What was the third Saturday in October like before Fulmer?

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Mke4Bama

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"Well, Eli, these Tennessee folks are really giving it to our boys down here, they hate us. But by God, I hate them too. Back to you, Eli."

Jerry Duncan

That's the way most of us felt from the 60's until today.

NOTHING SUX LIKE A BIG ORANGE
 

B1GTide

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Oh, so your FIL was an Alabama fan? I had wondered what connection you had to UA, because you're obviously more knowledgeable about our program than most fans that might consider UA a 2nd favorite team or whatever.

For what it's worth, I like Ohio State pretty good too, or at least I respect their program. Course, I generally like Michigan ok too (not wild about Harbaugh), and I realize that's like saying you like Alabama and Auburn. Kind of mutually exclusive.
My FiL and my wife went to Alabama (among a number of their family). Her family is from north Alabama - the Decatur/Huntsville area.

You couldn't get to know my FiL and/or my wife and not appreciate their love for Alabama - the state and the University.
 

GP for Bama

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The Bama-Tennessee game was considered THE game that most represented the SEC. The traditionally two best teams squared off on the third saturday in October each year. Both teams knew this game was a good measure of where they stood.

The rivalry was known nationally for being very respectful (though intense). This continued into the first several years of Fulmer. Until he secretly worked with Cramer to catch Bama in Memphis. I have to say that Bama was not innocent in this whole affair, so it could have been avoided. What makes Bama fans mad is that Tennessee was able to skate with the NCAA on several issues ( ie phone cards and paying Tee Martin) while Bama was hammered for unproven payments by a booster.

The rivalry was starting to decline somewhat because of divisional play. I doubt it will ever be the same.

I hope we keep beating them forever!!
 
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CrimsonEyeshade

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Well, I think I remember reading that Coach Bryant said something to the effect of "You don't know how good you are till you play Tennessee" . That seems like respect to me, which is what I mean. I'm not sure if I hate Tennessee and Auburn, but I sure don't like either of them.

It was actually the other way around. It was Neyland who said you could never measure a player until he played against Alabama.

The interesting thing that goes way back in my early childhood outside of the South was always picking up on the energy of the Alabama-Tennessee game without ever watching one. The sports pages and the TV commentators always made the game seem different. Almost exotic. Then my family moved to North Alabama, and there were Vol fans all over the Shoals. The first Tennessee game was the '66 squall in Knoxville with Dewey Warren and Kenny Stabler, and Stabler and the defense leading an inevitable comeback, and Warren bringing Tennessee back down the field for a chip shot, and a kid from Heflin duck-hooking his kick worse than anything we saw in last year's National Championship game.

Any whitewash about Bryant's feelings was stripped away by the acidity of his post-game comments. "If he had kicked it straight, we would have blocked it." Can you imagine what the Vols must have thought?

This is a long way of saying that, in my experiences, what drove the game was a combination of respect and hate. Fulmer changed the proportions of the ingredients. But given the times, they would have changed anyway.
 
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CrimSonami

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Everyone has to own their part of the wrong doing. But if Fat Feeel was truly interested in turning in folks for the sake of the integrity of the sport he would have "turnt in" himself. Because if my memory serves me correctly time has uncovered that his closet was full of little dirties around the same time and continued long after Alabama's little dirties got revealed.
Which is the exact reason he commandeered the spotlight and directed to Tuscaloosa. And the fact that Kramer turned a blind eye to Knoxville and assisted in the debacle continues to this day making me JUST HATE ORANGE!!!!
 

81usaf92

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I know I heard Spurrier said he was about to turn Logan Young in but Fulmer beat him to the punch.

But I think the biggest reason Phil doing it was worst than Spurrier doing it was because it was Tennessee and he was practically doing the same thing ever since he back stabbed his way into the Tennessee job. I think I’ve only cheered once for Nebraska in my lifetime and it was vs Tennessee.

My two favorite wins vs Tennessee are 02 and 07.
 
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GrayTide

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Well, I think I remember reading that Coach Bryant said something to the effect of "You don't know how good you are till you play Tennessee" . That seems like respect to me, which is what I mean. I'm not sure if I hate Tennessee and Auburn, but I sure don't like either of them.

It was actually the other way around. It was Neyland who said you could never measure a player until he played against Alabama.

The interesting thing that goes way back in my early childhood outside of the South was always picking up on the energy of the Alabama-Tennessee game without ever watching one. The sports pages and the TV commentators always made the game seem different. Almost exotic. Then my family moved to North Alabama, and there were Vol fans all over the Shoals. The first Tennessee game was the '66 squall in Knoxville with Dewey Warren and Kenny Stabler, and Stabler and the defense leading an inevitable comeback, and Warren bringing Tennessee back down the field for a chip shot, and a kid from Heflin duck-hooking his kick worse than anything we saw in last year's National Championship game.

Any whitewash about Bryant's feelings was stripped away by the acidity of his post-game comments. "If he had kicked it straight, we would have blocked it." Can you imagine what the Vols must have thought?

This is a long way of saying that, in my experiences, what drove the game was a combination of respect and hate. Fulmer changed the proportions of the ingredients. But given the times, they would have changed anyway.
Gary Wright
 

Professor

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Incidentally, much of the bad blood between Florida and Tennessee (aside from their division rivalry) stems from the Vols voting in 1985 to strip Florida of their first-ever SEC title. The Gators DID win it on the field, but they opted to forego the Sugar Bowl, knowing severe sanctions were coming. In May 1985, the SEC had a vote and it was a 6-4 vote to strip Florida of the title and not recognize a champion in 1984. Florida, MSU, Alabama, and Auburn all voted to permit Florida to keep their crown. Tennessee voted against them, and given some of the crossover between the two schools (sort of like us with Clemson or ATM), this was considered a betrayal. After all, a Vols vote would have given Florida their first SEC title with a 5-5 decision (or at least forced it on Boyd McWhorter).[/QUOTE]
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Above is a partial quote.
Actually much of the bad blood between Tennessee and Florida can be traced directly to Steve Spurrier.
Spurrier grew up and was a great athlete in Johnson City, Tennessee (Science Hill High School). The football field is named Steve Spurrier Field. Everyone expected him to play for the Vols. You can imagine the consternation when Spurrier announced he was going to play for the Gators. The folks in Tennessee have never gotten over that.

As a sideline, my grandson, who is a rising sophomore at UT, played wide receiver for Science Hill (Johnson City). He might have played college ball at a small college, but wanted an education from a big school. His dream was to attend Alabama, but his mom is a professor at ETSU and her son gets half tuition at any state school in Tennessee. Being a single mom, no way they could give up that much money, plus the question of out-of-state tuition, to attend Alabama. Ergo, UT it was. However, he is still a big Bama fan.
 

NationalTitles18

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We can all blame Fulmer if we want to but the majority of the issues were Alabama's own self inflicted problems and mis-management of the program from the time Coach Bryant retired till the hiring of Coach Saban. We did manage to win at a very high level when Coach Stallings was here but still were a lot of problems under the surface during his time.
There is some truth to there being problems that were present but the way Fulmer and others conspired to take Alabama down and the ways they went about it were completely their decision and therefore every bit of blame they get is deserved. Alabama paid the price and then some for the sins of some of her sons. There is no way for enough restitution to be paid other than Fulmer watching his team suffer for the rest of his days. After that I may reconsider my stance.
 

TomFromBama

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We can all blame Fulmer if we want to but the majority of the issues were Alabama's own self inflicted problems and mis-management of the program from the time Coach Bryant retired till the hiring of Coach Saban. We did manage to win at a very high level when Coach Stallings was here but still were a lot of problems under the surface during his time.
There's no question that AD Hootie Ingram intentionally violated NZAA rules in 1993 and tried to cover it up, and that Coach Dumbose and his staff were, at a minimum, "pushing the envelope" and at times even begin reckless with the rules (IN particular with Dumbose' very ill-advised decision to lift the ban Coach Bryant had imposed on Logan Young, and every subsequent UA coach had honored up to that time).
No Question.

That said, none of that excuses the bizarre and vitriolic Campaign of LIES and INNUENDO that Fulmer engaged in - pretty much from the time of our first penalty in 1995, right through time of the second major penalty in 2002.

I'm not unhappy with Fulmer because Alabama went on probation. It's not Fulmer's fault that Alabama behaved in profoundly STUPID ways many times in the 1990's and in particular between 1998 and 2001, and that our own stupidity left the door open for the NZAA to jump to conclusions (most of which were erroneous).

BUT - It IS fulmer's fault that he told a litany of lies about UA starting in 1995 with the design and intent that the NZAA would punish Alabama regardless of whether rules were actually broken. It IS his fault that he spread malicious and false rumors about Alabama to all his friends and allies across the Southeast, THEN told the NZAA the same stories - claimed he was just repeating what other coaches had told HIM, and gave the NZAA the names of all his buddies as corroborating witnesses to support the same rumors that he himself invented.

It's that sort of malfeasance that, among other things, got us busted for a "Major Infraction" for Kenny Smith - a guy who never played a snap at Alabama and instead signed, enrolled AND PLAYED at Tennessee, even while maintaining an "F" average in his supposed academic classes.

THAT is why I'm unhappy with phil fulmer, and will never have an ounce of respect for him.
 

Tenntiderman

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Kinda showing my age here. First TSIO I remember was 92.


I’ve always knew that CPB always had a hatred for Tennessee, but it seems like anything talked about this rivalry in its current form always goes back to 1994 when Peyton Manning nearly beat us in Knoxville, and the next decade of back stabbing and trash talk by the Vols. That period is where Tennessee went above Auburn to me in most hated teams.

But before Fulmer was the rival still filled with vile hatred or was it just a cross state rivalry with a rich tradition?
Ooohhh heck no. I became a Tider in '61...and UT fans came to Birmingham on Thursday or Friday before the game and would begin to tell us what was about to happen to the Tide even back then. They weren't as they became during the nineties, but always ALWAYS overconfident. They chanted "F*** Bear Bryant! F*** Bama!" in 1973. So no...that didn't just recently start. Way before 1994. They were throwing oranges from the stands in the early 70s. Is that vicious enough? And we beat them 11 times in a row before finally losing a close one in '82. Then we went 8-0-1 after losing 4 in a row beginning in 1982. They are looking at losing 12 in a row this year. THAT...is big to them. But I think the UT vs Bama thing goes way back to even before CPB's college days.
 

BamaMoon

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Ooohhh heck no. I became a Tider in '61...and UT fans came to Birmingham on Thursday or Friday before the game and would begin to tell us what was about to happen to the Tide even back then. They weren't as they became during the nineties, but always ALWAYS overconfident. They chanted "F*** Bear Bryant! F*** Bama!" in 1973. So no...that didn't just recently start. Way before 1994. They were throwing oranges from the stands in the early 70s. Is that vicious enough? And we beat them 11 times in a row before finally losing a close one in '82. Then we went 8-0-1 after losing 4 in a row beginning in 1982. They are looking at losing 12 in a row this year. THAT...is big to them. But I think the UT vs Bama thing goes way back to even before CPB's college days.
Lived in Tennessee for several years. I'm not doubting this didn't happen, but it seems you've picked an example of the very worst UT fans. We've got some just like that too. Every school does.

Most UT fans I know aren't much different from most Bama fans. They are generally good folks.
 

Tenntiderman

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There is some truth to there being problems that were present but the way Fulmer and others conspired to take Alabama down and the ways they went about it were completely their decision and therefore every bit of blame they get is deserved. Alabama paid the price and then some for the sins of some of her sons. There is no way for enough restitution to be paid other than Fulmer watching his team suffer for the rest of his days. After that I may reconsider my stance.
Well said Bro. Well said. I live in Tenn now, but my vehicles have suffered because of my Bama stickers and tags. One barber even refused to cut my hair when he asked where I was from. Actually it was when I answered his next question about who I pulled for. Auburn or Bama. When he took my money..he told me that he was not the only barber in Nashville.
 

BamaMoon

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Well said Bro. Well said. I live in Tenn now, but my vehicles have suffered because of my Bama stickers and tags. One barber even refused to cut my hair when he asked where I was from. Actually it was when I answered his next question about who I pulled for. Auburn or Bama. When he took my money..he told me that he was not the only barber in Nashville.
Well, mine and your experiences are vastly different, that's all I can say.

Only fan base I've ever seen that I think are collectively "bad" are LSU fans. I know there are exceptions, but most of them are rather difficult. Ask our Mods and that's why LSU fans were basically blocked from posting here. No such thing has ever happened here with other fan bases, unless it was an individual, bad apple.
 

TomFromBama

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I know I heard Spurrier said he was about to turn Logan Young in but Fulmer beat him to the punch.

But I think the biggest reason Phil doing it was worst than Spurrier doing it was because it was Tennessee and he was practically doing the same thing ever since he back stabbed his way into the Tennessee job. I think I’ve only cheered once for Nebraska in my lifetime and it was vs Tennessee.

My two favorite wins vs Tennessee are 02 and 07.
This ^^^

Spurrier DID report Dumbose to the NZAA - but he was barking up the wrong tree. An OL - and a pretty good one - Justin Smiley, got a new Pickup truck soon after announcing he was choosing UA over Floriduh. The "optics" were TERRIBLE (in Steve's opinion).

Thing is, Smiley's parents were well off, and had the receipts to prove they bought the truck with their own money.

During the 1990's Phil was actually running THE Dirtiest program in the SEC - which is saying a MOUTHFUL for any team in the same conference as aubarn!!!!

That's why he was so eager to act as a "Secret Witness" to - as he bragged - put Alabama "out of business".

Among other things:
- Prominent UcheaT boosters (like Roy "Tennstud" Adams) have publicly admitted that Fulmer was buying players in Memphis and across West TN and east Ark. Adams was officially "Dissociated" (wink,wink) for those statements, but UcheaT was never punished.
- QB Tee Martin was paid a CASH Salary via secret Western Union transfers, funded by a UcheaT "Fan" in Mobile, Dianne Sanford. She even bought him a Chevy Tahoe. This was completely exposed by the local newspaper down here - and all parties involved eventually ADMITTED IT!!! But the NZAA "Conveniently" ruled that Sanford was NOT a "Booster" - again, imagine heavy Air Quotes here - so the cash salary and other benefits were not a "Violation"!!! .... :mad:
- A tenured UT professor, Linda Bensel-Meyers, alleged a long-standing pattern of violations, including rampant cheating and academic fraud by scholarship athletes, a pattern of sexual assaults by UT athletes, and even large scale Grade fixing BY THE UNIVERSITY REGISTRAR!!! (but she ONLY went public after years of internal complaints were IGNORED). The NZAA looked the other way, and Dr. Bensel-Meyers was subjected to a pattern of abuse and intimidation that cost her her marriage, and lead her to walk away from her TENURED Faculty position - something almost Unheard Of in American Academia!
- Of particular note - upwards of 12 or more scholarship football players on the UcheaT 1998 team were able to maintain Bowl "Eligibility" despite flunking Fall Semester classes due to the Registrar's admitted practice of AUTOMATICALLY changing all "F" grades of Scholarship Athletes to "Incomplete" - THINK ABOUT THAT ONE FOR JUST A MINUTE!!!!!! :mad:
- Fulmer even actively covered up an "Alleged" RAPE of a mentally impaired minor by UT player Antwan Stewart. Thanks to Fulmer's PERSONAL intervention (including "alleged" witness intimidation) Stewart was never changed, and never missed a single play at UcheaT.

Mind you - Almost all of this above (and 10 times more that I'm not posting) ONLY saw the light of day due to the work of Attorney Tommy Gallion on behalf of former UA assistants Ivy Williams and Ronnie Cottrell - both of whom saw their careers wrecked due to the NZAA investigation and penalties. Despite this fact, Gallion is frequently mocked and ridiculed, even by UA fans, for his courageous work that uncovered the truth about phil fulmer.... :(
 

jabcmb

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Up to the early 90s, our impressions were largely shaped by the gentlemen sportswriters of the day. We probably had 25% of the information on teams that we have today (newspapers, magazines, and a few TV or radio shows) and 10% of the opinions. In Birmingham, if Benny Marshall or Alf Van Hoose wrote that we had a treasured rivalry with Tennessee, then that’s what it was. If you were lucky enough to go to a few games you could form your own opinion; otherwise, perceptions of rivalries were formed by a very small group of people.

That said—My worst game experiences have been against Tennessee, home and away. Their fans, boosters, coaches all earned my perpetual rancor against them. That won’t change.
 

Tenntiderman

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Well, mine and your experiences are vastly different, that's all I can say.

Only fan base I've ever seen that I think are collectively "bad" are LSU fans. I know there are exceptions, but most of them are rather difficult. Ask our Mods and that's why LSU fans were basically blocked from posting here. No such thing has ever happened here with other fan bases, unless it was an individual, bad apple.
I understand what you are saying, and I might feel the same way had I had your experiences. In Dec of 2016 in Spring Hill...a UT guy cut my left front tire and packed 2 liquor bottles under it while shopping. Cost me $200. I have been here since '91. Have YET to hear a nice compliment to the State of Alabama. Btw...the guy stood leaning on his truck waiting on me to back out. When I heard the bottles pop..I got out tosee what the heck happened. He climbed in his multicolored truck and left. Had a "Vols 1998 National Champion" sticker remains on the bumper.
 
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