1966 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Notre Dame 9-0-1
Undefeated teams: #3 Alabama 10-0
Undefeated teams with ties:#2 Michigan St 9-0-1
Three years ago, I wrote a detailed article about Alabama's 1966 season that covered from the moment they found they were 1965 champions until the days after the 1967 Sugar Bowl. You can read that link below:
I was asked to write this article by one of our fans, and it took a lot of research as well as the fact that, well, unlike very write-up I've done so far, I wasn't even alive for this one, so I have no personal recollections that I can add to the article. I will post the epilogue later this week...
www.tidefans.com
What I'm about to say isn't "The Gospel According To Alabama Fans" and isn't going to be popular, but it is going to reflect reality.
1) Another SEC team runs the table and sits at home uncrowned....
Alabama runs the table and sits home and watches not one but TWO Northern teams finish ahead of them in the standings. Alabama becomes no less than the FIFTEENTH SEC team to end the season with 0 losses (and 11th without ties) to be standing around at the end of the season looking up at another team in the top position (and virtually always from the Midwest). Entire books have been written about this one season, but I think a lot of Alabama fans (with all due respect as I AM one) sort of miss the reality train on this one. Hopefully, I will still be permitted to post here after completing the assessment.
2) Alabama - many flawed presuppositions
It causes TO THIS DAY no end of pain for a generation of Tide fans who lived through it. But the years have again clouded the emotional reactions with flat-out myth. Let's examine a few of those, which is not going to be pleasant for a number of fans. I covered some of this in my write-up above.
a) Notre Dame DID NOT "play for a tie" - not in the literal sense anyway.
Much of the ruckuks surrounding the "Tie one for the Gipper" concept can be laid at the feet of "Sports Illustrated" writer Dan Jenkins, who tore into Ara Parseghian and forever made the story "Notre Dame played for the tie." In fact, this is not "really" what happened. Michigan St tore out to a 10-0 lead, and Notre Dame, wounded by the loss of six players (much of it due to the sheer brutality of the Michigan St defense), came back. Then - and this is key to understanding what actually happened - Notre Dame attempted a 41-yard field goal that was barely wide right with 4:39 left in the game. If that field goal is good, the Irish have the lead. That hardly constitutes "playing for tie", at least in the traditional sense. It's not as though Notre Dame tied the game and then sat on the ball for a quarter and didn't even try to move. The largest criticism stems from Notre Dame's final possession where the Irish didn't heave a bomb downfield in an effort to win. But passing games in 1966 were not as sophisticated as they are today, and the coverage rules favored the DEFENSE as pass interference had to be seriously egregious in order to be called. Parseghian is correct for noting that he "did not play for a tie, the game ended in a tie." So what went wrong for Notre Dame?
Parseghian lost the battle early in one area he could control (his response) and one he could not (the media spin), and both were facilitated by the same group of people. When Parseghian REPEATEDLY said during interviews after the game that it was important to NOT LOSE, he invited the spin/interpretation that followed him to his grave. Like a lot of coaches after an emotional game, it was probably not the place to be answering questions, and Parseghian was in conflict of trying not to sound like he was making excuses with references to his backup QB who was diabetic (and had misfired on six consecutive passes, sometimes so erratically they were considering removing him from the game), so he went with defending conservative actions. In the rigid, literal sense, Ara did NOT play for a tie; in the abstract sense, however, it is true he did play to NOT lose, too. And as even Bubba Smith noted, Ara was the one guy who headed the one team in America who could do that and get away with it. It is this last that is the source of soreness for Alabama fans.
Incidentally, in addition to Jenkins, it was good ole Jim Murray who lambasted Notre Dame much as he savaged Alabama in 1961.
b) Alabama did NOT lose the national championship because of George Wallace
This is the central theme pushed by Keith Dunnavant in his book, "The Missing Ring." The man has forgotten more Alabama football history than I will ever know, and I had a great conversation with him when he signed my copy of "Three Days at Foster" at the 2014 Florida game. I enjoy his insights, but he's (with all due respect) wrong on this one.
Late in the book, Keith repeatedly brings up Wallace. But anyone arguing that has to come up with a believable explanation for 1964 AND 1965. Wallace was the governor 1963-1967 and then installed his wife as a puppet to stay on as "the actual governor." It is illogical to my mind to somehow say that Wallace's 1962 "segregation forever" speech, his 1963 stand in the doorway, and things like the Sixteenth Street Church Bombing (1963) cost Alabama the 1966 title but not the 64 and 65 ones. Voters very easily could have chosen Arkansas over Alabama in the final poll of 1964. Yes, the integration of Central High in 1957 had been a bad visual (and other things) for the state, but Arkansas wasn't seen on the evening news knocking down protesters with fire hoses, either. In 1965, voters could easily have chosen Michigan State - whose record was better than Alabama's both on the field and sociologically - using the argument that Sparty had already beaten UCLA so the defeat was offset. Michigan St was the first real FULLY integrated program in college football (even most of the Northern not-all-white teams of the time had at most 4-5 black players you had to search to find in the team photo).
The idea that in 1966 voters said, "Well, NOW we are mad at George Wallace and Alabama is going to pay" is absurd. And what proves that? Well, Alabama finishd third in the COACHES poll in 1966, too. Okay, you can concoct a conspiracy theory for the writers...but the coaches????
c) no, just because you were the pre-season #1 doesn't mean anything.
It is amazing to me how many fans who were actually alive in 1966 will use this line of argument. "Well, we were two-time champions, and we started the season at #1 and we never lost." But Alabama had been #1 in October 1962, won their game against Houston, and dropped to #2 and then beat MSU, 20-0, and dropped to #3. Why would fans who were alive at the time think you stayed #1? Their more legitimate beef, however, was the post-game polling regarding the tie.
d) Alabama is perfectly justified in wondering about the fallout from the tie that never occurred.
In the above linked article, I did a study of ties going back to the first AP poll in 1936. In almost every single case, a tie HURT the higher-ranked team and HELPED the lower ranked one.
e) "But Coach Bryant said that was his best team!"
It again amazes me how many fans say this. YES, he DID say that - in 1966. He said something completely different in 1979 when he was campaigning for that title, too, but nobody wants to talk about that. I'm not saying Coach Bryant was lying but let's be honest - no coach ever was better at poor-mouthing his team to get them motivated and no coach ever was more of a political master games player with bowls and polls than Paul Bryant was. He did say the 66 team was his best, but he said his 79 team was his best, too. Let's not take true anecdotes as arguments for who or why
3) As noted in the article, once Michigan State and Notre Dame reached November 19 unblemished, a TIE was the BEST POSSIBLE RESULT Alabama could hope for.
Remember this: a victor in that game whether Michigan St or Notre Dame ends the argument, and the winner is the national champion. Alabama and Nebraska (undefeated until the following week) NEEDED a tie once the kickoff for that game arrived. And it's VERY HARD to argue that Alabama or Michigan St or Notre Dame should have been ranked on the top of the polls. All 3 were very good teams, and this often gets lost in the outrage.