Even when Alabama basketball’s star has shined the brightest, it has been understandably obscured by the glare of Crimson Tide football. Yet, make no mistake, Alabama basketball has shone quite well indeed. In the Southeast Conference the Crimson Tide trail only Kentucky in basketball wins, conference tournament titles, and regular season conference titles.

Respect still has been hard to come by. As of 2009 there were no less than 128 books in the Paul W. Bryant Museum about Crimson Tide football. There was just one on Alabama basketball, Clyde Bolton’s 1977 book The Basketball Tide.

Bolton was The Birmingham News’ longtime sportswriter and columnist. He covered Alabama athletics for forty years and the books he produced on the subject are required reading for anyone interested in the history of that period. The Basketball Tide certainly fits that description.

The early history of Alabama basketball was inescapably intertwined with the football program since the school’s coaches often worked both sports. That began at the start. DV Graves was hired to coach the football team in 1911 and two years later he was at the helm of Alabama’s first basketball squad.

That connection continued when Hank Crisp arrived in 1924. Although Crisp’s is primarily remembered as the man who brought Paul Bryant to Tuscaloosa to play football for the Crimson Tide, his 18 years at the helm of the Alabama basketball team built a durable foundation for the program.

As much the Crimson Tide dominated football in the Southeast Conference under the leadership of Paul W. Bryant, the perennial bugbear for Alabama basketball was Kentucky under Adolph F. Rupp. Reading The Basketball Tide you certainly learn that wins against the Wildcats were not common but when they occurred they were particularly sweet.

Alabama celebrated with the 1956 win over the Wildcats.

Perhaps the greatest victory against Rupp’s team came in 1956 under Alabama coach Johnny Dee stunned Kentucky in a wild 101-77 win in Birmingham. Dee had brought a slew of transfers from the Midwest with him when he arrived in Tuscaloosa and this game sealed their fame as the Rocket 8.

The Basketball Tide is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Alabama basketball. While the style of the book can be tough reading – a lot of the chapters throw a heap of names at you and almost no context to grasp who they all are – Bolton’s prose tends to recover and carry the story along nicely.

The bigger problem with The Basketball Tide is that it ends during CM Newton’s successful stint leading the Tide basketball squad (they won three straight SEC titles just prior to The Basketball Tide’s publication). As a result there isn’t any information about the tenure of Wimp Sanderson who is, arguably, the most successful head coach in the history of Alabama basketball. Mark Gottfried is obviously omitted as well.

So with the current resurgence of the basketball program under Anthony Grant, perhaps the time has come for a sequel to The Basketball Tide.

Since the expansion of the Southeastern Conference in 1992, The Third Saturday in October is a name without a tether in reality. Rather than designate a specific weekend on the fall football schedule when the Alabama Crimson Tide and Tennessee Volunteers would meet on the gridiron it has simply become a title for a rivalry. And the rivalry is contentious enough, the name is still going strong.

It is also a title of Al Browning’s book on that rivalry, Third Saturday in October: The Game-by-Game Story of the South's Most Intense Football Rivalry. Built in the same format as Browning’s Bowl Bama Bowl, the book has one chapter for each game in the series starting with the 1928 contest, the first to be held on the third Saturday of October. There are also several essays scattered throughout focusing on the various head coaches that lead the teams through the seven decades described.

(The original edition of the book concluded with the 1987 season but the more recent second edition goes all the way through 2000.)

The result is a treasure trove of classic games rarely recounted in detail anymore. Here is the magestic kickers duel in 1932 between Tennessee’s Beattie Feathers and Alabama’s Johnny Caine that saw the Vols claim a 7-3 victory. Here is the classic come-from-behind 17-10 victory by Paul W. Bryant’s 1972 squad that found a way to score 14 points in the span of 36 seconds.

And here you will also find the "forgettable" games like the 1963 contest where five Volunteer fumbles and the performance of Joe Namath led to a 35-0 blowout only remembered for its final score.

Along the way Third Saturday in October delivers a treasure trove of fantastic anecdotes. There is the moving van parked in front of the Tennessee head coach’s house when fans felt he was losing to the Tide a bit too often and Coach Bryant breaking down the locker room door at Legion Field following a 7-7 tie in 1965.

Browning, it must be noted, is a native of Alabama and alumni of the University of Alabama and his book sometimes seems to be penned from a Crimson Tide point-of-view. Still, as a former sports editor at both the Tuscaloosa News and the Knoxville News-Sentinel, he’s in a unique position to tell the tale of the Alabama Tennessee rivalry with a reasonable degree of objectivity.

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The Alabama Legends video that precedes every Crimson Tide contest in Bryant-Denny Stadium contains no game clips of Bart Starr. Despite being recognized as one of the greatest quarterbacks at the pro level, his legacy at the University of Alabama is all but overlooked due to the unfortunate timing of his playing days at the Capstone.

Bart Starr cemented in place in the pantheon of football immortals with his tenure as the field general for Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers. The quarterback’s profile as it exists in the national consciousness is almost exclusively for his heroics on the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field during the 1960s. His years as a member of the Crimson Tide are often forgotten even by the Alabama faithful.

The importance of Alabama to Bart Star is one of the key points in Keith Dunnavant’s new book America’s Quarterback: Bart Starr and the Rise of the National Football League.

Starr’s time at the Capstone occurred during the nadir of the storied program. Under head coach Red Drew, Alabama football became a study in mediocrity that his successor JB Whitworth took to the depths of futility. Starr not only had the misfortune to play for both of these coaches, the latter benched him for his entire senior season.

A fortunate connection with the Green Bay organization through Alabama basketball coach Johnny Dee got Starr a tryout. Whitworth proved as useless as ever, not even providing Starr footballs to use in order to practice for the pro audition.

The Packers took him in the 17th round of the 1956 draft. When Vince Lombardi arrived in 1959, he wasn’t sold on his backup quarterback but knew good mechanics when he saw them. When pulled starter Lamar McHan in favor of Starr midway through the season, the man from Montgomery knew his opportunity had arrived and grabbed it with both hands.

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The worst thing about Clyde Bolton’s book on the history of Alabama football, The Crimson Tide, has to be the cover. The 1987 version of the book boasts the grinning visage of Bill Curry – not exactly the standard of excellence the former Birmingham News sportswriter was trying to convey in his tome.

Luckily, the cover of the paperback edition rips off very cleanly and the quality of the book improves tremendously from that point on. In fact, this is one of the best books about Alabama football I’ve ever read.

The Crimson Tide starts at the beginning, telling the tale of William G. Little, the Massachusetts prep student who came home to the University of Alabama to study law and brought the game of football with him. From there Bolton takes you on a brisk but not hurried tour of the history of the program up till the tenure of the aforementioned Curry.

Bolton takes you through Rose Bowl era of Wallace Wade and Frank Thomas, the slide into mediocrity with Red Drew and then the descent into disaster with "Ears" Whitworth. About half the book covers the return of Paul W. Bryant and the quarter century of dominance which, given the fact it was first printed in 1972 and then updated a decade later, makes sense.

Where The Crimson Tide stands out from the usual football histories is how Bolton intersperses the narrative with interviews of important characters to the story. These recollections from people like Bully Van de Graff, Fred Sington and Red Drew cast an authenticity to the tale by providing the main characters the luxury of perspective about their achievements.

Coach JWH Pollard devised and made the unique
headgear/mouthpiece for the Bama players.

What really makes The Crimson Tide stand apart from most books about Alabama football is Bolton’s skills as a reporter and writer. He has a natural eye for detail and sense of narrative. He’s not trying to unearth the deeper truth in his subject, just tell the story in front of him. What makes this effort shine is he also is blessed with an almost lost talent for metaphor.

"Headlines gravitate to Joe Namath like raindrops to the earth. Sometimes they are good headlines. Sometimes they are not. Always they are read."

I also have to admit that it’s oddly pleasant to read a book that eschews a lot of the now accepted elements of the narrative (the "mama called" comment, for example). It’s not a question of omission, Bolton simply was writing as these legends were still being hammered into their accepted forms.

If there’s any real criticism of the work it’s the almost complete absence of the issue of segregation. The controversy surrounding the 1970 USC game (not to mention the 1959 Liberty Bowl) and are important milestones in the program’s history and deserve mention.

This is disappointing because Bolton does a very good job handling the lawsuit against the Saturday Evening Post. He covers the incident in a thorough manner but keeps it concise so it doesn’t draw away from the narrative. By not addressing the issue of black players on the Alabama roster, Bolton passes up an opportunity that took years for other writers to address properly.

Still, while there are some superb books written about parts of Alabama football there are painfully few good ones that take on the entire scope of the program’s history. Among that number, The Crimson Tide is almost certainly at the very top.

With the death of Paul W. Bryant now almost three decades behind us, the ability to understand the actual stature of the man to those around him is ebbing as well. By all accounts, he possessed a powerful physical presence that game film and online video snippets capture in only the barest degree.

The two books by former student manager for the Alabama football team under Coach Bryant, Mike Bynum, have become critical to understanding the legendary coach’s legacy.

We Believe… was published in 1980 and, according to its forward, intended to be a fundraiser for scholarships at the schools Bryant coached at. Boys of Autumn was published in 1983 after hasty revisions to account for the retirement and passing of Coach Bryant earlier that year. Content-wise the two are almost exactly the same. The chapter titles are changed and a few introductory items altered but that’s about it.

Both start with a short biography of Coach Bryant that is interesting due to some of the comments clearly made to the author by the man himself. The bulk of the books, and the heart of their value, comes from one-on-one interviews with players and coaches who were on Coach Bryant’s teams. These recollections of Coach Bryant are impassioned, immediate and invaluable.

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The format of Don Wade’s 2006 book, Always Alabama: A History of Crimson Tide Football, suggests the selling point of the tome will be the photographs. In this instance, though, you really need to purchase it for the articles.

This is a very well written account of the 119-year history of gridiron at The Capstone and that’s probably because Wade knows what he’s doing. As longtime sportswriter for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, he’s clearly familiar with the subject matter but he then bolsters that with solid reporting and interviewing. Although he takes a few chances with the way he’s constructed the book, it works because the foundation of the effort are so firmly set.

The book was published in 2006 and so it gives, perhaps, an overly rosy assessment on the Mike Shula regime and the quality of play provided by Brodie Croyle. Aside from that, I’m hard pressed to really find much wrong with this effort.

The first thing you notice about Always Alabama is that it abandons a straight linear chronology and tells the tale of Alabama football more by subject matter. This would have been disaster in the hands of a lesser writer but it works here.

Wade has taken care in deciding what parts of Alabama football history he intends to highlight and then frames the history around that. The approach is effective because it is a compelling way to tell a story you probably know all the key parts by heart when you pick the book up to begin with.

So, for example, you have whole decades summarized very briefly and then one single game, the 1979 Sugar Bowl game against Penn State, depicted in play-by-play detail. The unconventional arrangement gives it an unexpected freshness but it works because it makes the specific point Wade is trying to convey (in this case it is that the Goal Line Stand was just one of several critical plays in that epic contest not the least of which being Don McNeal's stop of Scott Fitzkee on the 2-yard-line).

Wade takes that same approach in terms of the players. There is a serious effort in Always Alabama to include information about all the standouts but the focus is a little different than most books on Alabama football.

For example: Joe Namath and Ken Stabler are in evidence, as you should well expect, but they aren’t given the limelight like in most histories. Wade knows their stars shine bright enough already and he focuses more of his attention showing the other standouts who often are overlooked in the glare.

Importantly, no key controversy is overlooked – such as the integration of the program and The Saturday Evening Post lawsuit – but neither are they allowed to interrupt the flow of the story.

In fact, Always Alabama presents one of the best accounts of the uncertainty in the program during the 1980s after Coach Bryant’s passing and the turmoil that followed Coach Stallings resignation. Wade’s recounting of these periods rely on first hand interviews and, as a result, are far more authoritative than almost any other version of these episodes available thus far.

And Wade’s keen eye for the appropriate quote certainly doesn’t hurt the enterprise in the least. After recounting the tribulations of the program between 1983 and 1990, he puts it all in a neat little package with one comment by Coach Bryant’s longtime secretary Linda Knowles"

"I don’t talk about the Perkins and Curry years," she said. "Coach Stallings return was very unifying."

And that, as they say, is all that needs to be said about that.

The sheer amount of first-person interviews is a hallmark of Always Alabama. Wade has gone out and talked to the ex-players, ex-coaches and a host of other folks who are salient to the story. Then he uses their comments to underscore the events he is describing. And when he doesn’t have that one-on-one interview, he’s explicit about where his quote comes from.

The photographs are also carefully chosen and placed. They seem to be part of the ongoing flow of the narrative rather than a separate telling of the tale in progress. This isn’t a coffee table book at all. It’s meant to be read and read thoroughly.

Always Alabama does something almost unheard of for books about the Crimson Tide, it finds a way to tell the story in a new and refreshing way. And for that alone it deserves to be on your bookshelf.

Next week: The Boys of Autumn/We Believe...

In the 119-year history of Alabama football, the Crimson Tide have played in an NCAA-leading 58 bowl games. To a certain extent the team’s 32-22-3 bowl game record presents a history of the program and so it’s no surprise to find someone has already taken that tack to write it.

Clyde Browning’s book, Bowl Bama Bowl: 1926-1998, A Crimson Tide Tradition is the history of Alabama football told as a tale of post-season contests. It a compelling approach since it gives enough information of the given season to put the bowl game in context as well as offering a unique window into the longer trends that have shaped Alabama football over the decades.

As a former sportswriter for the Tuscaloosa News Browning brings a sure narrative style to the work and as a longtime personal assistant of Coach Bryant he has unique access to information that makes his telling of the tale valuable. The final chapters of Bowl Bama Bowl are bolstered by an incisive series of interviews with Coach Stallings, providing a fitting coda to the span of the story he has chosen to tell.

By focusing on the bowl games themselves, Browning’s book does a great job addressing one of the most vexing problems facing authors attempting to tell the history of Alabama football – there’s just so damn much of it. The high points – particularly the national championships and undefeated seasons – are sufficient in number to crowd out a host of deserving contests. The more bitter moments in the program’s history then tend to get short shrift if they are remembered at all.

Bowl Bama Bowl was initially published in 1972 and then successively updated through 1998. (He later took the same approach in recounting the history of Alabama’s rivalry with Tennessee in his book Third Saturday in October.)  The staggered updating actually helps the book as the first edition was penned early enough to include interviews and commentary by the participants in the Crimson Tide’s first bowl games. The latter updates give a first-hand account of games after the passing of Coach Bryant that are often overlooked due to the triumphs of the earlier era.

The 1962 Sugar Bowl. Alabama beat Arkansas
10-3 to claim the National Championship.

It's a long fascinating journey from Wallace Wade's team that won the 1926 Rose Bowl against Washington to Gene Stalling's squad that was victorious against Michigan in the 1997 Outback Bowl. The whole complexion of the game itself is almost unrecognizable from one point to the other. Flipping through photographs alone is a testament to the changes that transpired in that seven-decade span. But followed season-by-season the journey from then to now seems completely logical.

Bowl Bama Bowl gives some interesting perspectives on long-held beliefs about the Alabama program. One great example is how Coach Bryant came around to the idea of using the wishbone offense in 1971. Usually it’s presented as an epiphany that occurred after Spring practices that year. Bowl Bama Bowl shows the genesis for the transition was most probably in the tie with Oklahoma in the 1970 Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl that ended the prior season.

"Oklahoma ran up and down the field on us for awhile because we didn’t know much about stopping that wishbone offense they were running," Coach Bryant said. And, according to one player, he spent the entire flight back to Tuscaloosa diagramming plays of the innovative offense.

That tie was astride the Crimson Tide’s perplexing eight game run of bowl contests without a victory that ran from 1968 through 1974. As a simple stat that seems perplexing, read as an ongoing narrative gives an understanding of how painful the frustration was for the program – particularly given the degree of talent that the teams boasted. Conveying that is one of the ways this book is important.

Once read completely through, Bowl Bama Bowl is also a fantastic resource on the individual games and the season’s they occurred in. If there’s a list of books that are required reading for Alabama football fans, Bowl Bama Bowl is certainly high on it.

Next week: Always Alabama

There are a lot of folks who claim to be die-hard Alabama football fans but few people back it up with the devotion shown by Tony Brandino.

Between 1954 and 1997, the self-proclaimed residential hardware consultant from Birmingham attended 500 consecutive Crimson Tide football games. (He also took an extra trip to College Station, Texas in 1988 when the game against Texas A&M was pushed back due to Hurricane Gilbert which he counts as his "plus one.")

The odyssey is recounted in his book FANtastic published as he reached his milestone on Oct. 18, 1997. The next week his streak was felled by the flu.

The streak started in the dark days of the J.B. Whitworth regime when wins were scarce and die hard fans were a rarity. But Brandino and his brother stuck with the Crimson Tide and were rewarded with Coach Paul W. Bryant’s quarter century at the helm. The years after Bryant's tenure were not as sweet but, as he notes, were full of great moments as well.

The greatest game, he says, was Coach Bryant’s 315th victory in 1981. It earns the spot not simply due to the import of the record or the fact that it came against Alabama’s arch-rival but because it was a great game. "In retrospect," he says. "I think the gods of drama were in charge."

FANtastic outlines the highlights but also is comprehensive in detailing the low points as well. Brandino recounts the dismay of witnessing "Punt, Bama, Punt" as well as the team’s ongoing futility against Texas and Notre Dame. There is a legion of delightful anecdotes here; Woody Hayes kicking the Super Dome goal post, getting mistaken for a Shriner in Honolulu and Pat James’ professional specialty.

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