbor happens Brian. Of course, in lists he
42:52
Speaker 2: served three and a half years. He never actually served
42:54
Speaker 2: in combat. He was in North Africa at some point,
42:57
Speaker 2: and believe it or not, his time and North Africa.
43:01
Speaker 2: We'll make a return visit here later in this broadcast.
43:05
Speaker 2: But when he got back he took a job at
43:07
Speaker 2: Maryland University of Maryland, another school that will play a
43:11
Speaker 2: role in Joe Namas life when you get to it.
43:13
Speaker 2: Brian took over a one win team and he went
43:15
Speaker 2: six to one one in his first and only season
43:17
Speaker 2: at the University of Maryland, but he butted heads with
43:20
Speaker 2: the university president, so he left to coach at Kentucky.
43:23
Speaker 2: Now at Kentucky, he didn't just coach. He filled all
43:26
Speaker 2: sorts of roles. He was the marketer, he was the
43:27
Speaker 2: athletic trainer, and he still managed to win games almost
43:30
Speaker 2: three times as many games as he lost. But he
43:34
Speaker 2: was always in the shadow of another coach at Kentucky
43:38
Speaker 2: who he would clash with. It by the way, he
43:40
Speaker 2: was in the shadow of Don Hudson when he played
43:42
Speaker 2: as a player, and he was in a shadow of
43:44
Speaker 2: another coach at Kentucky, which actually developed a little bit
43:47
Speaker 2: of a chip for Bryant over the years. For what
43:49
Speaker 2: it's worth, he clashed where they had Off Rupp over
43:51
Speaker 2: who would be essentially the big team on campus. Well
43:55
Speaker 2: we all know who won that battle, since there's stuff
43:58
Speaker 2: named after Rupp and and I don't think there's anything
44:01
Speaker 2: named after mister Bryant.
44:04
Speaker 1: I got to go to Tuscaloosa, Yeah you do.
44:07
Speaker 2: So he goes from Kentucky to Texas, A and m
44:09
Speaker 2: that loan losing season and the infamous Junction Boys training
44:12
Speaker 2: camp in Junction, Texas. More than one hundred players showed
44:16
Speaker 2: up for workouts and triple digit temperatures. No water breaks
44:19
Speaker 2: were allowed. In fact, they'd get be given salt tablets,
44:24
Speaker 2: but you know which, of course, I know it would
44:28
Speaker 2: hydrate here sort of. But can you imagine only thirty
44:33
Speaker 2: something players made it through. I think we know that
44:37
Speaker 2: wouldn't fly today.
44:39
Speaker 1: That's so. Yeah, hydration, the importance of hydration is something
44:44
Speaker 1: we've learned that Bryant wasn't very innovative when it came
44:47
Speaker 1: to hydrating his athletes. But by some accounts, Brian's first
44:51
Speaker 1: training camp at Alabama nineteen fifty eight was even tougher,
44:54
Speaker 1: and that one lasted three months as opposed to the
44:57
Speaker 1: ten days that they spent in junction. Brian put up
45:00
Speaker 1: a sign, we got to Alabama. Winning isn't everything, but
45:03
Speaker 1: it beats anything that comes in second. So let you
45:06
Speaker 1: know kind of the mantra, and that Ethos was there.
45:08
Speaker 1: He wins a national championship in nineteen sixty two. Year four,
45:12
Speaker 1: he's there. Then Joe Namath arrived next year. The Namath
45:16
Speaker 1: went twenty nine and four into three years as the
45:17
Speaker 1: varsity QB, and they won another national championship in nineteen
45:20
Speaker 1: sixty four, his senior year.
45:23
Speaker 2: You know, there's a great stat jay about college coaches
45:27
Speaker 2: that it works today rarely, and it's true in the NFL.
45:30
Speaker 2: It's true for the most part. If you don't win,
45:34
Speaker 2: if you don't win the big one in your first
45:35
Speaker 2: five years, you usually don't win it. It is really rare.
45:39
Speaker 2: I think Pete Carroll was one of the few to
45:40
Speaker 2: ever pull it off to win a championship either in
45:43
Speaker 2: college or pro after sort of his fifth year sort
45:47
Speaker 2: of you know, in the mix and stuff like that.
45:49
Speaker 2: So it is it is amazing how that pattern has
45:53
Speaker 2: held whether you go back to the Bear Bryan era
45:56
Speaker 2: or you look you look now, I'll tell you they used.
46:00
Speaker 1: To have like a full you know, like a you
46:02
Speaker 1: can have a five year plan, right and you can
46:04
Speaker 1: be given you know, full recruiting class and you know
46:07
Speaker 1: multiple recruiting classes have a fully stocked roster of your players.
46:11
Speaker 1: Right that doesn't exist. But like like Brian Kelly at
46:13
Speaker 1: LSU now right, like, well.
46:15
Speaker 2: We're gonna and Kaylen de Bor ain't gonna get five
46:18
Speaker 2: years if he doesn't have a big win soon. Here's
46:23
Speaker 2: a fun little fact on Joe Namath. He had originally
46:26
Speaker 2: committed to Maryland, but he needed to score seven fifty
46:31
Speaker 2: in the SATs. They couldn't. He didn't score the first time.
46:35
Speaker 2: I think he got like seven thirty and they were
46:38
Speaker 2: waiting for him to do that. He couldn't get in.
46:40
Speaker 2: Alabama got w into this Bryant since Howard Schnellenberger to
46:44
Speaker 2: Beaver Falls. Schnellenberger spends a week according Joe Namas mom
46:50
Speaker 2: as much as Joe Namath and well, as they say,
46:54
Speaker 2: the rest is history. Alabama, of course, won another national
46:57
Speaker 2: championship the following season. Ken Stabler was the backup quarterback
47:01
Speaker 2: on that squad, and his most famous moment came in
47:04
Speaker 2: a game played in a downpour against Auburn in sixty
47:06
Speaker 2: seven when he had a winding forty seven yard run
47:09
Speaker 2: where the game's only touchdown very stable or esque, you
47:12
Speaker 2: can almost make sure right now, you know it was
47:15
Speaker 2: literally the snake and in many ways, that winding run
47:20
Speaker 2: helped help help forge that nickname.
47:24
Speaker 1: You know, there's a clip on YouTube of that play
47:26
Speaker 1: and it features Bear Bryant describing it, like I think
47:28
Speaker 1: during his Coaches Show or something. You hear Bear Bryant
47:31
Speaker 1: describing the play and Keith Jackson takes you in and
47:34
Speaker 1: out of that clip. And for colle football fans, right,
47:37
Speaker 1: it doesn't get any better than that. You got the
47:39
Speaker 1: voice of Key Jackson, the voice of Bear Bryant. You know,
47:41
Speaker 1: listening to some of these Bryant clips, he really sounds
47:44
Speaker 1: like Phil Harris, who was the voice of Blue the
47:46
Speaker 1: Bear in the Disney animated Jungle Book from the nineteen sixties.
47:50
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of that movie, and like hearing
47:53
Speaker 1: Bear Bryant sounds like Blue the Bear.
47:55
Speaker 2: This is why you're here? Where else are you gotta
47:57
Speaker 2: get a Jungle Book reference in narration to tell college
48:02
Speaker 2: football look Ketdy Stabler. He holds a bit of a
48:06
Speaker 2: dubious distinction, but we'll get into this. He was the
48:09
Speaker 2: quarterback of the sixty six Alabama team that went eleven
48:12
Speaker 2: and zero and then they won the Sugar Bowl. They
48:14
Speaker 2: didn't lose, and it was one of Bryan's only three
48:18
Speaker 2: undefeated teams at Alabama that did not win a national title.
48:23
Speaker 2: That was the year that Notre Dame of Michigan State
48:26
Speaker 2: played to a famous ten to ten tie in that
48:28
Speaker 2: season and both would end up finishing ahead of Alabama. Now,
48:33
Speaker 2: the poll voters didn't give Alabama much credit for they
48:36
Speaker 2: had a thirty Part of it was strength to schedule.
48:38
Speaker 2: They had a thirty nine to zero non conference victory
48:41
Speaker 2: against Louisiana Tech, and you could say they were doc
48:46
Speaker 2: points because Louisiana Tech was an all white team. This
48:49
Speaker 2: is the quote missing ring that some Alabama fans talk about.
48:53
Speaker 2: But I could make a case that they shouldn't have
48:56
Speaker 2: gotten one in seventy three that he gets because the
48:59
Speaker 2: UPI war or to cut their titled football championship before
49:02
Speaker 2: the bowl game. They would go on to lose the
49:04
Speaker 2: Sugar Bowl to Notre Dame. But they got that title anyway,
49:08
Speaker 2: so you could argue maybe they were the best team.
49:11
Speaker 2: But you know, this is one of those things where
49:14
Speaker 2: Bear has six national titles. You can argue which six
49:17
Speaker 2: he should get credit for, but the six is probably
49:20
Speaker 2: the right number, regardless of whether you think he deserved
49:24
Speaker 2: it in sixty six and not in seventy three or
49:26
Speaker 2: vice versa.
49:27
Speaker 1: I guess that's one of the benefits of longevity, right,
49:29
Speaker 1: that it can even out if you last, you know,
49:31
Speaker 1: a quarter century in the job, like things will kind
49:34
Speaker 1: of even out for you. You get some breaks and
49:36
Speaker 1: lose out on some things. But it's also unfortunately one
49:40
Speaker 1: of the problems with hole based championships, right, there's so
49:43
Speaker 1: much room for personal biases and agendas to creep in,
49:46
Speaker 1: you know, And it's fair to wonder if there were
49:48
Speaker 1: political messages being sent as well, because in this case,
49:51
Speaker 1: both Notre Dame and Michigan State had integrated teams.
49:56
Speaker 2: Look, this might have totally gone beyond football. And we
49:59
Speaker 2: were talking about it with the lack of Alabama players
50:02
Speaker 2: winning Heisman trophies back, especially those great players. We just
50:06
Speaker 2: talked about your name, it's your stablers, etc. That a
50:09
Speaker 2: message was being sent to the state of Alabama. Alabama
50:12
Speaker 2: was the epicenter of the civil rights battles of the
50:14
Speaker 2: fifties and sixties, and to this day, city name names
50:18
Speaker 2: can evoke turning points in the civil rights movement. You
50:20
Speaker 2: just say the names of Alabama cities and immediately it
50:23
Speaker 2: evokes certain visuals. Montgomery, that's the home of Rosa Parks
50:27
Speaker 2: and the bus boycott that's in nineteen fifty five. Selma,
50:31
Speaker 2: that's the side of Bloody Sunday, and of course the
50:33
Speaker 2: beatings on that Edmund Pettis Bridge. Birmingham, the location of
50:37
Speaker 2: so many Iron Bowl meetings between Alabama and Auburn, and
50:41
Speaker 2: of course forever associated with Martin Luther King's letter from
50:45
Speaker 2: a jail cell in Birmingham. So as much as Bryant
50:48
Speaker 2: was becoming the face of Alabama football, George Wallace and
50:52
Speaker 2: Bull Connor were still the names most associated with the
50:56
Speaker 2: state and this sort of look, this is one of
51:00
Speaker 2: those things where you can write both cases on Bear
51:06
Speaker 2: Bryan on this did he was he too slow? Or
51:09
Speaker 2: was he the one bringing folks along? And there are
51:14
Speaker 2: there's evidence to support both narratives.
51:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and I you know, you hear more kind
51:25
Speaker 1: of some things behind the scenes that he had done,
51:28
Speaker 1: or some thoughts or things that he had said. We'll
51:30
Speaker 1: kind of get into that, but you know, the flip
51:31
Speaker 1: side of that to me is that you know, he
51:34
Speaker 1: had so much clouts, you know, and you know, by
51:37
Speaker 1: the mid sixties especially, he's won those those three championships.
51:41
Speaker 1: You know, could have had a fourth, you know, and
51:43
Speaker 1: maybe he's being punished because he hadn't been more proactive
51:46
Speaker 1: for integration. But you just wonder, like, could he have
51:49
Speaker 1: exercised his cloud that he had, you know, what would
51:52
Speaker 1: have been the cost to him? Like you know, at
51:54
Speaker 1: the same time, Dean Smith coming in, who hasn't won
51:57
Speaker 1: a national championship, won't win another national championship until the
52:00
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, you know, and he's taking a risk to
52:03
Speaker 1: integrate his team, and he's getting hung in effigy, you
52:06
Speaker 1: know in the from trees in North Carolina. Now here
52:09
Speaker 1: in Alabama, a much more established Baron Bryant is not
52:15
Speaker 1: going out and taking that risk. It's a it is.
52:24
Speaker 2: I think about this all the time with our own
52:25
Speaker 2: current political divides today, and you get people on any
52:30
Speaker 2: side of an issue frustrated that something doesn't happen faster,
52:34
Speaker 2: and it always looks worse in hindsight, and sometimes you
52:40
Speaker 2: have to understand what was happening in the moment.
52:43
Speaker 1: You know.
52:43
Speaker 2: One of my favorite ways to sort of express this
52:46
Speaker 2: is civil unions were necessary to get to same legalization,
52:50
Speaker 2: the same sex marriage. You couldn't have done the leap
52:52
Speaker 2: without it. But in hindsight, the civil unions period of
52:56
Speaker 2: our history looks silly, and I think that sometimes it is.
53:01
Speaker 2: It is why guess what, That's why history is complicated.
53:04
Speaker 2: That's why America is complicated. But this, I think in
53:08
Speaker 2: this case, you see both sides of this narrative.
53:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's kind of hard to pin Beverb bryan down,
53:13
Speaker 1: you know where you stood on things like so he
53:15
Speaker 1: had one quote once he said something to fact on
53:18
Speaker 1: Marthy King said, I don't necessarily agree with everything Martin
53:21
Speaker 1: Luther King says, but I do see the wisdom, you know,
53:25
Speaker 1: in his beliefs. And you know, for the records, you know,
53:28
Speaker 1: like Malcolm ex didn't agree with everything that Martin Luster
53:30
Speaker 1: King said either. So you know the fact that Barb
53:33
Speaker 1: Bryant wasn't in one hundred percent agreeing with him, that
53:36
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily put him on one side or another, just
53:39
Speaker 1: on a personal note, kind of capturing both the both
53:43
Speaker 1: the value of football there and kind of the sense
53:46
Speaker 1: of racism, you know, almost entrenched in the state.
53:50
Speaker 2: You know.
53:50
Speaker 1: My first visit to Birmingham was in nineteen ninety six.
53:53
Speaker 1: I was covering the NBA basketball tournament regional and I
53:56
Speaker 1: got inundated with on both fronts. Right, I checked into
53:59
Speaker 1: my hotel. Well, I turned on the TV and on
54:01
Speaker 1: the local news, there's this countdown timer in the court down.
54:04
Speaker 1: What's it taking down? You know, hours, minute seconds to
54:06
Speaker 1: you sitting down? Then to get to the sports segment
54:08
Speaker 1: of the broadcast, and sportscaster says, well, we can tell well,
54:10
Speaker 1: it's almost time for the start of Alabama spring football.
54:13
Speaker 1: Like that thing of it that they had a countdown
54:17
Speaker 1: timer on the local news. I love that. I love
54:20
Speaker 1: it so And then, you know, I go out for
54:22
Speaker 1: a walk and I come across the square that I
54:24
Speaker 1: mainly recognize as that backdrop for the footage of those
54:28
Speaker 1: attack dogs being sticked on black marchers and the fire
54:32
Speaker 1: hoses being set on peaceful protesters. I went to the
54:36
Speaker 1: Civil Rights museum they have there, and it's powerful. It
54:39
Speaker 1: contains the barrows from the jail cell where Kay wrote
54:43
Speaker 1: his letter. At the end of the tour, You're looking
54:45
Speaker 1: out the window at this sixteen Street Baptist church that
54:49
Speaker 1: was bombed in nineteen sixty three, killing four little black
54:53
Speaker 1: girls that were inside there. And you know, I wasn't
54:57
Speaker 1: necessarily thinking about Alabama football at that moment. But you know,
55:00
Speaker 1: when you when you broaden your scope and realize that
55:04
Speaker 1: Bryant was coaching in the middle of all of that.
55:07
Speaker 1: You know, on the one hand, there's a governor who's
55:10
Speaker 1: pled segregation forever in a speech and he's literally stood
55:13
Speaker 1: in a doorway to block black students from attending a
55:15
Speaker 1: white school. And maybe you can see why the football
55:18
Speaker 1: coach of the flagship state school wasn't leading the way
55:20
Speaker 1: in integration, right, But again the flip side is he
55:24
Speaker 1: was one of the more powerful people in the state,
55:27
Speaker 1: you know, and could he have used that or maybe
55:29
Speaker 1: I'm being naives well.
55:31
Speaker 2: And again it goes back to it is it's easy
55:33
Speaker 2: to see in hindsight and we don't fully you know,
55:37
Speaker 2: I talk about I think about it now. You know,
55:39
Speaker 2: it's easy to You can stand on principle and then
55:42
Speaker 2: suddenly be eliminated from your ability to have any influence. Right,
55:46
Speaker 2: for all we know, Bear Bryant stands up to him,
55:48
Speaker 2: Wallace has him fired. Football program gets defunded, right Bordertow
55:52
Speaker 2: And then what happened, right you we don't know, and
55:58
Speaker 2: is it doesn't take away from the fact that he
56:02
Speaker 2: chose not to try, at least to do it the
56:05
Speaker 2: way that would seem like he had the political capital
56:09
Speaker 2: to do. But look Bryant was You could tell he
56:12
Speaker 2: tended to defer and to fleck when he was pressed
56:14
Speaker 2: about the issue. It had come up in sixty one
56:17
Speaker 2: when thanks to the Big Ten's old rule that teams
56:19
Speaker 2: couldn't make back to back appearances in the Rose Bowl,
56:22
Speaker 2: it looked like a spot could open up because Minnesota
56:24
Speaker 2: was back, was on track to win the conference again,
56:27
Speaker 2: so then they were going to have to take a
56:29
Speaker 2: different team, and there were rumblings that UCLA's players were
56:31
Speaker 2: going to stage some sort of protest if they had
56:34
Speaker 2: played against a segregated Alabama team. Jim Murray the LA
56:37
Speaker 2: Times went to Alabama to check things out for himself,
56:39
Speaker 2: and he wrote, Birmingham, Alabama show place at the Deep
56:42
Speaker 2: South gateway to the ku kux Klan. The water is rough,
56:47
Speaker 2: the water fountains in the airport. Jar you colored only
56:50
Speaker 2: the pretense that the world is divided into people and
56:53
Speaker 2: non people. If you don't notice them, eat, drink, or
56:55
Speaker 2: go to school with them, they're not there. And then
56:58
Speaker 2: he also described going to Bryant's media availability, Coach Brian asked,
57:01
Speaker 2: what do you think of the announcement out of UCLA
57:03
Speaker 2: that the colored players would not take the field against
57:06
Speaker 2: your team if it got to the Rose Bowl, And
57:08
Speaker 2: Brian says, oh, I would have nothing to say about that.
57:12
Speaker 2: Neither will the university, I am sure. And then one
57:16
Speaker 2: of the local Alabama writers chimed in, tell them West
57:19
Speaker 2: Coast and lovers to go lick your boots bear it. Look,
57:25
Speaker 2: you have to understand the culture of the moment, which
57:27
Speaker 2: is why we're including these important snippets here. Those columns
57:33
Speaker 2: were so enduring that Alabama fans blaming them for stirring
57:37
Speaker 2: negative sentiment about the sixty sixteen when the reality was
57:41
Speaker 2: that Murray hadn't given much thought to the Crimson Tide
57:44
Speaker 2: or written about them in five years. But when USC
57:47
Speaker 2: went to Birmingham for that historic game in nineteen seventy,
57:51
Speaker 2: Jim Murray went with them. And we're going to find
57:53
Speaker 2: out what he had to say about Alabama on that trip,
57:56
Speaker 2: the triumphant reemergence of the program in the seventies, the
57:59
Speaker 2: lost years after Bear Bryant, the dominance of the Nick
58:02
Speaker 2: saban Era in the next episode of Dynastic and a
58:05
Speaker 2: quick reminder here, please follow us on social media at
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Speaker 2: Dynastic Pod and to follow, like, and review us wherever
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Speaker 2: you listen to your podcast, and on our YouTube channel.
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Speaker 2: And before we say goodbye on this episode, I want
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Speaker 2: to thank Steve Hall, our partner and executive producer, Andrew Samson,
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Speaker 2: the head of programming at our production partner, show Book Media,
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Speaker 2: and of course Kevin Kennedy, our producer, and Meredith Violi,
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Speaker 2: our chief researcher. We will see you on the next episode.