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    Alabama Football Tales: More than a Century of Crimson Tide Glory
    Alabama Football Tales: More than a Century of Crimson Tide Glory
    Alabama Football Tales: More than a Century of Crimson Tide Glory
    Ebook176 pages2 hours

    Alabama Football Tales: More than a Century of Crimson Tide Glory

    By Lewis Bowling

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    The Crimson Tide's winning history is packed with fascinating stories of players and coaches who made the program the envy of every school in the nation. Now, author and sports historian Lewis Bowling presents a collection of tales that span the entirety of Alabama's history of hard-won glory. Blending humor, drama and historical accuracy, Bowling shares stories every Bama fan will love. Discover the Alabama team that pioneered innovations in forward passing, learn about Bear Bryant's stint as an assistant coach, relive the year that World War II forced Alabama to put its football season on hold and read the story of the soldier who credited his experience on the football field for his survival in battle. These stories, and many more, make Alabama Football Tales required reading for every fan.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateAug 28, 2012
    ISBN9781614236634
    Alabama Football Tales: More than a Century of Crimson Tide Glory
    Author

    Lewis Bowling

    Lewis Bowling is the author of Wallace Wade: Championship Years at Alabama and Duke. His work has appeared in Bama Magazine, Alabama Alumni Magazine, and Alabama Encyclopedia Online.

    Read more from Lewis Bowling

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      Book preview

      Alabama Football Tales - Lewis Bowling

      memorabilia.

      1

      WE THEREFORE GOT RID OF HIM

      Being head coach at Alabama has its advantages. Holding that position makes you the most recognizable person in the entire state. But it can be a tough job, especially if you don’t win. A school such as Alabama that has won fourteen national titles expects championships on the field, along with beating Auburn almost every year.

      You had to win at Alabama from the beginning days of football in Tuscaloosa. In 1892, Alabama’s very first team, coached by E.B. Beaumont, won two and lost two. They won the first game against Birmingham High School, 56–0. Alabama split its next two games with Birmingham Athletic Club but lost to Auburn in the first-ever meeting between those two rivals. Auburn won 32–22 in front of five thousand fans in Birmingham.

      Now, you might think that a .500 record in the school’s first year of playing football would get Coach Beaumont a second year to coach the team. The school yearbook, The Corolla, described his selection as coach as unfortunate. The Corolla also reported that Beaumont had very limited knowledge of football. We therefore got rid of him.

      As you can see, being head coach at Alabama was not going to be easy, not in 1892 and not today.

      Of course, not all coaches at Alabama have been so well compensated as current coach Nick Saban. In 1896, Alabama hired Otto Wagonhurst, who was to be paid $750 for the season. But the senior class could only raise $50. In 1926, after Alabama won the national title by beating Washington in the Rose Bowl, the Athletic Association got in touch with Wagonhurst and paid him the remaining portion of his salary.

      The 1915 team at Alabama was coached by Thomas Kelly. The Tide won six games with two losses. Alabama beat Sewanee 23–10 and beat Ole Miss 53–0. They traveled to Austin, Texas, and lost to Texas 20–0. Bully Vandegraaf, who is on the far right on the first row, became Alabama’s first All-American football player in 1915. Courtesy of Paul Bryant Museum.

      In 1906, Dartmouth alumnus Coach Doc Pollard was hired. Coach Pollard deserves credit for bringing the first real period of winning years in Alabama football history. His record in his four years from 1906 to 1909 was twenty-one wins and four losses. Alabama beat Tennessee all four of those years.

      Pollard was the coach in 1907 when Alabama played Auburn. When negotiations started for a contract to play the game in 1908, officials at both schools argued back and forth over such issues as player eligibility, illegal formations, how many players could suit up and who would be the officials, among other points of disagreement. The teams couldn’t come to an agreement and didn’t play again until 1948.

      In 1911, D.V. Graves was hired. Graves was a former coach at Blee’s Military Institute in Missouri. Honest to a fault, Graves said after Alabama selected him, I know nothing of southern football nor how Alabama ranks in comparison. The team is rather green in the so-called rudiments of the game. We have some big linemen, slow and clumsy, who with lots of practice ought to be fair linemen by November.

      The 1896 team won two games with one loss under coach Otto Wagonhurst. The two wins were over the Birmingham Athletic Club and Mississippi State, and they lost to Sewanee. S.B. Slone served as captain of the team. Courtesy of Paul Bryant Museum.

      An Alabama player scores a touchdown in a game in Tuscaloosa about 1915 at what was then called University Field (renamed Denny Field in 1920, after George Denny, the longtime president of the university). Courtesy of Paul Bryant Museum.

      But Dorsett Vandeventer Graves had a respectable record in his four years at the Capstone (University of Alabama), winning twenty-one games with twelve losses. Not only that, but Coach Graves also coached basketball and baseball while at Alabama. He would go on to be head baseball coach at the University of Washington from 1923 to 1946 and is now enshrined in the University of Washington Hall of Fame. For his entire coaching career, Graves had winning records in all three sports he coached. He was 32-18 in football, 50-27 in basketball and 347-219 in baseball.

      In 1913, under Coach Graves’s tenure, Alabama beat Birmingham Southern by a whopping 81–0, and in 1914, the Tide beat Georgia Tech for the first time. But against one of its main rivals of the era, Sewanee, Alabama was winless during Graves’s tenure.

      As was mentioned, coaching at Alabama is not easy. Following the 1913 season—which was pretty successful, with a 6-3 record—the howling started about Graves. While nowadays a season with three losses sends Bama fans into mourning, the Crimson Tide didn’t become a national power until the 1920s under Wallace Wade. A writer for a Birmingham newspaper noted the following:

      It seems that the coach question has again put in its appearance to make lively the post mortem discussion on the 1913 football season at Alabama. There are quite a number of alumni of the Tuscaloosa institution who like to whoop ’em up when the football team wins. But the Crimson victories in the last three years haven’t been sufficiently numerous to cause aforesaid alumni to exercise their lungs unduly. As a result thereof, there have been some who confessed a feeling of humiliation in regard to Alabama. It is only natural—and more often than not, it is just, to lay repeated defeat at the doors of the coach. It may be, therefore, that the wish is that another coach would replace Graves.

      An assistant coach (Dietz) for the Carlisle Indians was rumored to be the replacement coach. But the new president of Alabama, George Denny, denied strongly that a change would be made. A local paper ran a big headline: President Denny Denies That Indian or Any Other Coach Will Replace Graves.

      As you can see, Crimson Tide football has been attracting large, enthusiastic crowds to games in Tuscaloosa since the start of football at Alabama in 1892. This picture is from the early 1900s. Over 100,000 fans attend every home game at Bryant-Denny Stadium today. Courtesy of Paul Bryant Museum.

      This was the A-Club room for football players sometime before 1920. Courtesy of Paul Bryant Museum.

      Coach Graves did get another year and went 5-4, with losses to Tennessee, Sewanee, Mississippi State and, in the last game of the 1914 season, the Indians of Carlisle. (No, Alabama didn’t play against the great Jim Thorpe, who finished his career at the Indian boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1912.)

      In 1915, Thomas Kelly was hired to coach the Tide. Kelly had played football at the University of Chicago under famed coach Amos Alonzo Stagg.

      Perhaps the best opening five games of any Alabama coach would be credited to Kelly in 1915. Alabama beat Samford 44–0, Birmingham Southern 67–0, Mississippi College 40–0 and Tulane 16–0. So by the time Alabama played Sewanee on October 30, the Tide had outscored its four opponents 167 to 0. Alabama then beat Sewanee, perhaps the most powerful team in the South at the time, 23–10 (this game is covered in more detail elsewhere in this book).

      I had the opportunity to see the old Sewanee campus, what is today called the University of the South, when I gave a dedication speech for a Wallace Wade memorial in Tullahoma, Tennessee, in 2011. Tullahoma is about thirty miles from Sewanee. Coach Wade, who led Alabama to its first national title, coached high school football in Tullahoma for two years in 1919 and 1920. His 1920 team won the Tennessee high school state championship, going undefeated.

      Kelly went 6-2, 6-3 and 5-2 in 1915, 1916 and 1917. He later served as head coach at Idaho and Missouri.

      Coach Xen Scott arrived in Tuscaloosa in 1919 and had outstanding success, winning twenty-nine games and losing nine in his four seasons from 1919 to 1922. A win over Penn in 1922 gave Alabama some national recognition. Alabama traveled to Franklin Field, the home turf of eastern power Penn. Eastern teams dominated teams from the South, so Penn was a big favorite. But twenty-five thousand stunned fans saw Scott’s gallant southern boys win 9–7. Upon arriving back in Tuscaloosa, a huge crowd welcomed the boys at the train depot. Al Clemens, a player that year, recalled, They had three big flatbed trucks pulled by horses. They hitched them together, and we stood up on them and waved as we were pulled through the center of town.

      Tragically, cancer forced Scott to resign after the 1922 season, and he passed away in 1924.

      In 1923, Alabama hired William Wallace Wade, and football in Tuscaloosa would never be the same.

      The 1921 team, coached by Xen Scott (pictured in the top row, far left), finished 5-4-2. Alabama played LSU to a 7–7 tie in New Orleans. Al Clemens served as team captain. Courtesy of Paul Bryant Museum.

      Fans flocked to the Tuscaloosa Depot to welcome home the Crimson Tide team after its dramatic upset over Penn in Philadelphia in 1922, which shocked the nation. At this time, southern football was considered inferior to most other sections of the country. Courtesy of Paul Bryant Museum.

      2

      BULLY AND THE DANGLING EAR EPISODE

      The University of the South, still called Sewanee by many, used to regularly beat the University of Alabama in football. Located in Sewanee, Tennessee, Sewanee was a football powerhouse, especially in the 1890s. The 1899 team won all twelve of its games, and eleven were shutouts. Five of those wins came in a six-day period while on a 2,500-mile train trip.

      Sewanee beat Alabama 20–0 in 1893, Alabama’s second season of playing football. But in 1894, Alabama beat Sewanee 24–4. The next nine times these two teams played, Sewanee won, and often in convincing fashion, such as 42–6 in 1905 and 54–4 in 1907.

      In 1915, Alabama had Bully on its team—one William Vandegraaf, better known as Bully. Alabama won 23–10 as Bully kicked three field

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