Mal flew from Tampa to Pullman to pick up Mike Price. Was in Tampa to pick up Jim Leavitt. Don't know what happened there, but the next thing we knew the plane was in the air headed to Pullman.
Alabama's HC choices between Bear Bryant and Nick Saban - who else were considered?
- Thread starter saturdaysarebet
- Start date
I was a senior in HS when we hired Curry.
Our guidance counselor was an Alabama grad. I worked in the office, so I saw her virtually every day, and we talked Tide football most of the time.
The day after Curry got hired (hired Jan 5, so this was on Tuesday, Jan 6, 1987), I ran into her and all she said was, "I'm gonna have to talk to Joab about this. I don't know what he thinks he's doing."
The next night, I went to Wed night prayer service and ran into a guy who ran the Royal Ambassadors, a guy from north Georgia. I'm rolling my eyes about the Curry thing, and he takes up for him, saying that Alabama needs to get past the whole Bryant thing and that Curry will keep us off probation, improve academics, and go 9-3 every year. Then he said that we could go hire Charley Pell, field a national championship level team that comes up short and wind up on probation.
The fact those weren't the only two choices didn't seem to register with him. Pell's name wasn't part of the discussion, although I obviously knew what the guy meant.
Perkins leaves, and I'm thinking, "Bobby Bowden!" who, of course, wasn't quite the stud he became later that same year.
Side note: Curry went and talked to UK while still our coach. Lou Holtz of all people said that Curry had no choice at that point but to leave because you don't go shack up with a new girlfriend over the weekend and then tell the model wife you're cheating on that you'll be back home Monday morning.
Quite frankly, I've always thought that Bill Curry would be much better thought of by Alabama fans if he would just let it go in his mind. He DID win an SEC title here, so far as we know he wasn't straying from his marriage, and despite being in over his head, he was winning some games. The generations of fans AFTER he left would think nothing bad about him, and those of us who recall him soften over time as things play out and we see the bigger picture. But Curry - who, YES, we have to admit WAS mistreated by some of the vocal nuts in the fan base - let his edge come out time and again when calling some of our games, and his comment about the Alabama mafia the day we hired Saban was so far across the line of nonsense that I have an easier time applauding Mike DuBose when we honor the 73 champs than I do thinking positive about Curry.
He DID sort of take our side on radio when fRan left, I'll give him that.
Curry did play for Bryant. In the 1965 College All Star game played in August with the '64 seniors. Story is that Curry was one of the few, if not only, players from the South and that Bryant took him "under his wing".
Someone could, and probably will, write a book about all of these Alabama coaching searches that have bedeviled the fan base since CPB's retirement. I think the hiring of Steve Sloan as AD when Curry was hired as HC, was an olive branch to the PTB and fans who were not happy with Curry. IIRC, Hootie Ingam had been AD at FSU and may have been hired to try and lure Bowden after the Curry fiasco. This is pure speculation on my part. Stallings had some issues with the NCAA in his last couple of years as HC and, when Hootie resigned and Bockrath came in it was the end of Stallings. Bockrath then made the worst hire possible by promoting Dubose. Next in line was Mal Moore, who in my opinion, botched both the Franchione and Price hires, but more than redeemed himself with the Saban hire. We pretty much went through ADs like we did HCs after Coach Bryant's death.
Prothro or no prothro I highly doubt we could have hung with USC or texas that year.
Even before Kirby Smart's less than unsavory side really started to show itself at Georgia. I was never crazy about the idea of him becoming The heir apparent to saban. Call me gun shy but growing up with Shula and Dubose has caused me to always prefer a coach that had previous head coaching experience. Even before I really learned anything about Saban (my memories of him at LSU were very vague) I was on board because he at least had a lot of head coaching experience.
Might that have been Walt Harris, hc at Pitt? Hazzard was a round ball guy.
No, Walt Hazard wanted to branch out. Definitely him.
Yeah, I meant Harris, ha ha.
I was never a fan of Curry............he did win some games, but I wasn's sold on him and thought Bama could have found someone else.
We should have a rule on here that anytime Bill Curry's name is mentioned it be followed by a puking emoji.
Yesterday, I watched the Kentucky game for my 1989 write-up.
UK DID have a very good defense that year. In fact, they held Auburn and Vandy both to fewer points than we did, and they only gave up one more point to the Vols than we did. And our other common opponent, LSU, got 21 on them and 16 on us.
So they had a very good defense, they just didn't really have an offense worth a flip. (In their six wins, they scored 15 points or fewer three times, and they were 15 or below in six of eleven games).
But they were kept in the game by Curry's often times mind-boggling play calling and decision making as well as some just plain undisciplined stupidity (not as bad as the Dubious era but still bad). Our only TD of the game came on the very first drive after Dunn went out with his knee injury and Gary Hollingsworth - who had thrown only one career pass in CFB - drove us 69 yards for a TD.
The game was "all but over" at that point except we did some insanely dumb things - including letting UK block a punt right after we'd tried to short punt them instead of going for a fourth and short - and only put them 11 yards back up the field.
Curry was 9-5 in one-score games (8 points or less), and oversaw the following:
-two one-score wins over Vandy in three years (one where we led, 20-0, and won, 20-14)
- a loss to Memphis St
- a win over MSU where we scored the winning TD in the final seconds
- a 37-6 blowout loss to Notre Dame
- a win over Kentucky on the last play after trailing 17-0
- a loss to Ole Miss in a game we led, 12-0, in the 2nd half and which is technically a one score game as OM scored the "make it look impressive" TD very late
- a struggling 8-point win over an 0-5 Tennessee that LSU, Auburn, and Wazzu had already blown off the field
- a loss to LSU on a last second missed FG after blowing a 15-3 lead
- a narrow, one-point win over an Army team that required Derrick Thomas's heroics
- a 7-point win over a lackluster ULL team
- a win over Penn St that saw horrible decision-making and depended entirely on Blair Thomas' knee going down and Paterno opting for the field goal that was blocked
The problem is not with ANY of these games; it's with ALL of them. Stallings had a narrow win over Memphis, a couple of narrow wins over Vandy, and some close calls - but he also had 31 games in a row unbeaten, too.
In all sincerity - without the talent that he had nothing to do with acquiring, Curry likely has a DuBosian as Alabama coach. Sure, he was 26-10 (and some pundits like to say he had a better record in his three years than Bryant did, which is laughable given that Curry inherited a 10-3 top ten team and Bryant inherited a disaster), but he very easily could have been 18-16 with ONE bowl game and two 5-6 seasons without the talent gap.
Curry and Franchione may actually be one and the same person: incredibly arrogant, incredibly insecure, couldn't deal with pressure, left for "greener/bluer pastures" at lesser schools (A&M is/was a wannabe KY is/was a never-will-be) where they failed and then disappeared into the ether. Both lost some bad games in must-win situations. Both bad-mouthed the PTB at Bama. Neither will ever be mentioned on a greatest coach list. At least DuBose loved Alabama football. He couldn't coach'em up here but his love was unquestioned. Of course he loved it so much he nearly killed it.
My interpretation for the moral of this story when the time comes: Don't hire guys who can't win, who can't handle pressure, who think more of themselves than the University, who haven't accomplished anything as a HC at a Top 10 school prior to being pursued by Bama, who are cowardly in how they handle their departure. The standard should not be lowered. There's also a corollary for who are the UA president & UA AD at the time, as well.
My interpretation for the moral of this story when the time comes: Don't hire guys who can't win, who can't handle pressure, who think more of themselves than the University, who haven't accomplished anything as a HC at a Top 10 school prior to being pursued by Bama, who are cowardly in how they handle their departure. The standard should not be lowered. There's also a corollary for who are the UA president & UA AD at the time, as well.
Never heard Curry and fRAN compared before but you nailed it. The overriding feature is their insecurity. It's a sad, pathetic thing to watch. Insecure people should not be in leadership positions in any arena.
When Selma said no limit to the names that came up, I thought well Walt Hazzard fits that category lol. Harris turned out to be a true hazard for Stanford after his time at Pitt.
I will never be convinced that Mal could not have found a better coach than Franchione. He and his lackey, Mike McKenzie, were con men who leveraged a couple of good seasons at TCU (not the TCU of the last 15+ years BTW) into the HC at Alabama. Granted we were on the cusp of the NCAA sanctions, but Mal could have hired a decent HC with or without ties to Alabama. I have often wondered who influenced his decision to hire Franchione. Oh, well at least we had Fridays with Fran and Kim's Corner.
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I think he is waiting to see if CNS can bounce back from last year's 14-1 record. My sources have been off the grid lately.
Of the missteps pre Saban that Mal did, I don’t think hiring Fran ranks very high on the list. Not firing Dubose after the La Tech game in 1999 was far worse than hiring Fran.
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