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Alabama Football: Stallings to Saban, A Roller-Coaster Ride
Alabama Football Stallings to Saban A RollerCoaster Ride Author:Donald F. Staffo The Introduction — In 1992 Alabama celebrated its Football Centennial Celebration, Century of Champions, an appropriate name for a program that had won 11 national titles and led the nation with 23 bowl victories. Nobody told me that in 1992 the Crimson Tide would win its 12th national championship, or I would have waited another year before comp... more »leting my first book on Alabama football Bama After Bear. I wanted to get that book out in time for the 100-Year Celebration of Alabama football. So this work picks up where that left off, the 1992 season when Alabama won its first national championship since 1978, when Paul Bear Bryant won his sixth and last NCAA title, before retiring in 1982 and passing away in 1983.
In terms of stability, in the 25 years under Bryant, when championships were routine and NCAA penalties unheard of, the Alabama football program was the Rock of Gibraltar as stable as it gets. In the 27 years since Bryant s retirement, the program has been anything but. Beginning with Ray Perkins, the carousel of coaches has included Bill Curry, Gene Stallings, Mike DuBose, Dennis Franchione, Mike Price, Mike Shula and now Nick Saban. And the program has been placed on NCAA probation three times for several years for various rules violations.
The book opens with Stallings and a capsule of Alabama s national championship season, which for a short period of time reminded people of what Alabama football is supposed to be about. It also focuses on the DuBose, Price, Shula and Saban eras although some of the coaching tenures have been so short they re more like a blip than an era and the wild roller-coaster ride that has been Crimson Tide football from 1992 through 2008.
It is historical in nature, beginning with the exhilaration that surrounded the program when Bama thrashed Miami in the 1993 Sugar Bowl to culminate a magical season, and documents the varying degrees of success and failure and the various football-related problems that have plagued the program on and off for almost a decade and a half prior to Saban s arrived in Tuscaloosa.
This book is based on extensive research over an extended period of time, information gained in many intensive interviews and numerous conversations, and knowledge the writer gleamed from covering University of Alabama football for going on 25 years. Regardless, there is no way its contents will please everybody directly or indirectly associated with the program. It must be realized that opinions vary and can be biased, and memories can be faulty and selective. The intent of the book is not to provide answers, but to simply chronicle the noteworthy events that took place during the Stallings to Saban eras.