Greetings Tide Fans

AJDawg said:

Well - here we are. UW vs Alabama. Husky vs. Crimson Tide.

As a life-long Dawgfan and a devoted Follower of College Football I just want to Echo Huskylawyer's comments.

I am absolutely thrilled that we have the chance to play a program as rich in tradition, honors, and prestige as Alabama. After the early 1990's and the Don James years, I didn't think I'd see this day again. If there's ever a team to aspire to in this country as the pinnacle of achievement there are only a few besides the Tide - tOSU, Penn St. maybe Texas and, occasionally Notre Dame.

Growing up I followed the great players coming out of your program --- Joe Namath, Johnny Musso and many others too numerous to list.etc. But over all of them was the guiding hand of Bear Bryant. (I even remember watching one political convention where Bear got one vote from the Alabama deligation). He must've been a great person and terrific teacher of young men.

Make no mistake: UW is in really tough against Alabama. In order to have any chance at all we'll have to play near perfectly.
With that in mind I'd like to ask these questions:

1.) Why did Alabama decide to part ways with Gene Stallings? Seems like he won most of his games and was a decent fit for the program. The whole situation struck me like when Earl Bruce followed Woody Hayes at tOSU. The guy won but they still canned him.

2.) What did you think of Michigan State last year ---- you guys shut them out, I think, 35-0.

3.) Is Auburn your biggest rival? Georgia? Florida?

Thanks much.

AJD

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Roll Tide sir! It was 38-0 last season!


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AJDawg said:

Hi -> can you explain the last statement? Was there some circumstance where UT was over the top with something? Thanks.

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Okay, I'll try (as the self-appointed TideFans historian), but I'm not privy to many of the details.

Go back and look at the record book and you'll see something amazing about the winner of the Alabama-Tennessee series:

1948-60 Tennessee (three ties, one Tide win in 1954)
1961-66 Alabama (1965 was a tie)
1967-70 Tennessee
1971-81 Alabama
1982-85 Tennessee
1986-94 Alabama (note: 1993 was a tie)
1995-2004 Tennessee (note: Bama won 2002 only in this stretch)
2005-16 Alabama (note: Tennessee won 2006 only)

Notice that pretty much non-stop since 1948, the series has been one of continual victory streaks. With rare exceptions, once a team gets two wins in a row it seems to take awhile. Rarely there's a stretch of traded wins but it's not the norm. (The LSU series was once famous for the ROAD team winning almost every game for 20 years).

In 1970, Tennessee hired a new head coach, former Alabama player and current AD Bill Battle. Battle has the misfortune of overseeing the Vols right as Coach Bryant installed the wishbone and laid waste to the SEC for 11 solid years. Battle resigned after the 1976 season because he couldn't beat Alabama. If you'll go look at his record, which dropped from 11-1 his first year to 6-5 in 1976, he clearly couldn't recruit. Fans put "For Sale" signs in his yard and - and I'm not making this up - exterminators were sent anonymously to his office while he was there (e.g. he didn't have any termite problems but someone considered Battle a pest).

So they hired Johnny Majors, who had just won the national title at Pitt. Took him six years but he beat Coach Bryant in the Old Man's last year. Beat us four straight. Good games, too, not one decided by more than a single score. But by 1992, Majors had some problems both on the field (where he couldn't beat Alabama) and health issues off the field. Majors has been adamant for years that Fulmer stabbed him in the back while he was literally having back surgery. Fulmer was his offensive coordinator who took over for games Majors missed in 1992. Majors was fired that year and Fulmer took over a team that had won the SEC as recently as 1990.

It took him three years but with the addition of Peyton Manning and Alabama hit with a hard probation for the Antonio Langham affair, Tennessee finally beat us in 1995, and it was a blowout. It's really no accident that Tennessee's sudden ability to beat Alabama occurred precisely as we had problems with the NCAA.

And then there's the Logan Young-Roy Adams affair that supposedly caused more problems. These were two rich dudes, Young an Alabama fan and Adams a Volunteer guy (both are now deceased). They get into the sauce one night and have a back and forth with Young basically saying that once Manning leaves UT, the Vols are done. Fulmer reaps the benefits of his success (and John Chavis as a decent DC) and wins it all in 1998.

But something else was going on in 1998...Fulmer's chum, Darth Kramer (given name Roy Kramer). Some of the sordid details have been online for nearly 15 years here. But anyway, follow this: just as we're coming off probation, Fulmer fires up his fax machine and begins accusing us of everything you can name in faxes to Kramer, the freaking SEC commissioner. SUPPOSEDLY an impartial guy this Darth Kramer. Fulmer is bound and determined to keep us from getting back to full strength because he knows if we do....he's history. Keep in mind that even with all of our problems, we still scared the daylights out of him on probation in 1996, losing in the final two minutes. Anyway, Kramer then sends this information to an FBI agent in Memphis.

Now follow us......the commissioner of a sports conference is using a RIVAL COACH as his SECRET WITNESS to ALLEGED ALLEGATIONS at his ARCH-RIVAL......should this not make alarm bells go off in the minds of any impartial person?

To bring it as close to home as possible....imagine Larry Scott getting emails from Mike Leach (which will never happen because that goof can't type, but I digress) alleging a major Huskies booster is buying players for Washington....and then Scott turns it over to an FBI agent in Seattle.

Now add up the fact that it was a rival Vols booster (Clement) who was also filling in the FBI guy about what a bad guy Young is. So now it's not only the coach AND the commissioner but also a rival booster!!

So as the tale continues to unfold, former Auburn quarterback Pat Washington - who by 1998 is a coach on staff at Tennessee - informs the FBI guy about a recruit named Albert Means on the market for sale to the highest bidder. The agent proposes that Washington wear a wire and get the goods on the dirty high school coach. Kramer - in a rare moment of common sense - decides that's not a very good idea at all (remember: this is at the same time of the controversial Linda Tripp recordings that were all in the news as a bad idea - that's as far as I'm going with that).

But Kramer never once warned Alabama - despite six months's advance notice - that Means's HS coach was selling him to a high bidding booster. It is alleged he informed other schools, but the Internet was in its infancy compared to now so who knows? And before you think we're being insane....Fulmer was interviewed THREE TIMES BY THE NCAA, not just the SEC....as the star witness against his arch rival.


And the timing as that came out could not have been worse. The bombshell allegations were in the newspapers on Thanksgiving Day 2000 as we were trying to find a competent replacement for the force resigned Mike DuBose. It literally could not have come at a worse time for us. Oh and to make it better......after Dennis Franchione finishes his first year, the NCAA conveniently announces its hard-hitting sanctions (five years probation, two years no bowls, 21 lost scholarships - second only to SMU at the time) the Friday before national signing day.

It then became obvious in early 2004 that Fulmer had been the secret star witness against his arch rival. Despite this being a classic conflict of interest, the SEC actually passed what is called 'the Phil Fulmer rule' in 2004. Basically, that says something that was long known to be common sense: "The SEC decided to bar coaches from going directly to the NCAA or conference office with allegations against another school."

Fulmer, in fact, skipped the "SEC Media Day" in 2004 out of fear he would be served a subpoena in a libel suit brought by a former coach in the fallout of the whole thing. In fact, he WAS served as subpoena when he came for it in 2008.

And you wanna know what that sanctimonious tub of cholesterol had to say in 2004? Here it is:

"When you get behind all the smoke and the big pile of
lawsuits, the truth still stands: rules were broken, an
investigation proved it, those who broke the rules admitted their
guilt, and a university paid the price. There are a few people who
cannot accept the truth, so they file lawsuits hoping the truth
will go away," Fulmer said. ""As one of several coaches contacted by the NCAA regarding
these serious violations by a small group of boosters, my response
was honest, in line with our code of conduct, and the right thing
to do."

Note that Fulmer doesn't bother to mention in his claim 'one of several coaches contacted by the NCAA' that he FIRST contacted the SEC and started the whole damned thing.


That's it in a nutshell. The concurrent problem at the time was that every time you turned around Tennessee was being accused from within AND without.......and every single investigation went nowhere. One teacher even finally went to "Outside the Lines" and told of tutors doing schoolwork for the athletes, which is part of why we jokingly refer to them as Tutorsee.

ESPN (2004) at least had the integrity (at one time) to question the ethics of the NCAA:

But the way they went about building that case is now casting concern about the credibility of the NCAA's enforcement arm. You can't help but wonder if the NCAA lost more than it gained by secretly using a coach of a rival institution under investigation as a major source on the Alabama case.


Now what I just said probably sounds like sour grapes, right? After all, we shouldn't have 'done the crime' unless we could 'do the time.' But two things I'd point out. First of all, I've heard some things from reliable sources through the years - I cannot divulge them here - but basically it's a case of "we had some dirty laundry but what was done was overkill." YES, there were some problems we had to address - that's true. But punishing the football program for a repeat violation because of something with the b-ball program is insane.

And here's the second thing: the former chairman of the NCAA Infractions Committee, the man who oversaw the 1995 investigation into the Antonio Langham affair - a man with no ties to Alabama (an OU lawyer) - said right out that they basically used a machine gun to kill a gnat.

Note his words:

Expert witness David Swank, dean of the University of Oklahoma law school and a former chairman of the NCAA's infractions committee, condemned the enforcement division's prosecution of the Alabama case and its failure to turn over all evidence to the infractions committee - including evidence that contradicted the allegations against Keller and Alabama.

Swank said a lot more.


So there you have it. It's probably more than you wanted to know. The word 'hate' is probably a little strong, but I make no bones about it: I HATE that program for what their conniving head coach did, and I wouldn't pull for them with one engine out on the team charter. They're on their fourth coach since Saban arrived, and I hope they live long enough to see us beat them fifteen years in a row to make up for the 15 years of problems they helped cause.


And it's sad because it REALLY WAS a beautiful rivalry.

And it's sad because it REALLY WAS a beautiful rivalry.

You nailed it in your two beautiful essays today -- and this sentence tops it off. What Fulmer did went beyond the norm and not only cost us 15 years (acerbated by our own stupidity) -- it also poisoned this relationship so that it will take another 15 years to return to civility. So sad...a phone call to UA's head coach or AD could have avoided all this.

We hate Auburn because we're born to...We hate Tennessee because we want to!!! That's all I have to say about that!!! Roll Tide!!!

Along with all the other things posted about our rivalry with 10RC, I'll add this....when Coach Bryant played, he wanted to beat them as bad as any team Bama played. There were stories of guys coming off the field with broken noses, teeth knocked out, and the like. Coach Bryant played against 10RC with a fractured bone in one leg, demonstrating how tough he was, and how much he wanted to beat them. That alone puts them at the top of my list as the team I most want to beat. The stuff with Phillip Full-of-it makes me hate them with a passion bordering on unhealthy, and makes the wins all the sweeter.