The Tide Has Quite a History with “The Granddaddy of Them All” (Part 2)

Between the time my father was 5-years-old and the time he was a 26-year-old freshman at the University of Alabama, the Tide made 6 trips to Pasadena to play in the Rose Bowl. Whats more, 5 other southern teams competed in 7 additional Rose Bowls. Once an afterthought, sothern college football had risen to become a juggernaut with the Crimson Tide leading the way.

Between 1926 and 1938, Alabama appeared in the Rose bowl 5 times amassing a 3-1-1 record, They had in fact become, “Dixie’s football pride,” and most Alabamians responded with pure adulation for the Tide. My father was part of a cultural phenomenon, but all he knew was that the football team he loved had become a huge source of joy in a life that had been rather hard.

My Dad Wasn’t the Only One

My Dad’s family was poor. I’m not sure he and his siblings knew it. Everyone they grew up around in downtown Mobile was just as poor. In my Dad’s case, his father died when he was 9. My grandmother worked as a receptionist for a doctor, but they barely scraped by. In fact, my grandmother had to place my aunt and uncle in an orphanage after the Great Depression began for them to survive. My Dad and his older brother worked and went to school. Life was tough, and things to be proud of were often in short supply, but one thing was constant: the success of the the Crimson Tide and his pride in them.

And, pride wasn’t reserved for folks in Alabama. The tide of success brought on by the emergence of southern football swept acros the region with folks becoming fanatical, prideful supporters of their local teams. Rivalries grew among those teams and took on huge significance. In fact, “The South’s Most Important Football Game” lit the fuse on the entire explosion of southern pride.

The Tide on Top

The Tide’s victory over the Washington Huskies in the 1926 Rose Bowl was followed by a tie with Stanford in the 1927 game, and wins over the Washington State Cougars in 1931 and Stanford again in 1935. These teams also produced Alabama’s first 4 National Championships. The run by the Crimson Tide between 1925 and the 1935 Rose Bowl was the first “dynasty’ streak of the south’s greatest football power. (a harbinger of things to come, no doubt)

Signs that Alabama along with other southern teams, was about to face a long absence from the Rose Bowl were beginning to show at the end of the 1936 season. Western fans and football powers alike had begun to sour on the novelty of southern football. Southern teams were too successful, and a restlessness was beginning to show in the invitations from the Tournament of Roses Committee. An undefeated and once tied Alabama team missed a bowl game completely after they and undefeated and once tied LSU were passed over for a Rose Bowl invitation. (LSU got the Sugar Bowl invitation as the SEC Champion)

The End

Alabama was invited back to the Rose Bowl in 1938 and lost to Cal 13-0. West coast reporters found it hard to contain their resentment against the Tide as evidenced by Maxwell Stiles of the Los Angeles Examiner writing, “The Crimson Tide was at its ebb, Alabama at last had lost a Rose Bowl Game.” Sadly, that trip was the beginning of the end.

Other bowl games gained greater prominence. The Rose Bowl was no longer automatically the national championship game nor was it revered as it had been when it was the focal point of the college football world. For its part, Alabama enjoyed contined success gaining a 1942 Cotton Bowl bid, 1943 Orange Bowl bid, and a 1945 Sugar Bowl bid.

Bama completed its 4th undefeated season in 1945 and received a Rose Bowl bid which they won. Unfortunately, this great season came in the same year as an even greater season by Army. That team was loaded. It featured Glenn Davis and “Doc” Blanchard. No shame is losing out on a National Championship to what is widely regarded as the greatest college football team of all time.

The real shame is the conversation that started during the 1946 season. The end result was an agreement between the Pacific Coast Conference and the Big 9. My father always swore that the Rose Bowl signed the deal with the Big 9 and the PCC because they were “tired of the Tide going out to California to whip somebody’s butt.” Conventional wisdom is that the decision was an economic one since inking a deal between the relatively more affluent western and midwestern conferences meant greater tourism dollars.

Perhaps that is true, but whatever the reason, it enraged the south, and the Rose Bowl’s deal likely backfired. While the game maintained prominence for decades, the deal with the PAC-12 and B1G eventually marginalized the game as other bowls took center stage with their ability to feature better matchups with national championship implications.

Revisionist historians point to segregation as the prime motivation of the Rose Bowl, the PCC, and the Big-9 to ink their original agreement. While race and desegregation eventually became issues central to the Rose Bowl and college football in general, there is little evidence that they were at the heart of the decision when it was made. That in part was evidenced by what almost happened in 1961. Stay tuned for that story in the next intallment.