Forward to the Past: the SWC reborn?

A busy off-season of college football rumor-mongering and high-stakes brinkmanship appears to have ended a long way short of the "revolutionary" realignment that seemed all but a done deal until the 11th hour of the twelve-day Big XII missile crisis. A sport which often infuriates even its most loyal partisans by the almost imperceptible slowness with which it reforms itself off the field appeared to be on the very verge of a near instantaneous leap into the far reaches of an utterly unkown future. The men at the very center of the game made public comments based on the assumption that this shift would certainly take place. Bob Stoops referred to the proposed Pac-16 as "very exciting" and indulged in on-the-record comments about Oklahoma's prospective new conference rivalries. Deloss Dodd's, the ever-present University of Texas Athletics Director, gathered his school's coaches to inform them that the Big XII was dead and that the Longhorns would be heading west.

Then... nothing. Or almost nothing. The Mountain West switched Utah for Boise. The two most old-school conferences finally got a championship game by adding Nebraska to the Big Ten [12] and Colorado and Utah to the Pac. The Big XII [10] decided that championship games are for conferences that like making life harder for their champions and engaging in actual competition. Notre Dame breathed a sigh of relief. And that was all.

The question we are left with is whether the crazy off-season of 2010 ["expansion-palooza" as some are calling the affair] was a near total shakeup masterminded by a single outsider [former Tennis executive now Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott] or the next incremental step in a gradual, inexorable evolution toward the long expected "age of the super-conference." Due to the lightening pace at which rumor became event and event became non-event there is, I think, a general tendency to view this entire affair as an aberration. Many commentators are giving Larry Scott massive credit for "shaking up" the stolid, crusty Pac-10 and coming nearer than any thought possible to advancing college football more than one step forward in a single move.

Viewed in light of the conversations that surrounded the last major wave of realignment, however, this summer's events seem less unprecedented and revolutionary. Back in 1988 then SEC commissioner Roy Kramer spotted a potentially lucrative loophole in an NCAA by-law that implicitly did not apply to football. The rule states that conferences made up of twelve or more members may decide regular-season champions through championship games. Kramer accurately predicted that a one game playoff for a two-division, twelve-member SEC could generate massive revenue as well as the national prestige with pollsters that the league had historically lacked. The search was on for the best fitting two schools to incorporate.

Meanwhile, the once-mighty Southwest Conference was undergoing an existential crisis. No SWC school could boast a national championship since the 1970 Longhorns. During the ensuing two decades every member institution barring Rice, Baylor, and Arkansas had met with major NCAA sanctions on account of cheating scandals. A negative cycle of pay-for-play slush fund arms races and rival schools turning one another in to the authorities culminated with SMU receiving a one-year total suspension of its football program after the 1986 season. There was some symmetrical justice in this move as it had been ultra-rich oilman and SMU booster William Clements who first set the league on its slippery slope to financial depravity. By 1986 Clements occupied the Texas governor's mansion. The unrepentant Mustang-backer sensationalized a state whose tolerance for football motivated madness is remarkably high by instructing SMU to continue its slush fund payments to players even after existence of the practice had come to public light.

Cash incentives for players and recruits had been an open secret in the SWC for years. Gary Shaw claimed in his sensational 1972 expose on the Darrell Royal regime, Meat On The Hoof, that on his recruiting visit to SMU coaches had unabashedly asked him what kind of car he wanted to drive and promised that one would await him upon his enrollment in Dallas. Shaw claimed he had partly chosen Texas precisely because UT made no such offers. Coaches on Austin only told him, "If you come here you will have a chance to start." But after Royal retired in 1976 the 'Horns began to loose their overwhelming competitive advantage and UT also slid into the new culture of cheating. Between 1981 and 1984 SMU compiled a 41-5-1 record and earned three SWC championships with teams made up of blue-chip recruits who had gone to Dallas for money, stayed for money, and played for money. Conference rivals who cried foul were no more than pots screaming "black" at the kettle. By the time Roy Kramer began tentatively searching for new SEC members in 1989 the SWC had become a national laughing stock and byword for disgrace.

When Darrell Royal and Frank Broyles retired in 1976 they unknowingly took the Southwest Conference's former glory with them.

Frank Broyles, Royal's old sparring partner then Arkansas AD, chaffed under the guilt-by-association his beloved Razorbacks suffered. Broyles was also an astute business manager. He had already done more than anyone to move Arkansas toward the modern age of athletics finance, increasing alumni donations and exploring all manner of new revenue streams. As part of that process Broyles petitioned the SWC for permission to negotiate an independent distribution contract for University of Arkansas radio broadcasts. That request was denied.

Other league members did not want to allow the Razorbacks, who alone enjoyed the advantage of not sharing their state with any rival school, any revenue stream or media market it did not have to share. That short-sighted decision alienated power-brokers in Fayetteville and only heightened the mistrust that was rampant within the SWC ranks.

A former University of Texas women's athletic director Donna Lo-piano summed the situation up best, telling Sally Jenkins:

"[The SWC] is a bunch of institutions that care more about themselves than each other. It's a bad business conference."

Arkansas people began to cast hungry eyes over the SEC's notoriously passionate fan bases and the cache new visiting conference mates would bring. As one Arkansas athletics department official astutely foresaw:

"You don't have to worry about selling out the stadium—you have to worry about expanding it."

SWC average attendances fell consistently through the 1980s while those across the SEC only rose. And home gates were only the tip of the iceberg. By 1990 the complete overhaul of college football's relationship to television broadcasting was in full swing. The sixty-three member College Football Alliance had recently signed a $300 million five-year deal with ABC effective to begin in 1991. The promised riches that led to the landmark Oklahoma Board of Regents vs. NCAA Supreme Court case in 1984 were finally beginning to materialize. If University of Arkansas officials felt alienated by the refusal of the SWC brethren to liberate their radio broadcasting rights, they experienced even greater emotions when considering the possible resources conference TV deals might command in the brave new world of post-NCAA monopoly contract negotiations. The 1990s promised to be an very uncertain decade for collegiate football, and athletics directors worked tirelessly to figure out the best options for their institutions.

Many factors remained uncertain, but several issues could not have been clearer. Firstly, the money collegiate football could command in its immediate future promised to dwarf past revenue. Secondly, through conference-based contracts individual schools could hope to gain a larger slice of the pie than they had under the old NCAA contracts. Consequently, the factors that had created the long-established conference alignments that had defined the game during the twentieth century would necessarily be superseded by new considerations. If Arkansas bolted, the SWC would not only be a discredited, scandal-ridden hive of mutual distrust and institutionalized backbiting, it would also be a single-state league with little appeal to national broadcasters.

While the SEC looked to expand, add a championship game, and promised to command big bucks on the open market, the SWC became a decreasingly appealing asset. Officials at Texas and Texas A&M did everything they could increase their market share in the ailing conference. In 1992, the first year Arkansas played in the SEC, the SWC introduced new revenue sharing arrangements. The league scrapped its ancient 50-50 division of gate revenues between home and away teams. Member institutions playing in televised non-conference games were to retain 80% of the revenue generate rather than the previous 50%. And schools participating in post-season play were to keep the first $500,000 before sharing the remainder with the league as opposed to the previous $300,000. As the SWC cash-cow grew sicker the Longhorns and Aggies milked it harder and kept a greater share. In a statement that rings with starling familiarity to football fans in 2010 DeLoss Dodds, whose tenure as AD in Austin began back in 1981, brazenly told a reporter:

"The world is going to dictate where Texas goes. The marketplace will dictate it."

The very portrait of dysfunction.

The openness with which UT officials implicitly acknowledged that the school was considering following Arkansas out of the SWC created panic in the state legislature. David Silbey, a State Representative and Baylor alum, threatened that if the Longhorns and Aggies left the SWC without his Bears:

"The next time they want to talk about appropriations for new physics professors, they'll have to come through me."

Such threats will surface every time conferences realign. Schools that can command the highest market share will go looking for more, and those that cannot will threaten, rant, claw, beg, and sell their dignity cheap to avoid the ultimate uncertainty of temporary homelessness.

Market driven conference realignment in the early 1990s also created headaches for independents. As future television revenues seemed predestined to follow the most attractive and prestigious conference lineups, the east coast's host of historic independents looked for safe harbors in which to anchor their football programs. The Big East Conference, formed primarily for basketball in 1979, began conference play in football in 1991 to provide a more stable future for nervous independents such as Miami, Boston College, Syracuse, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Rutgers. When Penn State began Big Ten play in 1993 Notre Dame stood alone as the last great independent. Within three short seasons a landscape that had once been filled with independents who had every hope of playing in major bowls and winning national titles [as the Hurricanes, Nittany Lions, and Fighting Irish often did] was all but devoid of such schools.

Only Notre Dame's own lucrative mystique allowed the Great White Whale of conference realignment to hold out. Even then, expectations of the Irish's impending move to the Big Ten ran wild. The possibility of that move created a nervous apprehension in Big East country then as it still does today. One Big East AD commented to a reporter:

"Big Ten officials have declared a moratorium [of four years] on expansion, but who knows if they'll stick to it, once they see the writing on the wall?"

Then as today the Big Ten had its "timetable" and appeared to hold more cards than other conferences. But the bottom line was and always will be the market. Money might make the Big Ten move at any moment in any one of a number of directions. After that everyone else would have to move as well. Of course, Notre Dame didn't want to move. NBC's relationship with ND football began in February of 1990 and has funded Irish resilience at premium rates of return ever since. That precious money, the lifeline keeping Rockne's legacy of lone defiance against the simultaneously loved and hated Big Ten alive, allowed ND athletics director Dick Rosenthal to state emphatically:

"We've been an independent for 148 years. We are independent by desire."

Twenty years on that same money allowed current Notre Dame AD Jim Swarbrick to state that his school's "strong preference" remains independence [a state of being sought over every alternative save Armageddon].

The potential wild card in the whole process both in the early 90s, as today, was post-season revenue. Power players want to figure out the way to maximize bowl revenue while minimizing the number of mouths that revenue feeds and the list of schools that enjoy the opportunity of winning a national championship. Within two seasons of Arkansas' departure from the crumbling SWC the members of the College Football Association had negotiated a post-season structure known as the Bowl Coalition, which pitted the two highest ranked member teams in a championship bowl. This embryonic system grew into the current BCS with the inclusion of the Rose Bowl conferences in 1998. Bowls wanted the most lucrative matchups. Conferences wanted guaranteed bowl berths to add to their new TV contracts. No one except the fans wanted the unpredictable chaos of a playoff, which might generate more money but would also expose bigger fish to post-season competition and claims to revenue shares from upstart minnows.

Orange Bowl president Arthur Hertz stated to Sports Illustrated:

"I'm told by our legal people that if the Big Eight is not constituted the same as it was when we signed the contract [in 1988, with NBC, for six years], then we have the right to reevaluate."

In other words, conference realignment offered the opportunity for renegotiated post-season contracts that could mirror the game changing value of new regular season conference contracts. In such a market the parochial appeal of smaller conferences like the Big Eight and SWC held limited appeal. Frank Broyles saw the writing on the wall and even before Arkansas had officially accepted an invitation from the SEC publicly predicted:

"The '90s are predicted to be moving in the direction of three super-conferences, each with a major network."

Dodds sensed the future direction of college football with equal clarity. Bigger conferences housing multiple heavyweights and boasting blockbusting championship games were the wave of the future. The old SWC was not.

Viewed in light of the landscape as it stood in 1990, the summer of 2010 seems less revolutionary and more a case of 'same song, different verse.' In that same light the final outcome of the Big XII missile crisis seems even more surprising. It also would appear to be utterly unsustainable. The same factors which made the old SWC unstable and undesirable after the departure of Arkansas makes the current Big XII [10] a necessarily impermanent solution. The show may have been temporarily saved at the eleventh hour by money Dan Beebe raised from sources presently known only unto God and a select few other similarly tight-lipped individuals, but in the grand scheme simple market economics must dictate that the patch job will not last. Who in their right mind beyond the Texas-Southwest region will tune in on a weekly basis come fall Saturdays to witness the ritual ass whippings Texas and OU will most assuredly dole out to the grateful likes of Kansas, Iowa State, and Baylor?

Tom Osborne in 2010. Not so keen on Texas.

In 1990 the University of Arkansas left the old SWC because the league had decayed to a shell of its former self. A once-proud conference [home to the state of Texas' first national championship team and first Heisman winner -- neither of which hailed from Austin] had become an irrelevant, parochial group of infighting, backbiting brethren whose incessant scandals reflected poorly on the Hogs and had even begun to cost their athletics programs precious revenue rather than provide it. Association with the dysfunctional Southwest Conference family had, quite simply, become a liability where once it had been an asset.

In June of 2010 the University of Nebraska fled the company of its century-long conference mates for the safe refuge of Big Ten Country. For fifteen years Huskers have indignantly felt the offensive implications of the expanded Big XII's revenue sharing arrangement [which reflects more nearly the post-1992 SWC than the old Big Eight], and the location of the conference headquarters in Dallas. The extra second which miraculously appeared on the clock at the end of the 2010 conference championship game [much to Tom Osborne's chagrin] was, perhaps, the final straw. In pastures new Big Red can be one of twelve equally heard voices at the table rather than one ten utterly irrelevant ones.

Texas politicians and the complete dependence of OU football on its annual date at the state fair in Dallas may be able to keep the rump of the Big XII together for a while, but neither can force the football pedigree rich flagship institutions of other states to suffer bad company indefinitely. Texas politics could not keep Arkansas in the fold back in 1990 when common sense and market economics made the SEC an attractive prospect. Nor could they keep Big Red in the fold when the stable, equitable, lucrative, and cordial Big Ten came calling twenty years later. They, Dan Beebe, nor any other force save God himself will not prevent the Big XII [10] from crashing in a blaze of unmarketable ignominy sooner or later.

Questions have been raised as to the new name for the now numerically challenged Big XII. Presuming the obvious title of "Longhorn Athletic Conference" will not be adopted for fear of depriving Adam his fig leaf, there really is only one sensible choice:

The Southwest Conference.

Horns and Tide take it to the wire

On a sultry Miami evening on New Year’s Day 1965 the Universities of Texas and Alabama met on the gridiron for the sixth time. The Crimson Tide had never beaten the Longhorns. Their most recent meeting in the 1960 Bluebonnet Bowl had resulted in a 3-3 tie that would have been an Alabama victory without the Longhorns dropping Halfback Bobby Richardson mere inches from the goal-line on fourth down late in the first half. That contest was the first of three post-season meetings between Darrel Royal and Paul Bryant, both of whom were at the height of their powers in the mid-1960s.

Royal, a Bud Wilkinson protégé and former Oklahoma all-American, had effected a total sea-change in Austin since his arrival in 1957. His 1963 team went 11-0, claiming a third consecutive Southwest conference title and the school’s first AP crown. Entering the 1965 Orange Bowl, the Longhorns had lost only three games in four seasons. The Alabama team that waited in Miami for the late arriving, quietly confident Horns stood at 10-0 and had already been voted AP champion. Like Royal, Bryant had turned around a once-proud program at a school that hoped to forget the 1950s. Conference and national championships in 1961 and 1964 achieved that goal emphatically. Pundits and fans alike felt sure that both coaches had more national championship in their futures and it surprised no one when their teams fought out grueling contests that turned on goal-line stands.

The first and second ranked teams in the AP poll rarely met in bowl games in those days, but Alabama-Texas was in January 1965 came as close as imaginably possible to providing such a match. Unbeaten Southwest Conference champion Arkansas had finished behind Alabama and hosted Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl. Royal's team had missed out on their fourth consecutive conference title by the narrowest of margins and were every bit as deserving as Frank Broyles' Razorbacks. The two sides had faced off in Austin on October 17^th and for the first thirty minutes played out a defensive stand-off that only turned on an eighty-one yard punt return for a touchdown by Arkansas defensive back Kenny Hatfield. Offensively, the Hogs achieved little against a Texas defense led by all-American stand-out linebacker Tommy Nobis. Disciplined tackling and regular blitzes from the Hogs' defense interrupted Texas’ passing game, but the Longhorns ground out decent yardage with the run. Halfback Ernie Koy powered his way to a 110-yard day and eventually tired the Razorbacks enough to engineer a scoring drive to tie the game early in the final quarter. The Horns’ defense responded with resounding three-and-out, only to be called for a twelfth man on the field on the ensuing punt. Visibly deflated, Texas allowed the only sustained drive Arkansas enjoyed all day. Quarterback Fred Marshall directed a seventy-five yard scoring march that stood in stark contrast to his under-whelming final passing statistics: 6-12 for 81 yards with a touchdown and an interception. Texas responded late in the game with a bruising drive, again led by Koy’s running. Covering seventy-yards and eating plenty of clock, the Horns reached Arkansas' endzone with only 1:27 to play. Royal’s best chance at a second consecutive unbeaten year was a two-point conversation. Preferring to gamble on glory rather than bank a tie, Royal called a passing play and Quarterback Marv Krystinik failed to find Halfback Hix Green under pressure. The game finished 13-14 -- not for the last time that decade an epic Horns-Hogs meeting that featured an eventual national champion was decided on a two-point play by Texas.

Texas had romped to some big victories over weaker opponents – such as thirty-one and twenty-three point shut-out thrashings of Tulane and Texas Tech to open the year, and a 26-7 romp over hapless 1-9 Texas A&M to end it – but Royal's team had also shown its mettle in some squeakers. The week following the Arkansas loss Texas snapped a twelve year stretch without a road win over Rice in an uninspiring affair that ended 6-3. In a battle of field position, the Horns needed an outstanding special teams performance from Ernie Koy. For once, the Halfback's rushing stats did not eclipse his kicking as nine punts for a 46.3 yard average made the critical difference. In the Red River Shootout on October 10^th Texas gave up 109 yards rushing in the first half alone, while OU Linebacker Carl McAdams produced a dominating career day with 18 tackles, a fumble recovery, and a twenty-eight yard interception return. But Krystinik finally emerged with a sixty-yard scoring drive in the fourth quarter before the defense forced a fumble deep in OU territory. A thirteen-yard TD pass to End Pete Lammons put an unrepresentative gloss on the final score of 28-7.

By New Year’s Day 1965 the 9-1 Longhorns had convincingly beaten over-matched teams, pulled out gritty victories against good ones, and lost a heart-breaker in the noblest possible fashion to a team that would finish 11-0 and claim a shared national title. Royal’s 1964 Longhorns were champions in all but reality, equal in every respect to the Bear’s Crimson Tide. The two teams appeared as virtual mirror images.

Like Texas, Alabama had made easy going of the lighter names on their schedule. A resounding season-opening 31-3 home win over Georgia in Vince Dooley's first game as Bulldogs head-coach preceded 36-6 and 24-0 wins over Tulane and Vanderbilt. Alabama looked unstoppable behind the precision passing and dangerous outside running of senior quarterback Joe Namath. After a post-season suspension for breaking curfew, Namath had worked his way back into Bryant’s good graces and looked set to smash records and make a strong case for the Heisman. His 16 of 21 passes for 167 yard, combined with 55-yard rushing on 11 attempts, for 3 TDs against Georgia were typical for their cool efficiency. Unfortunately, Alabama’s season changed dramatically in the fourth game -- a home date versus North Carolina State. With six minutes remaining in a still scoreless first half, Namath rolled out of the pocket looking for an open receiver and badly turned his knee. With the Tide star already on 7 of 8 passes for 58-yards, the injury interrupted what was shaping up to be another career day. More significantly, in the days before modern reconstructive ligament surgery that single miss-step hampered Namath for the rest of his career. He played professionally until 1977 with great success, including a Super Bowl championship with the Jets in 1969. But the scrambling dual-threat Quarterback that thrilled Tide fans and helped the Bear rebuild Alabama football never left the field of Denny Stadium that October 10^th 1964. Had team doctors possessed the scanning technology available today Namath probably wouldn’t have seen another collegiate snap. Even without Namath, stiffling defense and the competent play of back-up Steve Sloan enabled the Tide to destroy NC State 21-0. As is characteristic of great championship teams, other players rose to the occassion. End Tommy Tolleson set a school record with an eight reception day for eighty-one yards; it hardly seemed to matter who was throwing to him. But in the grander scheme, replacing a talent of Namath’s magnitude was no easy task.

Offensive productivity dropped the following week in a 19-8 win over Tennessee. In Alabama’s sixth game, a home date against Florida, Namath returned to start but re-injured his knee late in the first quarter. Sloan's underwhelming 6 of 11 for 85-yard performance with one interception provided an unwelcome contrast to Namath's talent through the remaining three quarters. Fortunately for Alabama fans, the Tide possessed enough other play-makers to pull through. Fullback Steve Bowman provided eighty-two yards rushing with two scores on just eleven carries, including a thirty-yard score after a thirty-seven yard punt return from Halfback John Mosley in the final quarter. That touchdown tied that game at 14-14 before Bama place-kicker David Ray established a slender lead on a twenty-one yard attempt with three minutes remaining. The Tide needed all the special teams help they could get with a future Heisman Trophy winner in the opposing backfield. Steve Spurrier had an outstanding day, including a perfect seven of seven passing performance in the second half. Following Ray’s late three-pointer the Gator sophomore marched his team down the field with passes of sixteen, nineteen and seventeen yards before Alabama’s defense finally recovered its footing. Alabama sacked Spurrier and dropped Fullback John Felber for a loss with time expiring to force a quick field goal try. Those tackles robbed kicker Jim Hall of the spare seconds he needed to compose himself and the Florida specialist shanked his twenty-four yard attempt.

Two weeks later Alabama secured the SEC title in Birmingham with another narrow escape, beating LSU 17-9. On another mediocre passing performance from Sloan, the Tide held a slender 10-9 lead at halftime and relied entirely on defense to finish the job. Twice LSU drove down to the Alabama eleven-yard line before coming away empty handed. Stand-out defensive tackle Frank McClendon batted down four passes inside the redzone during those two desperate stands. Late in the fourth quarter a thirty-three yard interception return for a touchdown by defensive back Hudson Harris finally sealed a win that had looked very much in doubt.

Another close battle nearly caused Alabama to falter at the final hurdle, but once again one outstanding non-offensive performance made the difference. Hated instate rival Auburn, led by the power-running of consensus all-America Fullback Tucker Frederickson, enjoyed a 301 to 245 yardage edge in the 1964 Iron Bowl. Bama needed a a 107-yard kickoff return from Halfback Ray Ogden on the first play of the second half to tip the balance, earn a 21-14 win, and save the undefeated championship season. Namath returned to action during the game, adding a much needed spark. His twenty-three yard pass to End Ray Perkins provided Alabama’s final score. The stark contrast between Alabama's form before Namath's injury and later desperate wins over Florida, LSU and Auburn could not have been clearer. With him the Tide had some magic and could move the ball. Without, only bruising defense, clutch special teams play and gritty refusal to accept defeat elevated a good team into an unbeaten champion.

The 1965 Orange Bowl was the first collegiate game ever to experiment with an evening kickoff in the hopes of capturing a large prime-time television audience. Critics howled that ten solid hours of New Year’s Day football constituted ‘saturation’, but the masses disagreed. The game provided a gripping spectacle that propelled college football into the lucrative national viewing spotlight it has occupied ever since. The two power-house teams had all season long risen to the biggest occasions and clutched seemingly improbable triumph from the very jaws of grim defeat. Against one another, they played out a dual which ultimately turned on a decision so fine that Bama die-hards still dispute the outcome half a century later.

Several days prior to the game Namath again aggravated his injured knee practicing a routine hand-off. Bryant told reporters with characteristic frankness:

"If we don’t have Namath, our chances against a strong Texas team will be hurt… It’s like losing Sandy Koufax on the eve of the World Series."

By game time Namath’s leg was so heavily taped as to render him virtually immobile. Sloan got the nod for the start, though he also carried a nagging knee injury. Royal’s team had health problems of its own, with End Sandy Sands and Wingback Phil Harris carrying niggling injuries. But Texas did not enter the contest without any key starter. In fact, the Horns were stronger for the return of senior linebacker Timmy Doerr, who had been sidelined since the Arkansas game. Royal said everything coaches are supposed to say, reminding media men that Alabama had gone 6-0 with Sloan as the primary Quarterback. He claimed: "[Sloan] scares us just as much, if not more. He throws too good." But Royal's game-plan revealed his true perspective.

Viewing Sloan as an exploitable weak-link, defensive co-ordinator Mike Campbell had run weeks of rigorous full contact drills focusing on breaking up the Alabama option game and preventing the Tide back-up from finding his rhythm passing with play-action fakes. Texas' powerful defensive front seven blitzed early and often. For the first fifteen minutes this strategy worked perfectly. Alabama produced nothing offensively while the Texas managed to establish their running game and earn several first downs. Ernie Koy blew the game open on a big play late in the first quarter, receiving a pitch-out and turning the corner on the left side of the Bama line. He rumbled for a seventy-nine yard score, helped by the lead blocking of Guard Lee Hensley. On Texas’ next possession Royal ruthlessly exploited a rare Alabama coaching mistake. Changes to the substitution rules in 1964 allowed coaches to remove and return players in the same quarter for the first time since 1952. They could only do so, however, when the clock stopped. During a Bama timeout with Texas facing third and long, Bryant sent in most of his offensive personnel in anticipation of regaining possession. Royal quickly sent in his backup quarterback Jim Hudson, the team’s best deep passer. End George Sauer ran a seem route and when Safety Mickey Andrews took the bait on a pump-fake, Hudson hit him in stride past the fifty-yard line. Sauer raced off for a sixty-nine yard score.

Bryant commented after the game that he couldn’t remember when any team had burned Alabama on two long plays in such startling fashion. With his team desperately lacking a game-changing spark, Bryant once again turned to his hobbled star. Namath entered the game and answered Texas’s second score immediately. Deftly reading the blitzes that had disrupted Sloan, he set about dumping the ball off with calm accuracy. In a crucial eighty-seven yard march the Tide stand-out connected with Ray Perkins for twenty-five and nine yards, Tommy Tolleson for fifteen, and Wayne Cook for nine, before finishing with a seven-yard strike to Wayne Trimble in the endzone. The drive cut the Texas lead to 14-7 and completely changed the flow of the game. No longer was the Texas run-defense going against an option threat in Sloan. The immobile Namath had to rely on vertical passing finished with 255 yards on 18 of 37 passes for two scores. Bama totalled barely fifty team yards rushing. In contrast, Texas managed little through the air but gained more than 200 rushing yards, Koy alone accounting for 133 on twenty-four carries.

Texas had no intentions of surrendering without a fight and responded to Namath's first score with a sustained drive of their own to end the first half. Seventy-two yards, almost entirely on the ground, took the Horns inside inside the Alabama ten-yard line, where they finally stalled. With time running out Kicker David Conway came out for a short attempt. Alabama blocked the effort but in attempting to advance the ball fumbled it right back. Ernie Koy then converted Alabama's second mistake of the day for a one-yard touchdown with only seconds remaining. Texas took an imposing 21-7 lead to the locker-room.

Not for the first or last time in his astonishing career, whatever Bryant said at halftime rejuvenated his team. The Alabama defense dug in and the Longhorns failed to cross the fifty-yard line through the remaining two quarters. On offense, Namath picked up where he had left off and a Bama comeback began to assume the air of inevitability. Only five minutes into the third quarter Namath capped a sixty-three yard drive that featured only five rushing yards with a scoring strike to Ray Perkins. After an exchange of punts to Alabama's field position advantage, the period ended on a twenty-one yard field goal that cut the Texas lead to four at 21-17.

Bama players always said in later years that they never felt any doubt regarding the outcome. Fans in the stadium and the huge national television audience sensed as much when Namath again guided the Tide inside Texas' ten-yard line with less than five minutes remaining in the game. Perkins carried a seven yard pass out of bounds at the Texas six-yard line before Bama abandoned the passing game that had brought them within reach of triumph. Fullback Steve Bowman plunged into the Texas line three straight times for a net gain of five yards. With the ball on the Longhorn one and needing a touchdown, Namath went to the sideline. His coaches were uncertain as to the best option. The Alabama signal-caller made the decision to call his own number on a sneak. Tommy Nobis guessed the call and timed his plunge into the line of scrimmage perfectly to meet Namath. He has always claimed that the Bama legend's first dive came up short and that Namath only reached the endzone crawling on his elbows in a futile second effort. After some deliberation the referees agreed. Bama men, Namath not least among them, swear that the play succeeded. Despite protests, Texas took over possession and clung on for a precious four-point upset.

The next week, watching film back in Austin, Mike Campbell reviewed the play and jubilantly exulted to an assistant:

"Not only didn't Namath score, but not one damn Alabama jersey crossed that goalline."

No one saw things so clearly in the moment. Both sets of players and coaches readily acknowledged that the call could have gone either way. Virtually nothing separated two prolific championship winning programs on that eventful night. Alabama fans felt that if their star Quarterback could make 255 yards passing on a bum knee through three quarters that he would likely have made the decisive difference at full health in four. But injuries and hair's-breadth losses are simply part of the game. Championships with asterisks appended are not. Played out ten times the 1965 Orange Bowl might have resulted in a 5-5 series tie. As it is, the record books only show that Texas won, fair and square.

On January 7th, 2010 the Tide and Horns met for the ninth time, to play for the BCS championship in Pasadena. For the first time in more than twelve glorious decades of winning tradition, the University of Alabama defeated Texas. Early in the first quarter a routine tackle from Bama Defensive End Marcel Dareus put Colt McCoy, the all-time NCAA leader in career wins for a starting Quarterback, out of the game with a pinched nerve in his right shoulder. Redshirt freshman Garrett Gilbert could not have entered a bigger, more overwhelming stage under greater pressure. For the remainder of the first half, with their young signal caller visibly unnerved, Texas faltered and Bama surged. After the break, with the help of sixth-year senior Jordan Shipley [a veritable one-man receiving corps], Gilbert found his groove and posted a reasonably efficient effort. With three minutes remaining, back in possession of the ball and down by only a field goal, Texas fans sensed a repeat of 2005's miraculous fourth-quarter Rose Bowl come-back on the cards. It wasn't to be. Two turnovers gave Bama the victory with a deceptively emphatic final score of 37-21.

Texas fans have far more right to wonder what might have been through four quarters with a healthy star at Quarterback than Bama fans did in January 1965. But the metaphysical futility of presuming on unprovable alternate outcomes given hypothetical contingencies speaks for itself. The record books will ultimately only show that Bama finally managed to best the Longhorns.

(Sources: Pat Culpepper, Inside Texas; Barking Carnival; USA Today CFB encyclopedia; Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

SEC coaching rivalries: Nick Saban vs. Urban Meyer, in context

My last few posts have considered five of the most thrilling coaching rivalries in SEC history: Frank Thomas and Robert Neyland *, Johnny Vaught and Paul Dietzel *, Ralph Jordan and Paul Bryant *, Vince Dooley and Pat Dye *, and Phillip Fulmer and Steve Spurrier *.

I came up with the idea of surveying this question because I was wondering about the historical context of the current titanic Urban Meyer-Nick Saban death struggle. It seemed to me that the SEC has a richer, or at least broader, coaching tradition than other conferences, which have often been dominated for almost their entire history by two or three powers (the Michigan-Ohio State, OU-Nebraska, and Texas-Texas A&M/Arkansas rivalries spring to mind). But in the SEC Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Auburn, LSU and, more recently, Florida have all had one or more great coach who built regionally and nationally prominent programs. Even Kentucky, Mississippi State and Vanderbilt have enjoyed brief moments of regional significance. Through all that long and rich history, one pattern emerges. In every generation of SEC football two coaches seem destined to rise above their peers and wrestle for conference dominance (and usually with it national supremacy).


At present the SEC boasts the best group of coaches in college football. But amongst them all the resumes of two stand out. Heading into the 2009 season Urban Meyer's overall record as a head coach stood at 82-17 and 43-9 at Florida. He has won two BCS championships and has one undefeated season. Between Utah and Florida his teams are unbeaten in three BCS bowl appearances. His teams have won two Mountain West Conference titles (in two years) and two SEC titles. At the time of writing, Meyer's winning percentage at UF is significantly better even than Steve Spurrier's (even discounting shameless trouncings of the occasional rent-a-victim non-conference foe).

Nick Saban has a BCS championship of his own. His record heading into 2009 was 110-50-1. At LSU he went 48-16 with two conference titles. His Toledo team won the MAC in his only year as head coach, and his best Michigan State team finished second in the Big Ten (no mean feat at MSU - ask anyone who's tried).

Though Saban and Meyer between them have dominated the SEC since 2000 it was not until Saban took the Alabama job in 2007 that the two coaches' careers actually collided. Fittingly it was not until last year's SEC championship game that they actually coached against one another. After a 7-6 campaign in which much wheat and chaff were separated Saban's Tide went 12-0 in the 2008 regular season. When #1 Alabama and #2 Florida met in Atlanta the teams went blow for blow through three quarters before the stamina of the younger Crimson Tide waned. In the final analysis, three third down plays inside the Alabama ten-yard line that Tim Tebow completed for touchdowns in tight coverage made the difference.

Webster's dictionary defines the word monomania with this picture

This also reflects a long standing trend in SEC coaching rivalries. The difference between two giant programs is often made by the presence of a special player who rises above the crowd. That was true for Paul Deitzel with Billy Cannon, Johnny Vaught with Archie Manning, Pat Dye with Bo Jackson, Vince Dooley with Herschel Walker amongst others. With every consensus top 3 recruiting class Meyer and Saban rein in, the chances that they rather than another SEC coach will find the next generation's special talent increases.

At the time of writing Florida and Alabama are first and second in the AP poll. Both are undefeated. The chances that Saban and Meyer's next bout will come this December in Atlanta seem high. It seems equally likely that this ongoing battle will define SEC football for the foreseeable future.

Probably the first of many.

[Update: The Meyer-Saban coaching rivalry will not be deciding the near future of SEC football greatness so much as the Myer-Miles rivalry. Who saw that coming? Look for Bama and Ohio State to renew this rivalry in a major post-season game sometime soon.]

SEC coaching rivalries: Phillip Fulmer vs. Steve Spurrier, 1993-2001

It seems unlikely in the current climate of high-pressure SEC coaching that there will be another lifer who serves his alma mater for decades on end. Philip Fulmer was almost certainly the last of his breed.

Born and raised in Winchester, Tennessee in the south-central part of the state just across the Alabama state line Fulmer grew up in the very geometric center of the UT-Bama rivalry. Though Fulmer was quite talented enough as a prep lineman to earn high level interest as a college recruit there was only one choice for him and he would not be dissuaded. Fulmer matriculated at UT in 1968 and walked on to Doug Dickey’s team. His hard work and commitment to UT football earned him a scholarship and established him on the offensive line. He played on an SEC championship winning team as a sophomore in 1969 and an 11-1 Sugar Bowl winning team in 1970. The Vols lost only five games in Fulmer’s three years as a player. He loved Tennessee and he loved football. When he graduated he could only envision one career. Fulmer had to coach. Needless to say, when it came to his coaching ambitions there was, as always, only one school.

Immediately after graduating, Fulmer coached Tennessee’s freshman linebackers. After six years coaching various positions at Vanderbilt and Wichita State he returned to Knoxville as an assistant coach in 1980. He would serve continuously as a football coach at UT for the next twenty-eight years. Fulmer worked faithfully as an assistant to Johnny Majors, the legendry former Volunteer running back, from 1980 until 1992. Over half way into the 1992 season the University controversially let Majors go due to health problems. Feelings on the move ran high and at a difficult time for the school Fulmer was a wise and reliable choice as successor.

Apart from keeping the peace, Fulmer's mandate was simple: arrest the meteoric rise of upstart rival Florida. Majors' SEC championships in 1985, ‘89 and ’90 appeared to put the Vols back in the big time after decades of subservience to Paul Bryant's hated Crimson Tide. But in 1990 and ’91 a hot young head coaching commodity named Steve Spurrier arrived in Gainesville and immediately began turning UF into a football giant.

Fulmer worked every bit as hard as any rival to build his Tennessee program. He even began to do what no UT coach had done in decades by stealing recruits from the back yards of conference rivals. Some of the greatest Vols of the 1990s hailed from states that rarely if ever sent a coveted prep star to Knoxville before Fulmer. Jamal Lewis came from Georgia, Darwin Walker from South Carolina, Travis Henry from Florida, Tee Martin from Alabama. Fulmer even drew national talent from areas beyond the south, including the phenomenal receiver Peerless Price from right under Buckeye noses in Ohio.

While SEC rivals other than Florida suffered through periods of coaching mediocrity (Ray Goff and Jim Donnan at Georgia, Billy Brewer at Mississippi, Mike DuBose at Alabama, Terry Bowden at Auburn) Fulmer’s teams reflected his own consistent, methodical, efficient and unflappable style. His first full season in charge coincided with the SEC divisional split and new championship game format. From 1993 to 2001 Tennessee never finished lower than second in the SEC east. Seven of those nine seasons the eastern divisional champion won the conference. Almost every year during the 1990s Florida vs. Tennessee constituted a de facto SEC title game. And for all Fulmer’s effort, Florida generally won.

Fulmer faced Steve Spurrier as a head coach nine times. His unimpressive record of 2-7 does not adequately reflect his work and accomplishments as UT head coach. From 1995 through 1998 the Vols went an amazing 45-5. Three of those losses came against Florida. Tennessee fans hated Spurrier. As Fulmer steadily built his program during the mid-nineties around his most prominent recruiting coup, Payton Manning, the Vols dropped five straight to Florida. Fulmer’s first clash with the Gators came on the road in mid-September 1993. Florida was ranked 3-0 and Spurrier had yet to lose a home game.

For a man apparently able to accomplish whatever he desired Steve Spurrier behaved with more public displays of emotion than almost any southern coach before him. At one point drawing a 15-yard unsportsman-like conduct penalty for protesting a holding call too vigorously and flinging his trademark visor toward a referee. Such displayed seemed totally unnecessary. Freshman quarterback Danny Wuerffel threw for 231 yards and three touchdowns with apparent ease. The game remained close, finishing 34-41, but UT made crucial mistakes. On the opening kick of the second half return man Nilo Silvan fumbled and gave Florida only 30 yards to drive for a TD. After the game Tennessee receiver admitted to a reporter that the Vols could not get over the ‘big game’ hump. In contrast Spurrier was yet to lose to Georgia, Tennessee or Auburn in three seasons as head coach.

In the end it all came at once for Fulmer. He beat Spurrier and earned Tennessee’s first national championship in half a century all in the same year. Before the 1998 meeting Fulmer answered media questions about the Gators with chagrin, saying:

“We’ve lost three SEC games in three years but people only want to talk about Florida. I share their passion, but it gets frustrating.”

Quarterback Payton Manning, running back Jay Graham, and stand-out defensive end Leonard Little had all graduated. After five straight losses to UF and rebuilding after graduating such stars, few gave Tennessee a prayer. But the Vols did exactly what the situation called for, playing a careful, conservative game. Tee Martin threw only twenty times, completing a paltry seven for 64 yards – not Manning-like numbers to say the least. Fortunately senior receiver Peerless Price converted one of those completions for a twenty-nine yard touchdown. Senior linebacker Al Wilson was everywhere, forcing three fumbles – one from the quarterback in the backfield, one from a receiver in open space, and one from a running back at the line of scrimmage. Dave Cutcliff’s supremely organized offense put together 170 yards on the ground; much by a young back and future star named Jamal Lewis who gained 81 yards on 20 carries. But even giving up four turnovers the Gators still took the affair to overtime. The Vols were desperate and the atmosphere could not have been tenser. When Florida came away with nothing from the first overtime possession victory became almost palpable for the home fans. Neyland roared, but again victory seemed destined to slip away when the Vols lost ten yards on their first two downs. Fortunately Tee Martin remained calm and showed enough presence of mind to take a 14 yard rushing gain with Florida back in deep pass coverage. That gave his kicker a manageable distance for a narrow 20-17 victory.

The relief in Knoxville was so great that the difference felt so much bigger than one overtime kick. With the monkey finally off their collective backs the Volunteers sailed to a 13-0 year and claimed the first ever BCS championship crown. Fulmer's program continued to compete at the highest level of SEC play but if surpassing Florida was the ultimate measure of success, 1998 was an aberration.

Bear Bryant always said that the University of Florida was the one SEC school he feared could become a dominant power with the right coach. He never lived to see that coach take the reigns in Gainesville, though his Crimson Tide did face and beat him once as a player. That loss, by three points in Tuscaloosa as a sophomore, was one of only nine games the Gators lost in Steve Spurrier’s three seasons as quarterback. He was a winner, plain and simple. Even growing up in Johnson City, Tennessee, a small mountain town in the far north-eastern corner of the state, Spurrier’s extraordinary talents garnered national attention. He not only lettered in three sports, but starred on a national scale. In three seasons pitching for Science Hill Prep he never lost a game and led his team to two consecutive state championships. Somehow Spurrier was even better at football and earned Prep All-America honors as a senior.

Though he grew up in the heart of Volunteer country Steve Spurrier decided to accept Ray Grave's scholarship offer and matriculated at the University of Florida in 1963. Like all Florida coaches during the first nine decades of Gator football Graves never fielded outstanding teams. That his .685 winning percentage ranks as second amongst UF coaches in the modern era not called Spurrier or Myer significantly reflects the fact that he enjoyed the benefits of having Spurrier as a player three of his ten seasons.

Spurrier and Fulmer in more recent times

Spurrier was, and still is, an amusing blend of utterly old-school and assertively innovative. His three-sport letterman, all-American, small-town High School career and his dual contribution passing-punting exploits in football possess something of a 1930s feel. Late on in a home date against Shug Jordan’s Auburn Tigers on October 29th 1966 Spurrier famously waved off Florida’s kicker on fourth down and booted the game winning points himself. The Gators triumphed 30-27 and the next week Heisman ballots were mailed out to voters. With Florida then 7-0 and ranked ninth, a 27 of 40 passing performance for a then SEC record 259 yards probably tipped the balance in his favor. Punting six times with a 47 yard average and converting the game winning place kick can't have hurt, either.

Jordan had warned his Tiger team all week that with a wild-card like Spurrier in the backfield Florida might well attempt a fake field goal. As Spurrier waved his kicker off with time expiring Jordan told his players:

“You’d better hope this is a fake because Spurrier kicks this he’ll make it.”

That was Steve Spurrier. Things went his way. His talent seemed to always make the difference. But if his multi-sport home-town heroism and quarterback/punter role were old-school, his rushing yards out of a vertical passing offense were more futuristic than the other running quarterbacks of his generation, most of whom played from the wishbone. In three seasons at Florida Spurrier went 392 of 692 through the air for 4,848 yards and 87 touchdowns. He added 442 yards on the ground. For the mid 1960s those figures were extremely impressive. Great quarterbacks at Texas, Nebraska or Oklahoma were more likely to make 4,000 yards rushing and 400 through the air.

Spurrier’s talent-driven Midas touch continued into his coaching career. So too did his love of flashy, innovative offense. Beginning with one season as Florida quarterbacks coach in 1978 he moved through various college and pro jobs before taking his first head coaching position at Duke in 1987. Since William Murray retired in 1965 no Duke coach had achieved a better win percentage than .440 and a few 6-5 seasons constituted the high water marks of Blue Devil football. Duke had not been to a bowl since 1961 and had no ACC championship since 1962. In Spurrier's second and third seasons Duke finished 7-4-1 and 8-4, winning the ACC that latter year. The Blue Devils have not won a championship or had a coach better than .330 since. Spurrier was obviously a hot commodity and when Galen Hall’s tenure in Gainesville came to a tumultuous end amidst NCAA rule violation accusation mid-season in 1989 it was no surprise who UF named as successor.

In some ways Spurrier's coaching was old-school. He could be gruff and was often aloof with his players. He ran a very tight ship. But he was also outspoken and not infrequently made public inflammatory comments or jokes. He told students at a prep rally before playing Auburn in 1991 that a fire had ravaged the AU library and burnt all twenty books. He finished:

“The real tragedy is that fifteen had not yet been colored yet!”

That kind of cocky self-assurance brought a new era to SEC football. It came as quite a surprise from a man coaching at Florida, which had never won a championship of any kind prior to his arrival. Spurrier changed that in two seasons.

By the early 1990s the state of Florida had transformed from a sparsely inhabited swampy region with an unlivable climate into an economic hotspot with an exploding population. Young athletic talent was now plentiful enough to sustain winning college football programs. Bobby Bowden’s Florida State Seminoles and Jimmy Johnson’s Miami Hurricanes made Florida the college football state of the decade in the 1980s and left the state’s flagship public university behind. Galen Hall recruited well against in-state rivals but couldn’t seem to coach those players up to the highest level. Spurrier took over Hall's squad and brought a confidence to Gainesville that affected a sea change. He brought Florida’s offensive up to Miami’s speed and Florida State’s aggressiveness. The Gators went 9-2 in his first season and topped the SEC standing but could not claim the conference crown or appear in any bowl because of NCAA probation. That mattered little. Florida fans only had one more year to wait. Junior quarterback Shane Matthews broke the SEC total passing offense record with almost 4,000 passing yards the next season and won the SEC officially for the first time ever.

Florida failed to win ten games only two times during Spurrier’s tenure. From 1990 to 2001 he went a staggering 122-27-1. His teams won six SEC titles and a national championship. He was named SEC coach of the year five times. After the conference split to two divisions in 1992 Florida failed to win the East Division only twice under Spurrier, coming second both times. Spurrier took UF to eleven straight bowls, winning six including two Sugar Bowls and two Orange Bowls. What he accomplished in a single decade as a coach during the 1990s can only be compared to Bear Bryant’s achievements in the 1970s and Bud Wilkinson’s run in the 1950s. That is hallowed company.

Florida's national championship did not come with complete ease. After the Gators romped to an unbeaten 12-0 record in 1995 they faced Nebraska in the Fiesta Bowl. 11 point victories over Auburn and Florida State had been UF’s closest wins by a considerable margin and blowing opponents out of the water had become routine. But on New Year's Day 1996 Tom Osbourne’s Huskers gave UF a taste of their own medicine in a lopsided 24-62 thrashing. Spurrier highlighted 1996 as the year for Gator redemption. Florida’s key players returned, led by Danny Wuerffel who had claimed both the Davey O’Brien and Sam Baugh awards as a junior the previous year. Off the field Wuerffel was humility incarnate. Quiet, unassuming, impeccably polite and deeply religious he lacked his coach’s cocky assertiveness. On it, he was more like his mentor. Though perhaps less flashy, he was equally unhesitant, ruthless, and intelligent as a down-field passer. Wuerffel was always crushingly reliable in the clutch moments. He claimed the Heisman trophy in 1996 - another sore spot for Volunteer fans who felt that Payton manning deserved the award in 1997 when he lost out to Michigan's Charles Woodson. It just seemed Tennessee could never top Florida during the 1990s.

No game show cased Florida’s quick striking and potent offense like the 1996 trip to Neyland stadium. A close Tennessee-Florida game in Gainesville the previous year had gotten out of hand in the second half and ended 62-37. Tennessee players, coaches and fans salivated at the prospect of getting the Gators on their turf. The Volunteers worked for a year to prepare for thier chance at revenge, but once again the upstart rival refused to take come-uppance. Wuerffel threw four touchdowns to four receivers in the first twenty minutes while the Gator defense forced three turnovers in reply. UF led 35-0 almost before Tennessee fans could find their seats. So thorough was Florida’s whirlwind start and so total the trauma that even after Wuerffel finished only 11 of 22 while Manning threw for over 400 yards and closed the final tally to 35-29 the affair still had the feel of an unambiguous Gator rampage.

If there is one word to describe Spurrier’s teams it must be complete. They possessed everything on offense that he had shown in his own playing career: the gambler’s abandon combined with the expert’s skill; the pace and absolute shock-and-awe explosiveness; the innovation and disregard for the institutional habits of southern football. They also had a young guru as defensive coordinator whose confidence and productivity matched Spurrier’s own. Bob Stoops would go on to make a fine head coach himself in due course. For the time being, his punishing defensive style did more than enough to give Spurrier’s offenses room to work.

The Gators’ only loss in 1996 came in a 3 point nail-biter in Tallahassee. Fortunately for Spurrier, the Sugar Bowl committee invited FSU to face the SEC champion and gave Spurrier a second shot. The game quickly became personal after a Florida State player told reporters that the Seminoles had attempted to knock Wuerffel out of the game in Tallahasee. A public war of words ensued and in New Orleans January 1st 1997 the animosity was palpable. But the emotion and tension did not cloud Spurrier’s mind. He put FSU completely off balance with several new wrinkles. Firstly the Gators implemented a silent count with center Jeff Mitchell snapping the ball at his own discretion after receiving a ‘ready’ signal from his quarterback. Secondly, Florida ran almost exclusively from the shotgun. Wuerffel even scrambled 16 yards late in the third quarter for an uncharacteristic rushing touchdown. It seemed that every Gator produced the game of his life. Even punter Robbie Stevenson kicked for an average of 48 yards. Everything went Florida’s way. FSU couldn’t adjust and UF avenged a three point loss with a crushing 52-20 win. When Ohio State knocked off the Sun Devils in Pasadena later that day Florida had its national championship. Steve Spurrier, Florida’s chosen son had led the SEC’s perennial also-ran to the Promised Land in only six years. UF has never looked back.

Phillip Fulmer performed admirably as head coach in Knoxville at a difficult time. No other team even came close to matching Florida's records, offensive production, and championships. Fulmer's Tennessee teams did everything they could. But, as Bear Bryant prophesied, Florida's time had come.




Fulmer's pre-game talk from his last head-to-head UT-UF game vs. Spurrier

SEC coaching rivalries: Paul Bryant vs. Ralph Jordan, 1958-75

Perhaps no coach in SEC history became so intensely identified with his alma mater through a career of long and loyal service than Ralph “Shug” Jordan. The Selma native lettered at Auburn (or Alabama Polytechnic Institute as it was known until 1960) in football, basketball and baseball. As a senior in 1932 Jordan was named the school’s most outstanding athlete. That was no mean feat on an API football team that went undefeated at 9-0-1 to claim a share of the last Southern Conference title before the inception of the SEC in 1933.

Jordan loved Auburn. With the exception of wartime tours of duty in Europe and the Pacific and a few years in exile as an assistant coach at UGa, he literally spent his entire adult life on 'the plains'. A year after graduating he returned to API as head basketball coach and assistant football coach. He served through the Depression without great distinction in either sport. API football and basketball both hovered slightly above .500 during the 1930s. Jordan was a soft spoken coach, never the kind of coach to make great waves or draw attention. But there was no doubting his determination. Nor his courage, given his wartime service record. Jordan participated in the invasions of Sicily, Italy, Normandy and Okinawa. He was wounded seriously enough in the Normandy campaign to require lengthy recuperation and transfer to the Pacific. His service earned him both the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Toward the end of his life as he struggled through a losing battle with aggressive and painful cancer Bear Bryant commented to a reporter:

“[Ralph Jordan] has more courage in his little finger than I’ve got in my entire body.”

Understandably after such selfless wartime service Jordan wanted to return to the place and work that he loved. He resumed his work as API basketball coach for one season, but he found the appeal of football growing and decided to take an assistant position with the professional Miami Seahawks. After one year Jordan moved to Athens as an assistant to Wallace Butts. His time at Georgia coincided with Earl Brown’s disastrous tenure as head football coach in Auburn. After Brown posted an 0-10 record in 1950 there was only one choice for API. The school's most loyal son received the call.

Jordan didn’t right the ship overnight, but in his quiet, committed way he began coaching with simplicity, clarity and humanity. Shug kept his play-book very simple, running only variations of roughly ten plays but insisting that they be run well every time. He also refused to exact too high a price from his players in practice. He once told a reporter:

“We don’t eat ourselves alive in practice… It’s unthinkable for us to lose a Saturday game in a Tuesday scrimmage.”

After a three decade hiatus following a dispute regarding gate receipts from the 1907API-Alabama game the state’s leading football schools resumed their annual series in 1948. Since the 1907 fixture the Crimson Tide had become a national power, winning national titles under two coaches and claiming multiple Rose Bowl crowns. The Plainsmen, on the other hand, remained a regional power at best and were clear second in the state. Men of Alabama’s less favored institution chaffed under the feeling of second-class status. Athletics offered a way to regain some pride, but from 1948 to 1953 Bama won five of six. Jordan’s first two seasons were tough going. He followed a 5-5 record his first year with a disappointing 2-8 campaign. But through a combination of confidence, charm and some dubious recruiting practices that quickly landed API with six-years of NCAA probation Jordan began to convince the state’s better athletes to play for him. As API’s stock rose the Crimson Tide fell. From 1954 to 1958 Shug took five straight over the state’s flagship university, restoring API pride and giving the Plainsmen their longest winning streak in the rivalry until recent times.

The API 1957 national championship team

Jordan’s career was not one long string of championships. Many might not even consider his coaching success to be outstanding. Shug coached Auburn football for twenty-five seasons from 1951 to 1975, compiling a record of 175-83-7. 1957 provided his only conference and national titles. But Jordan's teams finished second in the conference seven times. After his first four seasons as coach Auburn finished below third in the conference only ten times in twenty one seasons. That doesn’t sound too impressive at first. Nor does a 5-7 bowl record without a single victory in any of the four major New Year’s Day games. But finishing in the top third of SEC play in almost two of every three seasons over several decades is very difficult. Ask a coach who has tried. Very, very few have done better.

Jordan was voted coach of the year by the national coaches association, the AP and the SEC. Even though NCAA regulations prohibited API from accepting their Sugar Bowl bid, it was a great year. But Auburn fans don’t remember Shug for one great season, or even for a considerable number of very respectable seasons. They remember him as a consistent, committed, unassuming, unerringly loyal servant of their school. Shug Jordan was, more than anything, an Auburn man. His legacy would be remembered with more reverence by people outside of eastern Alabama had Jordan not suffered the misfortune of spending much of his coaching tenure across the state from a man whose legend became utterly insurmountable.

Paul Bryant was simply a football man. Growing up dirt poor in Fordye, Arkansas life didn’t offer many opportunities. Bryant earned his life-long nickname by agreeing to wrestle a bear at a travelling carnival. He was promised a dollar for every minute he stayed in the ring but never saw a cent because the bear’s muzzle came off and Bryant wisely ran away. Bryant was no coward. When Frank Thomas offered him a scholarship to play football for Alabama he grabbed the first real opportunity life had given him with both hands. The Bear played hurt on numerous occasions, including the entirety of a famous game against Mississippi State on a broken leg. He went to be the most demanding coach in the business, but no one could call him a hypocrite. Bryant gave 100% as a Bama player, despite not possessing the most talent. He played opposite Don Hutson on the 1934 Rose Bowl winning team and was jokingly known as “the other end”. Hutson, not Bryant, went on to set countless NFL receiving records. Bryant later said of his own coaching career that he was an ordinary coach of great players but a great coach of average players. He boasted that he could make his players think they were all-Americans. That boast wasn’t arrogance, it was fact.

Alabama has never had a Heisman Trophy winner. Through a quarter-century of unrivaled success in Tuscaloosa the Bear never produced a single player that critics viewed as individually peerless. Bryant excelled by producing not a handful of great players but hundreds of players like himself. He made men play above their ability, consistently give full effort, and perform as a team far beyond individual capability. Bryant’s records speak for themselves. After graduation he worked as an assistant to Thomas. He never wanted to do anything but coach. Bryant committed his entire life and legacy to the game and the men football can produce. When the U.S. entered WWII he went to the Iowa pre-flight program and coached with various future greats including Woody Hayes to help physically prepare pilots for war. Bryant coached the University of Kentucky from 1946 to 1953, going 60-23-5. More than half a century later Bryant still holds the best winning percentage of any Kentucky coach. The Wildcats have yet to repeat his 1950 SEC and Sugar Bowl championships.

The Bear’s practices were demanding; probably unnecessarily so. After taking over a lifeless Texas A&M program in 1954 he famously drove his entire football squad into rural west Texas and held brutal workouts for two weeks. Half his team quit and the Bear posted the only losing year of his career with a 1-9 record. A lot of commentators look at that camp as a sacrificial separation of men from boys that founded the nucleus of an A&M program that lost only four games over the next three seasons. It seems more likely that Junction was the disaster it appeared. For the only time in his career the Bear lost most of his team, literally and metaphorically. Bryant was a great coach for the same reason Alexander was a great general. His players believed in him and would do anything for him. At Junction, the Bear learned how far was too far. He remained a grueling, exacting, gruff and demanding mean cuss of a coach, but he never pushed a team so far again.

In 1955 Jennings Whitworth’s Tide went an unacceptable 0-10. The next two seasons were little better at a combined 4-14-2. A university accustomed to Rose Bowls and national acclaim did not like losing football games to the state’s agricultural school. The Bear took over in 1958. His first Crimson Tide team finished 5-4-1. That was the only time in twenty-five seasons that Bryant did not take Alabama to a Bowl. In a quarter-century, without ever incurring any penalty for any kind of NCAA violation, Bryant went 232-46-9. He went to 24 bowls with a record of 11-10-2, winning seven Sugar Bowls, two Orange Bowls and a Cotton Bowl. His teams earned six national championships and ten SEC titles. In an incredible eleven year stretch from 1971 to 1981 the Bear’s teams won nine SEC titles and finished second the other two years. After finishing sixth and fourth in the SEC his first two seasons Bryant never came in lower than third in the SEC standings - twenty-three consecutive seasons in the top third of the SEC! His coaching record is not only peerless, it will never be matched. No one will ever come close.

Year in, year out with whatever players he had, Bryant found a way to win. He once called over to the Auburn football office at 6 a.m during Iron Bowl week. Someone answered the phone and told him that no coaches were in their offices yet. The Bear asked:

“Don’t they care about football over at Auburn?”

That was the effort he demanded. That was the effort he gave himself. When he saw his all-American quarterback Joe Namath slacking off in practice and heard other players complaining, he instructed an assistant to give Namath a dirty old jersey. Bryant told his quarterback in front of the entire team that he had to work harder than the other players to earn a clean jersey back. That was the summer of 1966. The Tide went unbeaten that year, won a national title and Namath went on to the New York Jets where he did quite well.

Everything Paul Bryant did at Alabama he did well, but especially beating Auburn. Over a quarter century the Bear went 19-6 against the Tigers. The record prior to Jordan’s retirement is slightly more favorable to Auburn at 13-5. But out competing Bryant on a consistent basis was simply impossible. Even the best coaches failed to keep pace. But every so often Shug’s patience, tenacity, and humble resolve would produce teams that caught their perennially more favored in-state nemesis off guard. Sometimes, as if in response to shows of hubris of Homeric proportions, the gods themselves intervened on Auburn’s behalf.

Such was the case with Auburn’s most legendary Iron Bowl triumph. Heading into the Birmingham showdown on December 2nd 1972 the second ranked Crimson Tide were 10-0 and already had the SEC title wrapped up. Bama had not lost a regular season game in two years, since Auburn’s last Iron Bowl triumph in 1969. The line on the game was Bama by 16. Auburn men had every right to take exception to such an insult. The Tigers were 9-1 with only a lopsided loss to LSU blemishing another manifestly respectable season for Shug’s boys.

Despite Auburn’s determination to upstage their rival the Tiger offense accomplished nothing all day. Superior execution and athletes appeared to have made the difference, as they so often had before, with Bama leading 16-3 deep into the fourth quarter. With 5:30 left in the game Auburn forced a punt on the Alabama forty yard line. As Greg Gantt wound up for his kick Auburn committed about everyone but their return man to the rush. The Bama line collapsed almost instantly and linebacker Bill Newton spread his huge body in front of Gantt with abandon. The ball bounced back with enough force to carry it to the Bama 25, where defensive back David Langer reeled it in without apparent effort and strode into the end zone. Langer’s move from Auburn’s line into rushing the punter and on through Bama’s goal-line took place in one fluid motion. Auburn celebrated, but at 16-10 the victory appeared a moral one.

The gods had other ideas. After receiving the ensuing kickoff the Alabama offense once again reached only their own forty-yard line before stalling. By that point only 1:30 remained. The chances of Auburn achieving offensively in a minute and a half what they had failed to manage in the preceding fifty-eight were negligible. With nothing to lose Jordan signaled for his team to send everything at the kick again. Incredibly Auburn repeated the penetration of an Alabama line that seemed to evaporate under the pressure as it hadn’t done in two entire seasons. Once again Newton reached the ball first, swatting it as it left Gantt’s foot. Once again it fell into the path of Langer, and once again the Auburn defensive back sailed without breaking stride for a score. Auburn won 17-16, derailed Alabama’s national title hunt, and earned a Gator Bowl berth for themselves. Without having gained anything worth remembering on offense all day Auburn posted an immortal victory on the strength of two special teams TDs and a missed Bama point-after. The odds were so staggeringly improbable that even the most casual of fans can readily ascribe the legendary “Punt, Bama, punt!” Iron Bowl of 1972 to the football gods. This game was their gift to a long suffering API graduate who spent his life faithfully toiling in the Bear’s expansive shadow.

Two years later, the 1974 Iron Bowl featured undefeated 1st ranked Alabama and 4th ranked one-loss Auburn. The national as well as SEC championship was on the line. But in the state of Alabama one thing is more important than national fame. Bryant told a reporter succinctly in the run up to the game:

“The state championship of Alabama means everything. This is for bragging rights for the next 365 days.”

Alabama had limped through the season with various injuries, finding ways to win with whoever was available. Starting quarterback Gary Rutledge was lost early. Later his replacement Richard Todd missed three games with a knee injury. Despite the unblemished record and top ranking it had been an ugly season from the Tide, including a late comeback 8-7 win over a Florida State team that had lost sixteen straight. The ’74 Iron Bowl proved no exception. Both teams moved the ball but also made their share of mistakes. Only gritty special teams play kept the Tide unbeaten.

Early in the first quarter a 35 yard strike to tight end Ozzie Newsome took Bama into Auburn territory. The drive continued to the Tigers’ three yard line before Todd lost a fumble. Bama’s next possession started deep in their own half after a clipping penalty on Auburn’s punt. After grinding their way into Auburn territory the Tide seemed to have settled down when Todd hit Willy Selby on a short swing pass that the receiver converted for a 45-yard touchdown. After Bama extended the lead to 10 on their next possession Auburn responded with an impressive long drive, pounding the same basic inside running play with Sedrick McIntyre most of the 71 yards to the end zone. The teams would have finished the half tied at ten except for Alabama end Leroy Cook managing to get his long arms in the way of a seemingly simple 21-yard field goal attempt from Auburn’s Chris Wilson. Alabama extended the lead to 17-7 early in the third quarter behind the gritty running of Calvin Culliver and Randy Billingsley. Auburn responded with a 41-yard touchdown pass from Phil Gargis, only to see the score wiped off because the receiver had stepped out of bounds prior to catching the ball. In the fourth quarter Todd was stuffed in brutal fashion on 4th and goal before Auburn drove 72-yards two possessions later on a touchdown drive that included a twelve yard pass from a fake field goal attempt. After a two-point conversation failed Bama led 17-13. Auburn gained one last possession with a minute remaining but defensive end Mike Dubose sealed the victory by busting up a developing reverse hand-off in the back field. Dubose batted the ball from Gargis’ hand and fell on it gratefully.

As Auburn had in their famous win two years earlier, Alabama rode their luck. In the grand scheme however, the Bear made his own luck. As a freshman Mike Dubose had suffered an excruciating injury when another player accidentally stamped on his crotch in a scrum. Dubose underwent surgery to remove a crushed testicle and doctors told Bryant the boy could not play again. When he heard the news Dubose threatened to transfer to Troy State and continue playing there. Bryant realized that if an athlete that tough wanted to play football so badly, he should play it for Bama. Dubose was the kind of player that gave everything. He gave as much as Bryant demanded. He gave as much as Bryant had given for Frank Thomas.

Players like Dubose, whom Bryant seemed to produce or find by the truck-load, were the reason Alabama won so many titles in that magical quarter century. No one else could keep up. In many senses it is hardly fair to say Bryant had any rivals. His career truly was peerless. And yet, without the constant, unyielding service of Ralph Jordan there is no knowing how much farther behind Auburn might have fallen. Bryant respected and admired Jordan more than anyone. He told viewers on his Sunday morning TV show after the 1973 Iron Bowl:

“Coach Jordan’s a wonderful person and I consider him a close personal friend.”

That was a friendship built on competition that bred mutual respect. Bryant’s commendation of another coach’s career should be high enough praise for any critic.



The Bear not cooperating with a new fangled female sideline reporter.