And then when you were 9 you saw the reason for the loss when Bama beat Miami in the Sugar Bowl. Stallings mailed in the Fiesta Bowl and went recruiting, resulting in the 92 NC. It's the reason we now have a dead period in recruiting during the Bowl season.
I'm curious as to whom precisely you think supports this thesis?
The following players were on the 1990 team and could in no way be said to have been recruited by Stallings in that time frame:
Antonio Langham
George Teague
Eric Curry
Derrick Lassic
Martin Houston
Tarrant Lynch
Tobie Sheils
Roosevelt Patterson
Lemanski Hall
Michael Rogers
The core of the team was there in 1990, so this idea is absurd on its face.
I'm not gonna say Stallings wasn't out recruiting but this is trying to put ketchup on manure and say it tastes good.
And while Bama was recruiting, Louisville had SEVEN weeks to prepare for the game. Bama played Cincinnati and Auburn after Louisville finished their season on 11/10 and accepted the Fiesta bid. Howard Schnellenberger sat 3 rows in front of me at the Auburn game knowing full well he was going to be playing Bama although bids could not be extended until a team finished their season.
Yes, he knew this the day of the Auburn game because there was a HUGE stink about whether teams from the state would go because Arizona didn't
recognize the MLK holiday. The problem with this whacked out theory is that the Fiesta Bowl wanted Notre Dame and Virginia first, both of whom
turned them down. In fact, what the Fiesta Bowl wanted was to pit Virginia against the SEC runner-up. UVA made clear they weren't going and
Louisville was a fallback choice, accepting the bid on November 18th.
They didn't know they were playing Alabama or Auburn until the end of November.
And besides - we're not talking a week off vs a week playing a game. That long off makes a team rusty and Browning Nagle popped us for over 450 yards passing so......no......
The bid was supposedly to go to Bama (7-4) or Ole Miss (9-2), but Arizona was in the middle of a huge controversy over the Martin Luther King Birthday Holiday and there was no way the Fiesta was going to invite Ole Miss and their rebel flags.
You may have a point there, but the original line-up was supposed to be Virginia - founded by that slave owner Jefferson - and the SEC runner-up. I won't deny your point that that probably played a role in it but......Alabama isn't really any better than Mississippi in race relations at that time, either.
But the idea Stallings basically pulled a Franchione and mailed it in? Ridiculous.