 |
|
|
|
|
|
| Back |
Previous on Jeremy Bosch Memorial HOF |
Next on Jeremy Bosch Memorial HOF |
ck
(68.201.146.167) on 7/25/2005 - 8:42 p.m. says: ( 3 views
)
|
"Here's part 1 again...."
|
|
Column: The decline of Alabama football
Bill Robinson
Columnist
Friday, July 22, 2005
Editor’s note: This is the first installment in a three-part series about the decline of Alabama’s once-storied football program.
Is this truly the end of an empire? Alabama enters the 2005 season stalked by a strange and almost unreal atmosphere. Once upon a short time ago, the Crimson Tide was the nation’s No. 1 football dynasty. From 1919 through 1999, the Tide owned more victories than even Notre Dame and Michigan. And Texas and Oklahoma.
In this new century? Well, Alabama is a loser; a 30-31 record. The once great scourge of the Southeastern Conference, the U. of A. has lost one more game than it has won in the first five years of the 21st century. In fact, Alabama has had only two winning years during that time.
The saying is that Bama does not yet realize that the old Bear is dead. The British have a fine way of putting it; comparisons are odious. Indeed they are, yet how can you judge Tide football without including Bear Bryant?
Mike Shula is the seventh head coach at The Capstone since the days of The Bear. That’s right! … I did not stutter … SEVEN head coaches (and that’s not counting all the unfortunate assistants who got caught in this inhuman meat-grinder).
The football coach’s office in Tuscaloosa has become the biggest bus stop in college football. And it is certainly the busiest.
The Bear died on Jan. 26, 1983. Young men not yet born now wear crimson and white. In my opinion, Alabama officials made mistake after mistake after Bryant’s death. In 1982, former Tide end Danny Ford led Clemson University to the national championship. A young woman television reporter, addressing the nation, said that Ford’s team, the “Clemson Tide,” was voted No. 1 by AP and UPI after defeating Nebraska, 24-13, in the Orange Bowl.
That should have been enough of a Freudian slip to inform the numbskulls in Tuscaloosa to name Ford the successor to Bryant.
But, no! They picked Ray Perkins, a losing coach with the New York Giants.
It was also interesting to see that Howard Schnellenberger, a former player and assistant coach under Bryant, won the national championship in 1983 … in the same year of The Bear’s death. Howard’s Miami Hurricanes upset mighty Nebraska 31-30, also in the Orange Bowl, to win the title. Get this! … Nebraska was the killer offensive team of the past 30 years in college football … an example was that the Cornhuskers whipped Minnesota 83-13! … the Huskers scored 613 points before heading to Miami for the Orange Bowl.
Schnellenberger, in one of the great called shots in sports history, predicted his ‘Canes would win.
Yet, neither Ford nor Schnellenberger were even considered as a Bama head coach. How ridiculous can you get?
Did they believe that Howard’s last name too much resembled the sound of a German pickle factory? Was that a bad image for Bama?
Alabama’s powers-that-be, however, those so-called “big money boys,” the “Big Mules” from Birmingham, did a knee-jerk reaction and named one of their favorite Bear Bryant players, the aforementioned young Mr. Perkins, as the coach to succeed Bryant.
Ray Perkins was one of my favorites, too … but as a player, not as a coach. He had lost almost 10 more games than he had won with the Giants. He was a professional coach, and unused to the college game, and the endless, remorseless and unforgiving hours that a college coach has to spend just recruiting.
Ford and Schnellenberger took to recruiting like a duck to water. You have to flat-out LOVE college football before you can coach it!
People are supposed to learn from their mistakes. Coach Frank Thomas won three national championships at Alabama. He was only 31 when he got the job. He was a great friend and mentor of mine at the U-of-A. But they were trying to get rid of Coach Thomas … almost from the time he arrived in 1931. Coach Tommy, who recruited players like Dixie Howell, Don Hutson and Bear Bryant, was 9-1 his first year, then 8-2 his second season.
But Thomas failed to beat No. 1 foe Tennessee (Bama didn’t play Auburn in those days) those first two years. Bryant, a sophomore on the 1933 team, said, “Coach Tommy was so nervous getting ready for Tennessee that week that one day at practice he stuck the lighted end of his cigar in his mouth.”
The Tide topped Tennessee 12-6 in ‘33; the heat was off Thomas, and the next year he won the national championship and won the Rose Bowl in an upset.
Thomas’ teams lost but eight games his first eight years. In fact, the Tide was college football’s winningest program in the 1930’s … yet, still the Big Mules weren’t totally happy with the little man who smoked the big Churchillian cigar.
(To be continued.)
This story can be found at: http://www.oanow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=OAN%2FMGArticle%2FOAN_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031783995247&path=%21sports%21index.html
|
|
