“The Tide Has Quite a History with “The Granddaddy of Them All” (Part 3)

Let’s get this out of the way and set a little context. In the previous article in this series, I confronted the false narrative that the 1946 agreement to make the Rose Bowl an exclusive contest between the Pacific Coast Conference champion and the Big-9 conference champion was a reaction against segregation. This is a notion that spread in recent year fueled by revisionist historians desperate to frame people and institutions important to them as more noble than they really were.

No, the Rose Bowl nor the two conferences involved were motivated by justice. Instead, their motivations were grounded in less virtuous considerations: money, power, and notariety. The Rose Bowl faced the very real fear of losing its place at the center of the college football world. Once the premiere postseason contest, the Rose Bowl was now one of several with the Sugar, Cotton, and Orange Bowls all hosting significant games that at various time had national championship implications.

The 1946 agreement (and its successive iterations) was an attempt by the Rose Bowl to salvage its standing. The committee gambled on what it believed was a surefire strategy to solidify a relationship with the relatively more affluent Big-9. Bringing schools from the economically prosperous and more densely populated midwest was really less of a gamble and more of an obvious play. In the short run, this alliance looked like the best way to protect the future of the Rose Bowl and to guarantee its opportunity to be the biggest game on New Year’s Day.

As time passed, the Rose Bowl’s importance diminished as if goverend by the law of diminishing returns. Since 1946, the Rose Bowl hosted the eventual national champion 11 times. The Orange, Sugar, and Cotton hosted the eventual champion 16, 15, and 9 times; hovever, after 1970, the balance of power shifted. Of the 42 national champions awarded since 1970, the Rose Bowl hoted only 9 of the eventual champions (not considering the location of the CFP National Championship games).

The Real Stand for Justice

In 1961, an exceptional situation emerged during the college football season. By this time the PCC had broken up as a result of a pay-for-play scandal. It’s successor, the Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU) became the source of the Rose Bowl’s host team, but the Big-9 delayed in signing on to provide their permanent opponent (becuase they were looking for a more advantageous opportunity).

Being a shrewd man, Coach “Bear” Bryant saw an opportunity. His Navy shipmate, Admiral Tom Hamilton was the commissioner of the AAWU and the man with the sole authority to award the opportunity to come play the AAWU Champion in the 1962 Rose Bowl.

As the game approached, word began to spread that Coach Bryant was lobbying for his undefeated and untied Alabama team would be invited to play AAWU Champion UCLA. Coach Bryant had both played and coached for Alabama in the Rose Bowl. He, like most Alabama fans, saw the Rose Bowl’s agreement with the PCC and the Big-9 as a slap in the face and an attempt to keep southern teams, most notibly Alabama, out of the Rose Bowl because they were upset that the “inferior” southerners were dominating the Rose Bowl and increasingly college football as a whole.

From a football perspective, Alabama was the right choice for the Rose Bowl. The 1961 team was dominant, and they were named a consensus national champion at the end of the season for their on-field accomplishments. While this was all true, a greater story that overshadowed what happened on the field ws about to unfold.

Hearing rumors of Coach Bryant’s lobbying, the 8 black players on the UCLA squad threatened to boycott the Rose Bowl. They were protesting segregation in the south in general and on the Alabama football team specifically. Those rumors were widely reported to be true in mid-November 1961 when Los Angeles Times reporter Jim Murray got on the story. The Times published two stories under Hamilton’s on November 19 & 20, 1961.

The tone of Murray’s articles was uncharateristically acerbic for sports journalism of the time. His straightforward and caustic article challenged the segregationist laws of the south and the xenophobic policies that resulted in an all-white Alabama football squad. As expected, the articles were received differently in different parts of the country. In the south, they were seen as an attack motivated by the attempt to keep the region down as it had been since the Civil War. Ironically, most white southerners could not see the beam of racism and segregation in their own eyes as they railed against the oppression they received from the north and west.

I have to admit that my father was one of the people that saw it that way. He was a product of his time and environment. Though his attitudes on race evolved, he always struggled to see the irony in the contempt he held for the Rose Bowl while dismissing the depth of the evil in segregation. To him, segregation wasn’t right, but it just was. It was unjust, but he was powerless to change it.

Conclusion

Hindsight always being 20/20, it is easy to overlay a contemporary perspective upon the norms of the past.

Though wildly unpopular in the south, the work of Jim Murray set in motion a ripple that would become an earthquake just a few years later as southern universities integrated their sports teams. Integration was a victory, but parity was a long way away.

In the end, Jim Murray helped the student-athletes of UCLA make their stand and achieve a victory for justice and equality, but their victory did not keep Alabama from the national championship in 1961. Like so many steps forward in the Civil Rights Movement, this one was tinged with a foot being drug behind.

There are some things that I think Murray got wrong. He painted Coach Bryant as a thoroughgoing racist. I think Coach Bryant was probably more like my Dad, a man who was a product of his time. The stories are numerous of Coach Bryant helping black athletes from the south find places to play outside the region in which they were not permitted to compete.

Cynics will certainly point out that Coach Bryant’s strategy was at least in part self-serving. Designed to preserve his dominance and not upsetting the competitive balance that favored him more often than not. I am sure this is true, but I believe that it is equally true that Coach Bryant struggled to see how even someone as powerful as he could strike a death blow to segregation.

In the end, Coach Bryant did carry out a plan to help him free his team from the shackles of segregationist policies, but it would be another eight years before the Crimson Tide were integrated, and not until 1971 did black players actually suit up for Alabama in varsity competition. Again, the skeptical will point out that Coach Bryant did what he did because segregation was hurting the Tide on the field not becuase segregation was hurting the country away from it. They are right, but we have to give some allowance that at least Bryant did act, and he fully embraced black players unlke others including his former colleague Adolf Rupp who, although he recuited a single black player at the end of his career, retired before making a meaningful contribution to desegregation.

Like so many things in life, the story is complicated and painted in shades of grey. What is certain is the progress made from this moment in Crimson Tide history along with countless others would be evidenced by the makeup of the Crimson Tide team that next made a postseason appearance in Pasadena. But that is a story for tomorrow. I hope you’ll come back and join me here then.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please comment here or at @TWO__Rick on @X.

Roll Tide!