The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Football History > Item 85
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The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize
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by Keith Dunnavant
Sales Rank: 253380
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List Price: $14.95
$10.17
At Amazon
on 8-5-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 352 pages
Published by: St. Martin's GriffinEdition: 1st Edition August 21, 2007
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0312374321
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0312374327
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
Weighs: 12.8 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
During the turbulent battles over issues such as civil rights and Vietnam in the mid-1960s, the University of Alabama's Crimson Tide football team, led by legendary coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, had its own cause—becoming the first team in modern college history to win the national championship for three straight years. In this solid if somewhat overlong study of the Tide's quest, Dunnavant expands upon his earlier Bryant biography, Coach, to explore how national politics and collegiate sports inevitably collided. While the bulk of the book delivers insightful profiles of the team's working-class players and fast-paced looks at the team's unbeaten season, it also convincingly argues that Alabama's image as reflecting "establishment America" was skewed by "the poisonous climate" of Gov. George Wallace's segregationist policies. But in a provocative account of a late-season meeting with Notre Dame, Dunnavant names his story's true villains: Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian, who, as Dunnavant sees it, played for a tie, sitting "on the ball to avoid a turnover" instead of playing to win—"the most cynical act in college football history"—and the sportswriters who voted "media darling" Notre Dame the national champion over a team from "a state seen by many Americans as a national pariah." (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Booklist
This book fortunately is more than its title would imply, being a deeper, broader portrait of the celebrated but flawed University of Alabama football teams coached by Bear Bryant in the mid-1960s. While author Dunnavant, who has already written a full biography of Bryant (Coach, 1996), ostensibly focuses on that 1967 team--a group that was undefeated but was, controversially, segregated--he reveals the sheer willfulness that marked Bryant's teams over the coach's 25-season tenure. The author also places that 1967 season into rich historical context, which saw the state of Alabama and its governor, George Wallace, vainly leading the fight nationwide against civil rights. Dunnavant too readily excuses Bryant, who abided the segregation, for his role in that system. But he makes clear that segregation probably cost the undefeated Tide the 1967 championship to Notre Dame, which tied one game that season by letting the clock run out rather than having the valor to go for the win. Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize (Hardcover)
Alabama was snubbed in 1966 for one simple reason: it was,by preference, a segregated football team. The emerging leftist politics of the time could not tolerate it. It mattered not who was the best team, who had the best record, who played the best schedule, or who had won the most games, any of which criteria would have made the Tide no. 1, it only mattered that the fractious state of Alabama was still insisting on a segregated football team and a largely segregated society. The Tide had eleven wins (to ND's and MSU's eight apiece); the ONLY perfect record in the nation; the best QB in the country (Ken Stabler, compared to Hanratty of ND or Jimmy Raye of MSU); a blowout 35 to 6 bowl victory over a fine Nebraska team (neither ND or MSU even played in a bowl that year); and, of course, the best coach in America. But the polls said they could not be no. 1 because they had no black players. One could argue (meekly) that even this overwhelming preponderance of evidence cannot actually prove that Bama was the best team, but lacking a national playoff to decide it, we can only go on the evidence of who DESERVED it, and on that issue there can be no room for doubt. The true national champion that year, unfortunately, was political correctness. And if Bama and ND had actully pklayed? My bet is on the Tide, by two or three touchdowns, This was the University of Alabama's greatest team ever. As a footnote, and in fairness, Alabama didn't deserve the national championship of 1964; Texas beat Bama in the Orange Bowl that year, and Arkansas, the only team to beat Texas, beat Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl, thereby becoming the only team in '64 to complete a perfect season.
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The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize
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Price: $10.17
Updated on 8-5-2008.
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