A bowl question for the old-timers in here. I was looking at past Bama seasons and I noticed from 1967-1974, Alabama went 0-7-1 in bowl games under the great Bear Bryant. Anyone ever come up with a plausible explanation for that?
I agree with both responses, but I'll add an additional perspective. Coach Bryant won 8 or fewer games at Alabama eight times - his first three years, his last year, and the four year stretch from 1967-70. It was his weakest set of teams, struggling to find an offensive identity and recruit well, and I don't think recruiting really flipped until 1973's team. Two great seasons followed after our wishbone transition, yet we lost both bowl games those years as well. I think those years' regular season successes were, in part, due to a "gadget bump" from the new system and SEC teams' unfamiliarity with it. Fun N' Gun, HUNH, RPO - they all have their day and then defenses adjust. Those two years (1970 and 1971), in Nebraska and Texas we played two bowl teams very accustomed to seeing the wishbone. If we'd played teams from either coast or the north we might not be talking about the streak. 1973 was a NC game that we lost by a point, tough loss but we were in it, and Coach Bryant had us back.
Since we're talking old coaches, I'll throw in an aubrun story. I was down there yesterday for a speaking engagement, and at the end of their conference Ralph Jordan, Jr. is the human interest speaker, telling tales of his Dad. Seems a fan brought Ralph an old thank you letter from Shug from 1957, wanted to give it to him. Ralph looked at it and said, "yep, that's my Dad's handwriting, but I can't tell if he wrote it left- or right-handed." The fan said, "Shug was ambidextrous?". Ralph said no, but on his first day of Catholic school the nun took a ruler to his left hand for holding a pencil in it, telling him we don't write with our left hand in this school. Shug wrote right-handed during the day, and left handed at night, such that you couldn't tell which hand he'd written it with. On top of that, if he was writing an identical thank you note, he could write the same message with each hand simultaneously. I thought that was a pretty neat story. That, and when Georgia used to play them in Columbus, Wally Butts would come back to their house, and they would dump tow sacks of dollar bills on the kitchen table, count it, and split it. Head coaches counting the gate...how times have changed.
RTR,
Tim
