University Of Alabama History And Traditions

Yea Alabama

Yea, Alabama! Drown 'em Tide!
Every 'Bama man's behind you, Hit your stride.
Go teach the Bulldogs to behave,
Send the Yellow Jackets to a watery grave.
And if a man starts to weaken, That's a shame!
For Bama's pluck and grit have Writ her name in Crimson flame.
Fight on, fight on, fight on men!
Remember the Rose Bowl, we'll win then.
So roll on to victory,
Hit your stride,
You're Dixie's football pride,
Crimson Tide, Roll Tide, Roll Tide!!

Sweet Home Alabama

The Elephant Story

The story of how Alabama became associated with the "elephant" goes back to the 1930 season when Coach Wallace Wade had assembled a great football team.
On October 8, 1930, sports writer Everett Strupper of the Atlanta Journal wrote a story of the Alabama-Mississippi game he had witnessed in Tuscaloosa four days earlier. Strupper wrote, "That Alabama team of 1930 is a typical Wade machine, powerful, big, tough, fast, aggressive, well-schooled in fundamentals, and the best blocking team for this early in the season that I have ever seen. When those big brutes hit you I mean you go down and stay down, often for an additional two minutes.
"Coach Wade started his second team that was plenty big and they went right to their knitting scoring a touchdown in the first quarter against one of the best fighting small lines that I have seen. For Ole Miss was truly battling the big boys for every inch of ground.
"At the end of the quarter, the earth started to tremble, there was a distant rumble that continued to grow. Some excited fan in the stands bellowed, 'Hold your horses, the elephants are coming,' and out stamped this Alabama varsity.
"It was the first time that I had seen it and the size of the entire eleven nearly knocked me cold, men that I had seen play last year looking like they had nearly doubled in size."
Strupper and other writers continued to refer to the Alabama linemen as "Red Elephants," the color referring to the crimson jerseys.
The 1930 team posted an overall 10-0 record. It shut out eight opponents and allowed only 13 points all season while scoring 217. The "Red Elephants" rolled over Washington State 24-0 in the Rose Bowl and were declared National Champions.

Bryant-Denny Stadium - The Home of the Crimson Tide

Bryant-Denny Stadium is the on-campus home of the Alabama Crimson Tide football team, winners of 12 national championships. The stadium is named for legendary University of Alabama football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant and former U. of A. president George Denny.

History

Bryant-Denny Stadium opened on September 29, 1929. It was known as the George Hutchenson Denny Stadium until 1975, when the state legislature added Bryant's name. Bryant Denny Stadium has undergone six expansions in its history. The first came in 1937 when 6,000 seats were added on the east side and brought capacity to 18,000. After two more expansions in 1950 and 1961, the grandstands reached a total of 61 rows and the capacity was 43,000. In 1966, the grandstands were extended into the end zones, and the capacity grew to 60,000. The west upper deck and press box added 10,000 more seats in 1988. The east upper deck was added for the 1998 season, providing 10,000 additional bleacher seats and 81 skyboxes on two levels and raising the total capacity to 83,818. Also added during this expansion were a scoreboard with video display capabilities in the south endzone as well as a new east side entrance tower, a brick facade, and reception areas for the Scholarship and A-Club level patrons.

The most recent expanison was completed in fall of 2006. This brought seating capacity to 92,138, making Bryant-Denny Stadium the seventh largest on-campus facility in the nation, the largest stadium in the state of Alabama, and the fourth largest in the Southeastern Conference.

With the addition of two (2) new Jumbotrons, one placed in each corner of the north endzone, Bryant-Denny Stadium is the only college stadium in the country with three (3) jumbotrons. Four-feet high and 450 feet long LCD ribbon screens have been placed along the East and West upper deck facades making it the largest of its kind in NCAA football and rivaling most professional stadiums.

Prior to Denny Stadium being built, the Tide played on the Quad (1893-1914) and Denny Field (1915-1917 and 1919-1928). Those years represent a total of 53 games for which Bama posted a 44-9 record. There were two different sites used on the Quad, the first located on the southeast corner, with the field running parallel to 6th Avenue. Around the turn of the century, the field was moved 90-degrees to the west to run parallel to University Boulevard.

In 1915, games were played on University Field, renamed Denny Field in 1920, where the Tide played for the next 14 years. Alabama posted a 43-2 record on that field and held opponents scoreless in 35 of those games. Denny Field was two blocks east of the current stadium, behind Little Hall. Mallet Hall and Parker-Adams Hall now stand on the north endzone of Denny Field. A parking lot covers the rest of what remains of Denny Field.

Location:

950 Paul W. Bryant Drive
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
Map by Google

Broke ground: September 28, 1929, Opened: 1929

Surface: Natural Grass

Former name: George Hutchenson Denny Stadium (1929-1975)

Seats: 92,138

Facts

• Total seating capacity: 92,138
• The stadium, by capacity, is the second largest sporting events venue in the state, with the largest being the Talladega Superspeedway in Talladega, AL (capacity: 143,231).
• All-time attendance record: 92,138 (vs. Hawaii, September 2, 2006)
• The September 2, 2006 match up vs. Hawaii saw the largest crowd to have ever witnessed a football game in the state of Alabama.
• All-time win-loss record in stadium: 187-32-3
• Number of skyboxes: 123 (85 added the east side in 1998, 38 added on the north side in 2006)
• Consecutive sellouts: 56 (since 1988, as of 08/01/01)
• From 1947 until 2000, the annual Iron Bowl game between Alabama and Auburn was played in Birmingham. Prior to 1988, Legion Field was divided 50-50; however, after this game, Alabama would have their home game here every other year. (Auburn had begun hosting the game in Auburn in 1989, and every other year since 1993.)
• Special features:
• Video scoreboard in south end zone.
• Reception areas for A-Club and Scholarship club level patrons in central entrance tower on east side.
• Two ribbon boards mounted on the east and west sides of the stadium which measure approximately 4 feet high by 420 feet wide, making these displays the largest ever installed at an outdoor collegiate facility, as well as rivaling many professional stadiums.
• Two jumbotrons that are located in both corners of the north end zone.

Note: This information found on www.jclemens.com is a personally owned fan site and is not affiliated with the University of Alabama®
Alabama logos are property of The University of Alabama®

Paul "BEAR" Bryant September 11, 1913- January 26, 1983

“Paul William "Bear" Bryant best known as an American college football coach, especially as the longtime head coach of the University of Alabama football team. He won the national championship six times and set the record as the all-time (up to that time) most successful coach in NCAA Division I college football, with a record of 323-85-17.

September 11, 1913 - Paul William Bryant is born in Moro Bottoms near Moro Creek in southern Arkansas. Moro Bottom was a three-square mile plot of land where seven families lived. He is the 11th of 12 children borne by Ida Kilgore and William Monroe Bryant. Three of the Bryant children had died in infancy.

1924 - The Bryant family moves to nearby Fordyce, Ark., a town of 3,600 people.

1926 - Paul Bryant goes out for football and plays in the first game he ever sees. He has cleats screwed into his shoes, the only pair he owns, and wears them everywhere he goes.  

1927 - The young teenager goes to the Fordyce Theatre where anyone who will wrestle a bear can win a dollar. Bryant wrestles the bear but the owner and the bear escape without paying. He didn't get the buck but he got a nickname.

1930 - Paul 'Bear' Bryant leads his high school team, the Fordyce Red Bugs to a perfect season and a state championship.

1931 - Alabama assistant coach Hank Crisp comes to Fordyce trying to sign the Jordan twins, who opt to go to Arkansas. Crisp leaves with one Paul Bryant. 1933 - In the first year of the Southeastern Conference, Bryant helps the Crimson Tide to the initial SEC Championship. 1934 - Paul Bryant becomes known in football folklore as the 'other end' to Don Hutson as Alabama goes 10-0 and beats Stanford 29-13 in the Rose Bowl. The Crimson Tide claims the national title by a number of polls in the pre-AP era. June 2, 1935 - Paul Bryant secretly marries Mary Harmon Black in Ozark, Ala. He doesn't tell Coach Frank Thomas in fear he'll take away his scholarship. October 19, 1935 - The legend of Bryant continues to grow as he plays against Tennessee in Knoxville with a broken bone in his left leg and he leads the Tide to a 25-0 victory over the Volunteers. The Tide goes 23-3-2 during his three-year career.

1936 - Bryant is hired at Union College in Tennessee to install the Notre Dame Box offense. He's making $170 a month when Frank Thomas calls him home to Alabama as an assistant coach, paying him $1,250 a year. Daughter Mae Martin is born. 1940 - Bryant goes to Vanderbilt as an assistant coach to Red Sanders after being recommended by sports writer and close personal friend Fred Russell. Bryant helps the Commodores upset the Tide 7-0 in 1941. December 7, 1941 -Bryant and Hall of Fame New York Yankee catcher Bill Dickey are going to Arkansas where Bryant is in line to be named the head coach of the Razorbacks when they hear news of Pearl Harbor on the radio. They turn around and head back to Nashville and Bryant enlists in the Navy.

1942-44 - Bryant serves as an officer in North Africa until he is honorably discharged and sent to North Carolina to train new enlistees. He reaches the rank of Lt. Commander. While at North Carolina, he coaches the football team, North Carolina Pre-Flight. His son Paul, Jr., is born December 19.

In 1945 Bryant accepted the job as head coach at the University of Maryland. He coached the Terrapins for only one season (6-2-1), during which he was in constant competition for ultimate control of the football program with former Terrapin coach and then University President, Harry C. Byrd. In the most widely publicized example of the power struggle between the two, Bryant suspended a player for violating team rules only to discover that Byrd had the player reinstated while Bryant was away on vacation. The power struggle culminated with Bryant confronting Byrd in a closed door meeting that lasted hours. During the meeting, word leaked that Bryant was leaving among the students. A reported 3,000 students organized demonstrations for several days in an attempt to convince Bryant to stay. A reluctant Bryant addressed the crowd, telling them that he was leaving and the university administration needed their support, not blame. Bryant left Maryland to take over the head coaching position at the University of Kentucky.

Bryant coached at the University of Kentucky for eight seasons which included Kentucky's first bowl appearance (1947) and their first (and only) Southeastern Conference title (1950). The 1950 Kentucky team is considered to be the national champions by at least one ranking system, the Sagarin ratings; that team defeated Bud Wilkinson's #1 ranked Oklahoma Sooners in the Sugar Bowl but the AP polls then came out before the bowl games. Bryant led Kentucky to appearances in the Great Lakes Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl and Cotton Bowl. Kentucky's final AP poll rankings under Bryant included #11 in 1949, #7 in 1950 (before defeating #1 Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl), #15 in 1951, #20 in 1952 and #16 in 1953. The 1950 season was Kentucky's highest rank until it finished #6 in the final 1977 AP poll. Bryant left Kentucky after the end of the 1953 season.

In 1954 Bryant, in need of a job, accepted the head coaching job at Texas A&M University. The Aggies suffered through a grueling 1-9 initial season which began with the famous training camp in Junction, TX. But only two years later, possibly a result of the Junction experience, Bryant led the team to the Southwest Conference championship with a 34-21 victory over the University of Texas at Austin. The following year, 1957, Bryant's star back John David Crow won the Heisman Trophy (the only Bryant player to ever earn that award), and the Aggies were in title contention until they lost to the #20 Rice Owls in Houston, amid rumors that Alabama would be going after Bryant. At the close of the 1957 season, having compiled an overall 25-14-2 record at Texas A&M, Bryant returned to Tuscaloosa to take the head coaching position at Alabama.

Bryant arrived in Tuscaloosa as head coach in 1958. The turnaround at Alabama was almost immediate. After winning a combined four games the previous three years, the Tide went 5-4-1 in Bryant's first season. The next year, in 1959, Alabama beat Auburn and appeared in a bowl game, the first time either had happened in the previous six years. It was two years later, however, in 1961, that Alabama regained dominance and Bryant first ascended to the throne of college football. The 1961 team went 11-0 and defeated Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl to claim the national championship; the defense allowed a mere 25 points all season, compiling six shutouts, five of them coming consecutively. No defense since has fared better on paper than the 1961 Crimson Tide defense led by Lee Roy Jordan. The next three years (1962-1964) featured Joe Namath at quarterback and were among Bryant's finest. The 1962 season ended with a victory in the Orange Bowl over Bud Wilkinson's University of Oklahoma Sooners. The following year ended with a victory in 1963 Sugar Bowl. In 1964, the Tide won another national championship but lost to the University of Texas in the Orange Bowl in the first nationally televised college game in color. The Crimson Tide would repeat as champions in 1965. Coming off of back-to-back national championship seasons, Bryant's Alabama team went undefeated in 1966 and defeated a strong Nebraska team 39-28 in the Orange Bowl. Despite this, Alabama finished third in the nation behind Michigan State and Notre Dame, both of which had one tie (against each other), and neither of which chose to play in a bowl game that season.

1967, however would mark the beginning of a downturn for Bryant and the Tide. The 1967 team was billed as another national championship contender with star quarterback Kenny Stabler returning, but the team stumbled out of the gate and tied Florida State 37-37 at Legion Field. The season never took off from there, with the Bryant-led Alabama team finishing 8-2-1, losing in the Cotton Bowl to Texas A&M, coached by former Bryant player and assistant coach Gene Stallings. In 1968, Bryant again could not match his previous successes, as the team went 8-3. It was in 1969 and 1970, however, that Bryant reached the trough of his coaching career, going 6-5 and 6-5-1 respectively.

In 1971, Bryant re-invented himself, Alabama, and the game when he installed the wishbone offense. The offense had been invented by Emory Bellard, and Darrell Royal had won national championships with it at Texas in 1969 and 1970. Bryant saw the wishbone first hand in the 1970 Bluebonnet Bowl against Oklahoma, and on the plane ride home he became fascinated with the new formation. That summer, he arranged for visits with friend and colleague Darrell Royal, who showed Bryant the ins and outs of the wishbone. He kept the new offense secret until he finally unveiled it against USC in the first game of the 1971 season, as the Tide defeated the stunned Trojans 17-10. The tide went on to share championships with USC and Notre Dame and finally won a championship outright in 1979.

He coached at Alabama for 25 years sharing five national titles (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, and winning one outright in 1979). In the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Bryant received one and a half votes for presidential candidate. His win over in-state rival Auburn University, coached by former Bryant assistant Pat Dye in November 1981 was Bryant's 315th, earning him the record for victories over Amos Alonzo Stagg. When Bryant retired after the 1982 season, his record at Alabama totaled 232-46-9.

In his career Bryant participated in a total of 31 post-season bowl games including 24 consecutively at Alabama. He had 15 bowl wins, including eight Sugar Bowls, was a 10-time Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year and a four-time National Coach of the Year; an award subsequently named the Paul "Bear" Bryant Award in his honor. Even today his legacy casts a long shadow over every subsequent head coach at Alabama. A great testament to Bryant, as a person, is the trust fund he created which enables the children of every player he coached to attend college for free.

Retirement

Bryant announced his retirement as head football coach at Alabama effective with the end of the 1982 season. His last game was a 21-15 victory in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee over the University of Illinois. When asked in a post-game interview what he intended to do while retired, Bryant sarcastically replied that he would "probably croak in a month."

He had intended to stay on with the University as athletic director, but died on January 26, 1983 after checking into a hospital in Tuscaloosa with chest pains. His death came less than a month after his last game as a coach. Three churches were needed to hold the multitudes that gathered for the funeral service on January 28, 1983.

The five-mile procession slowly rolled down Tenth Street in Tuscaloosa, past the stadium that for 25 years had been filled with fans cheering him on, past Memorial Coliseum where his office was located. The caravan made its way down I-59, where all traffic stopped to allow its passage. Officials estimated between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people lined the 53-mile stretch to Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham; it is believed to be one of the largest events in the state's history, in terms of persons attending.

Legacy

Bryant is buried in Birmingham in Elmwood Cemetery; a crimson line is painted on the road from the entrance of the cemetery that leads directly to his gravesite. To this day, fans still travel to his grave to pay their respects or leave flowers and other Alabama-related material. In February, 1983 President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Alabama's Bryant-Denny Stadium (which was named for him in 1975, more than seven years before his death), as well as a high school and a major street that runs through the University of Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa, are named for him. There is also a museum dedicated to him on Alabama's campus. A national "College Football Coach of the Year" award is named for him and he was honored with a U.S. postage stamp in 1996. After his death in 1983, the Associated Press named its college football national championship trophy after Bryant. At Legion Field, the site of countless Bryant triumphs, there stands a statue in his honor. Prior to the start of the 2006 season, Alabama's Bryant-Denny Stadium received a number of upgrades including statues of Bryant and the three other Crimson Tide coaches to take Alabama to national championships.

Bryant is fondly remembered, even revered, in Alabama for his reputation as a tough, dedicated leader with an indisputable record of success. His trademark houndstooth hat is an instantly-recognizable icon.

Gary Busey portrayed Bryant in a 1984 biographical film, "The Bear". Sonny Shroyer appears briefly as Bryant in Forrest Gump. Tom Berenger played Bryant in the 2003 movie The Junction Boys depicting Bryant's first season as head coach at Texas A&M.

 

Paul "Bear" Bryant's Records

6 National Championships

1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, 1979

13 SEC Titles

1961, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1971, 1972, 1973,

1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981

Bowl Games

24 Consecutive Bowl Trips

7 Sugar Bowls - Orange Bowls

4 Liberty Bowls - Cotton Bowls

2 Bluebonnet Bowls -  Gator Bowl

Coach of the Year Honors

National Coach of the Year

1961, 1971, 1973

SEC Coach of the Year

1950, 1961, 1964, 1965, 1971, 1973,

1974, 1977, 1979, 1981”

References:

• Coach Bryant timeline at the Paul W. Bryant Museum.
• Paul "Bear" Bryant at the College Football Hall of Fame
• summary of Bryant's record from RollTide.com
• Bear Bryant quotes from Wikiquote

Chapter Officers

President: Blair Brown
Vice President: Jeff Ezell
2nd Vice President Stan Brumbeloe
Secretary: Jim White
Treasurer: Joe Bross
At-Large: Sam Ruffner

Chapter Information

© 2009 Russell/Muscogee County
University of Alabama
Alumni Chapter

2101 Second Avenue
Columbus Georgia 3190
Telephone: (706) 478-5162  
Fax: (706) 322-3059