On this very day 29 years ago, Paul W. Bryant passed away at the age of 69. It is with particular sadness we note this anniversary so soon after the death of Penn State’s own legendary head coach Joe Paterno. In the sphere of college football there have been but a handful of men who can boast accomplishments on par with these two and it’s doubtful any can surpass them.

Yesterday, Paterno’s funeral was held in State College and there will be a memorial service today on the Penn State campus. These events have already been compared to those that transpired in January 1982 to mark the passing of Bryant. That should be expected.

There are striking similarities between the two legendary coaches that exceeds the simple parallel of longevity. Bryant and Paterno’s histories are bound together by a multitude of fateful connections and epic football games. Commenting on the congruity has been a staple of sports columnists the past several days.

As Alabama’s head coach, Bryant faced Paterno on the opposite sideline five times – four times as Penn State’s head coach and once as a Nittany Lions assistant. All of the games proved to be memorable, several of them classics and at least two of significant historical significance.

Despite these connections and similarities, it is a great mistake to conflate the legacies of these two coaches. That’s an easy mistake to make due to the immense shadows they both cast over a sport that, in many significant ways, they defined for almost everyone else that followed them.

There may also be clues in the long difficult struggle to cope with the loss endured by Alabama a quarter century ago that can help Penn State navigate the painful journey ahead.

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Recently I was poring through the archives over at the Paul W. Bryant Museum and came across a superb summation Alabama's defensive philosophy penned by Coach Bryant in the late 1960s. This is the two-page introduction to the defensive section of Alabama' 1967 playbook which, as far as I can tell, is essentially unchanged from the version he included in the 1958 playbook -- his first year as head coach of the Crimson Tide.

Defense is a part of the game that gives the player an unexcelled opportunity to engage in physical contact, and those that are fond of it will usually excel in this facet of the game.

Defense in its simplicity requires that the players be able to do three or four things. They are:

1. Whip the blocker or blockers so that he can disengage the blocker at will.
2. Get to the ball rapidly.
3. Tackle the ball carrier.
4. A defensive secondary must be able to defend against the pass.

Defense is the most important aspect of the game. Some of the reasons this is true are:

1. If you prevent the opponent from scoring you will not lose.
2. More mistakes are always made with the ball.
3. Adverse weather conditions can seriously affect a team's offense yet have practically no effect on the defense.
4. There are more ways to score on defense than on offense. (The defense can score with a blocked kick, an intercepted pass, a safety, a recovered fumble in the air and with a punt return.)

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In the early 1970s, National Geographic photographer Dick Durrance III traveled to Alabama to capture the essence of the Yellowhammer State for a story penned by Howard La Fay. Their story "Alabama, Dixie to a Different Tune" appeared in the October 1975 issue of the magazine (Vol. 148, No. 4) and it offered a two-page spread on Crimson Tide football and Paul W. Bryant.

Durrance's photos are now available through National Geographic's online image collection. They are after the jump with an excerpt of that portion of La Fay's 1975 story.

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The first Associated Press College Football Poll appeared in 1934 and due to the feature's popularity, became a regular item by the news service two years later. Alabama's first appearance in the poll seems to be at the No. 14 slot on Oct. 14, 1936 (the Tide would finish at No. 4 that season). 

The first occasion for the Crimson Tide to face off in a contest pitting two top ten teams was in the 1938 Rose Bowl. The second ranked team in the nation, California, succeeded in downing No. 4 Alabama 13-0. Since that game, the Tide has played in 61 games when they and the opponent were among the top ten squads in the country. Bama has a 35-26-1 record in those games overall and a  23-14-1 tally for those contests in the regular season.

On Saturday, No. 2 Alabama will face No. 1 LSU in Bryant-Denny Stadium to take part on one of just 45 games pitting the top two teams in the AP poll against each other. Alabama has played in six of those contests. LSU, one. Neither have ever played in such a contest during the regular season. It is fourth time Nick Saban has lead to Tide into one of these games.

As for the outcomes, Alabama has a 1-1 record as the No. 1 team and a 3-1 record as No. 2. Here is a run-down of each of these games and how they played out.

Jan. 7, 2010, No. 1 Alabama vs No. 2 Texas, BCS Championship Game

This will never get old. Ever.

How they got there: When No. 2 Alabama decisively downed No. 1 Florida in the SEC Championship, AP voters placed the Crimson Tide in the top slot of the poll. Texas, meanwhile, had begun the season ranked No. 2 and although mid-season shuffling of the top of the rankings dropped them to No. 3 several times, that was where they finished it as well. Despite a close scare against Nebraska in the BIG XII championship, the Longhorns kept their record intact and earned the invitation to Pasadena to play the Crimson Tide in the BCS National Championship game.

What transpired: A series of Alabama miscues early seemed to have given Texas the upper hand but Longhorns' quarterback Colt McCoy was knocked out of the game with a fluke injury on their fifth play from scrimmage. From there the Alabama defense stiffened and the Crimson Tide offense began mauling the Texas D. Although Texas launched an inspired rally behind backup Garrett Gilbert in the second half, it wasn't nearly enough. Alabama won 37-21 and claimed the Crimson Tide's 13th National Championship.

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On the morning of Nov. 18, 1895, Alabama and LSU faced off in Baton Rouge for the first of 74 contests leading up to this Saturday's game in Bryant-Denny Stadium. That Tiger team of yore was undefeated and the Tide squad that year had nary a win. Both would finish their respective seasons in that state.

It took three tries for Alabama to notch a win against the Bayou Bengals, a 10-0 victory in Baton Rouge in 1903. Since that time things  have gone considerably better for the Crimson Tide. Alabama leads the overall series 45-24-5. Still recent history has certainly put the balance of power on the far side of the Pearl River. LSU holds a 7-3 lead against the Tide since 2001.

While a great amount of attention has been paid to the fact this is the first time the two teams have met holding the top two rankings in college football, there are quite a few top ten tilts in the history book - 1964, 1972, 1973, 1978, 2005 and 2009.

So to get everyone up to speed on the history of the rivalry we offer the complete record of the series between two teams as well as the record book for those games compiled by the UA Athletic Department. Please peruse and enjoy.

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Alabama football has been associated with the elephant since the 1930s. The official account of how the pachyderm was adopted as the symbol for the team goes back to a reference made by Atlanta Journal sports writer Everett Strupper but there are other versions of the story.

What is generally accepted is the practice of referring to the Alabama team as "the red elephants" became common in the early 1930s (an association head coach Wallace Wade was not particularly fond of). Still, the team was known as The Crimson Tide and the pachyderm didn't become adopted as the school's official mascot until 1979.

Yet, despite the unofficial status as the Crimson Tide's mascot, the elephant was very much part of the school's football traditions by the 1940s. It was in that decade that a live elephant mascot named "Alamite" was a regular sight on gamedays in Tuscaloosa (show above in 1945).

For several years it was traditional for the pachyderm to lead the homecoming parade and Alamite would also bear that year's queen onto the field prior to the game as this photo from the 1947 contest against LSU shows.

By the mid-1950s, Alamite gave way to a mascot-for-a-day that would be brought in for the homecoming parade and other activities. Reportedly, the cost of keeping the giant animal proved too expensive for the university.

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With the start of Alabama's Southeastern Conference schedule and the recent hullabaloo over the sanctity of the the gridiron traditions therein, I thought it might be time to see how well versed everyone actually is with the history of these programs.

For the most part, each school presently in the SEC saw their respective football program inaugurated in the early 1890s. In most cases this occurred as a result of one man - usually with some experience with the game due to time as a student in a northern institution - taking the initiative to organize and coach the team.

So here is a list of the men who deserve the credit for beginning the many programs that have prospered over the last 120-years-or-so as well as a list of the glorious teams they founded which we know today. Both columns are listed alphabetically. How schools can you match correctly with their football founders?  Answers, of course, are after the jump.

I must note that Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee have been left off of this list since it seems there isn't any single person who can be credited with the organization of their respective football programs (and Florida's peculiar institutional origins complicates this even further). If anyone has any better information about these teams, I'd love to hear it.

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September 11, 2010; Tuscaloosa, AL
# 1 Alabama 24 - # 18 Penn State 3

Between 1959 and 1990, Alabama and Penn State met on the gridiron a total of 13 times. The first three occasions the two teams faced each other were in high-stakes bowl games but for the entire 1980s the two teams were an annual regular season matchup. The Crimson Tide and the Nittany Lions resumed their unique rivalry last season, a full twenty years after the last contest. On Saturday, Alabama will return to Beaver Stadium for the first time since 1989. To mark this auspicious occasion Roll Bama Roll is taking a looking back at the history of this series through the game program covers.

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