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Coach Bryant vs Sat. Evening Post

In a 1963 Saturday Evening Post article, Coach Bryant was accused of conspiring to fix the game against Georgia the previous season. The article said Georgia's athletic director, Wally Butts, gave Bryant the plays, allowing Alabama to roll 35-0. The charges were never proven and Coach Bryant won a libel suit against the magazine. The magazine never recovered.

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[This message has been edited by TideBeliever (edited 04-20-2004).]
 
Wally Butts won a libel suit for around 1 mil I believe, but Coach Bryant settled out of court for 300 and something thou. They did go out of business shortly after that.

That's chicken feed now, but in those days, it was big bucks.

The whole thing was ludicrous. In those days, Georgia wouldn't have been a good scrimmage for our 2nd string.
 
That would explain why the good-ole AJC has no love for Bama. Bisher is treated with such reverence around this town (Atlanta) by the sports media...I guess he still carries a chip on his shoulder about the University of Alabama.
 
If my memory serves me..There was also an earlier suit about Bryant teaching violence.
It evolved from the game that Darwin Holt sort of broke Chick Granning's jaw in an Al-GaTech game. Bryant also won that suit...
 
Jhonny Griffith was Ga's coach and was in the hospital for his appendix(I think)at the time of the game. The man(can't think of his name)that claimed he was connected electronicly to a phone conversation between Butts and Coach Bryant, made notes of the discussion, claiming they were Ga's plays for the up coming game. He took them to Bisher who ran with the story. These same notes were taken to Ga's coach and he said they didn't mean a thing to him.

Bisher's title for the story was..'A story of a football fix'

Then after the Chick Granning/Darwin Holt incident the AJC ran a story about coach Bryant coaching 'brutaity'.

Bisher and the AJC have had a burr under their saddle ever since when it comes to Bama.

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"Doctors bury their mistake, I have to feed mine 4 years!"......Bear bryant
 
I've been surfing here for much of the past four years, and this is the first time I've ever seen this painful subject arise.

I read the original at my college library in 1990. I was appalled to say the least. Not because of my Crimson persuasion but because the article was so slanted it wasn't even funny. It didn't even PRETEND to be objective.

Here are the basic facts:

1. Alabama opened the 1962 season with a 35-0 pounding of Georgia (not Ga Tech as someone asked).

2. Wally Butts was not the coach, but the AD at the time. When the President of Georgia asked him to take a polygraph, Butts resigned.

3. Bryant and the Post had been after one another for awhile. He had already filed suit against them for an unflattering article about his days at A/M.

4. The article portrayed Georgia's coach as believing every word of the fix. In reality, he thought it was asinine, too.

5. The source, a guy named Brummett, was a convicted felon. And because the story didn't come out until well into 1963, the Post had PLENTY of time to confirm his story. But they never did.

6. Brummett's claim was that some phone wires got crossed and he heard Bryant and Butts talking about it. But this begs several questions:

First, Alabama had already owned Georgia. The Tide was the defending national champions at the start of 1962. They'd beaten Georgia by 15 points in 1960, and 26 in 1961. Why in the hell would they need to 'fix the game?'

Second, Georgia had losing seasons from 1961 through 1963. They lost to Florida State fielding a team of all girls for Pete's sake (not really - the girls part I mean). Again, since Alabama won by five TDs, what would we need help with?

Third, this game was profiled in a Bryant book I read years ago (forget which one). One of the coaches discovered that every time Georgia ran a pass, the QB lined up with his feet facing one way and when they ran, they were positioned differently. Sure makes more sense than a fix.

And here's the most obvious question: even assuming Butts and Bryant conspired to fix the game, how in the world did they let about 200 ballplayers in on it without somebody squealing? Most guys who play football are intensely competitive. This ain't basketball where if you get to two players you can easily sway the outcome. Again, to my knowledge none of the players did that.

Oh, so Butts sent the plays to Bryant, right? So what did Bryant do, say, 'Y'know Lee Roy, he's going to be going 'that' way.'

This was such an asinine suggestion, whoever made it should have been shot, picked up, and shot again.
 
Selma, you brought back memories. I knew some of the members of that team. One of them told me that the score would have been 95-0, had they known the plays. In a serious vein, he went on to say that they had several "keys" that made them extremely predictable, and the opposition that year predicted them pretty well. One GA player was quoted - and may have been deposed - as saying that "they were yelling out our plays at us." He was "hee-hawed" for the reasons you've set out. Also, at that time, a kinder gentler age, it was common for opposing coaches, who were friends, (and retired HCs become ADs) to call each other the week before the game and "horse around." It would go like "You're not going to run that 421 Blue right again, are you?" Reply: "Damn right, and that's not all." Of course, each side was always hoping for a lapse that might give a little info. I've always thought some such conversation took place between Bryant and Butts. Wally Butts was a honorable man, but he was well advised not to undergo a polygraph, weak tool that it is. I can easily think of a line of questioning that would have made him look guilty as hell - though having given up nothing. The Post was on the downward slide and had adopted a strategy of "sophisticated muckraking," as they called it, to try to save the publication. Instead, it buried it...
 
I was not around when this happened, but I've researched it a lot. My mom told me the story about the supposed fix (she never bought it either) when I was a young Tide fan (and she's from Auburn country - Lanett to be precise).

She started off with, "Ever heard of the Saturday Evening Post?" Of course I had, it was the most famous paper in America at that time. Then she'd tell the story about Wally and Bear founding a new porno magazine called "Bear Butts."

My grandfather, God rest his soul, however, went to his grave hating Bear Bryant and how Georgia treated Butts. He was actually recruited back in the 1920s to play for Georgia Tech and he held unbending allegiance to that school. He thought Bryant was a crook, kicked his dog, and was the devil incarnate. He never stopped tiring of telling me how Alabama "scheduled easy teams like the University of Cincinnati High School" (the Bearcats). But he blamed Bryant (instead of the SEP) for Butts' resignation and thought Bryant should have left, too.

Of course he did. Bobby Dodd fled the conference because of what Bryant did to them, and look how bad it hurt them. They sank to oblivion in the 1970s, firing Bud Carson and Pepper Rodgers (because he wouldn't get a hair cut).

Wally Butts - from all I've heard - was widely admired. He was basically the 'second Bear' in the SEC from folks I've talked to about that - and ALL of them without exception think it was inconceivable that Bryant or Butts would do what they were accused of doing.

I still like the line from my book about the movie (yeah, the Gary Busey one):

"Coach Bryant have you ever lied about a football game?"

Bryant: "Yes sir."

"And when was that?"

Bryant: "Every time I told somebody I thought we'd lose."
 
Thanks everyone, for the information. This does bring back memories even though I was 8 years old at the time. I am glad coach Bryant stood up to them and made them pay. Like the Atlanta paper, some may still hold a grudge.
Roll Tide
 
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