“Winning cures all, doesn’t it? Until you lose to Louisiana Tech, then it don’t cure no more.”

must be really bitter, like a lot of us from that era, to speak out now. The last time I spoke to him about this kind of stuff he had similar sentiments, but that was on the telephone, in private. I guess there’s no point in holding back anything anymore.

He’s right about the assistants and recruiting. And he’s right about Fran being organized. The program needed that sort of discipline at the time, even if Fran was in over his head.

Recruiting:
Totally agree. We signed way, way too many guys we should not have signed. This is not even debatable. Regardless of being on probation, DuBose listened to too many Jim-Bob, Boss Hog types who “knew about dis boy up in da Mountains” who was 6’5 and 240 and could run and jump, etc. Too many of those guys sucked, to be blunt. We signed players who had NO BUSINESS being in an Alabama uniform. And what did DuBose do? He dressed them. He didn’t make them work out at 5 a.m. He tried to run off the walk-ons who wanted to be on the team and when Jim-Bob, Boss Hog hastled him about the pseudo-prized recruit, DuBose caved in. DuBose played some of these guys. Really, what choice did he have.

I don’t want to name names, but really, there is a long list of horrible players Alabama put on scholarship. It boils my blood today thinking about it.

Assistants:
DuBose – couldn’t be a hardass with the right people
Cottrell – a smoothtalking bullshitter; recruiter: yes coach: NO
Rouzie – an animal; should have coached inside linebackers and nothing else
Skene – a first-rate sycophant to DuBose
Williams – a first-rate cancer
Swinney – of no consequence
Ross – horrible for Alabama football
Johnson – good coach, shows in how many job offers he’s had since leaving
Harbison – good coach, good attitude
Hallman – washed up coach when we had him
Arians – too NFL for college, but had some funny insults
Callaway – too much of a Bama guy to coexist with DuBose and Stubbs
Stubbs – knew his stuff, but overruled because he was too cerebral
Shipp – too much of a badass to coach with DuBose
Thompson – a decent coach, good recruiter, and total bullshitter
Jones & Martin – inconsistent strength and conditioning program that was tampered with too much at times and too little at others

To be a successful coach at Alabama, you have to be hardass who can do the following things:
1) Recruit
2) Control the boosters
3) Rule the entire program like a dictator
4) Tell every Know-it-all Bama person who has “Ideas” for the program to Shut the _ up because this is MY Team. DuBose could never do that. He compromised way too much.

To quote the man: don’t compromise what you want most for what you want at the moment.

Holding the rope

The UA football post game radio show: “Just a head’s up, if you are interested in calling, there’s a two-drink minimum. If you say more than three coherent words in a row, you’re cut off. It’s not acceptable. Not on our show; we don’t put up with that.”