Question for older Bama fans about ties in a game.

[arthurdawg]

Yes, we didn't win the '93 Tennessee game, but not losing to Tennessee was so much better than losing to Tennessee.

Different too in that we all thought we were going to lose the game and the best we could was tie them anyway. We had to make the two point conversion or we lost.

It was tougher when it was say 21-14 and you scored with a few seconds left. You have the option to almost certainly tie the game or a 40-45% chance of winning... You had to think about where your team was at in a championship race and if a tie kept you in, you'd go for that.

 

[graydogg85]

I was 8 years old in 1993 and have vague memories of listening to the UT game on the radio, but I was such a football noob that I didn't really know how to feel one way or another after that one. The first Bama game I ever watched was the 1992 SECCG, and 1993 was the first full season that I was really engaged as a fan. Like others have said, the tie was definitely better than a loss.

I can't recall, was '95 or '96 the first season that OT was implemented in CFB? I am pretty sure that Bama didn't play in an OT game until '98 against Ole Miss at home.

On a side note, this thread is bringing back a lot of memories of Stallings-era teams. Not complaining, he was a highly successful coach, but I would liken most of Stallings' teams to Iowa under Kirk Ferentz. They basically play the exact same style of football - and in that era it was good enough to win the overwhelming majority of your games.

 

[GboyBama]

Moring and Harold Swopes were our 3rd and 4th string walk on guys at fullback that year.

Swopes, yep I remember that name too, way back from when I would memorize every single jot from the annual Media Guide

Am I old?

 

[78Alum]

Yep, in general ties did in fact feel like kissing your sister. However, any game that it looked like we were going to lose that we came back and tied, like the 93 Tennessee game felt almost like a win. I celebrated that one for sure... Now, don't get me wrong, I hope we win by 50 every game! RTR!

 

[arthurdawg]

Swopes, yep I remember that name too, way back from when I would memorize every single jot from the annual Media Guide

Am I old?

We are both old! These young sprigs around here probably don't remember Tracy High, Mick Conn, Roman Harper, and good ole boy Dabo as a walk on!

 

[GboyBama]

We are both old! These young sprigs around here probably don't remember Tracy High, Mick Conn, Roman Harper, and good ole boy Dabo as a walk on!

Absolutely love this. Conn and High, heck yeah!

My buddies and I were cheering Dabo on from the student section back in the day. My one friend from Jasper would go go nuts and yell "Daaaaaboooo!! JASPER ALABAMA!" every time he'd catch his one reception of the game.

Still makes me laugh

 

[alabama mike1]

All games in the old days ended with a tie. No overtime was played back then.

 

[Elefantman]

This season, MSU wishes games could end in a tie.

 

[CB4]

Context mattered.

The key component with Tennessee in 1993 is the fact we had not lost a game in over two years AND the fact that we were down 8 points, so a tie was the best we could attain. Had we been down by 7 and PLAYED FOR A TIE, there would have been serious calls from the fanbase (but nobody else) to fire Stallings.

Largely, it mattered whether:
a) the game ENDED in a tie OR
b) somebody PLAYED for a tie

Alabama had three tie games when it could happen during my fandom:
1981 USM
1985 LSU
1993 Tennessee

The reactions to those three in order were, "we blew it," "I'm confused," and "whew!"

The most frustrating of those three was probably the 1985 LSU game. We scored to cut the gap to 14-13 with something like 83 seconds left. Perkins then opted to kick the point after and tie the game. Frank Broyles was puzzled beyond words and there was another aspect: Alabama had no timeouts left and yet Perkins's "reasoning" (excuse?) was to say, "I thought we would get down there and get a turnover." Now bear in mind that LSU HAD NOT TURNED THE BALL OVER THE ENTIRE GAME!!!

But Perkins says his - excuse, which is what it was - was "I thought we'd get a turnover." Fine, except LSU had a better QB than we did, and they had three timeouts. And so they drove all the way down to attempt a last play 24-yard field goal that Ron Lewis shanked. So we.....well, we felt "relieved" we were still technically in the SEC race, but we were now depending on Tennessee to mess the bed against Ole Miss, Kentucky, or Vandy.

I guess - if one gets technical - we can say that Perkins's thought process went like this, maybe this can be defended:
a) we have no timeouts left and they have three
b) that puts the entire game on the onsides kick for us
c) if we win, Tennessee HAS to win all three of their games
d) and their all-SEC quarterback is gone for the season, so maybe.....

The win would NOT have won us the SEC, it would only have kept us alive.

I just always thought Perkins's approach in that particular game was quite cowardly. I'm guessing his logic was, "Well, Wickersham will have to throw the ball to move down the field, so maybe we can pick it off." But in 1985, Wickersham had both more attempts and completions than any other QB in the SEC. The problem is that Alabama's 1985 defense - which included Cornelius Bennett, Curt Jarvis, and Big John Hand - was a "bend but don't break" defense. We gave up "only" 16.2 ppg that year...but there were 25 better scoring defenses than us.

Now I will add, those numbers are inflated, too. For example, we led Mississippi State, 44-6, in a rainstorm and Perkins wanted his backups to get some reps, so MSU closed the gap artificially to 44-28. Georgia's only TOUCHDOWN on us was a blocked punt with a minute left, although yes, those points go against the defense.

As far as 1981 USM, the game was not on TV, and the story I heard later - because we stopped the clock and enabled USM to line up and tie the game - was some youngster called timeout when he shouldn't have and Coach Bryant threw himself on the sword, which was his job.

So it all depended on context.

I was there. Walking out of Legion Field that day felt like a loss. Yes, the Alabama player was LB Robbie Jones that called TO with 8 seconds to play. Reggie Collier was the USM QB and we had done a pretty good job of keeping him bottled up. He completed probably a 25-30 yard pass into Alabama territory to set up the tying FG. If I recall correctly, USM had no TO’s remaining. Once the ball was spotted, the clock would start. He would have to get to the LOS and throw the ball out of bounds (spiking wasn’t legal in those days) to stop the clock in order to get the FG unit on the field. Collier could have possibly* done it but it would have been close. When Jones called the TO, the point was moot. I remember sitting there thinking “what is he doing?!!!!!”.

Bryant indeed did “fall on his sword” for Robbie. Afterwards he said “I told Robbie any time you think there is confusion out there, take a timeout. He did what I had told him to do.”

In typical Legion Field fashion, I had paid someone $5 to park my car in a yard near the stadium. I came out to find someone had let the air out one on my tires. Every car in that yard had one flat tire.

Edit: The Legion Field parking shakedown. Many times people would charge you to park in their yard. Problem was it wasn’t “their yard”. Often you came out to find situations where you had to deal with an irate actual homeowner. The other shakedown was paying someone to “watch your car” in addition to paying to park. Five bucks to park it, and another five to make sure it was “safe”.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

I was there. Walking out of Legion Field that day felt like a loss. Yes, the Alabama player was LB Robbie Jones that called TO with 8 seconds to play. Reggie Collier was the USM QB and we had done a pretty good job of keeping him bottled up. He completed probably a 25-30 yard pass into Alabama territory to set up the tying FG. If I recall correctly, USM had no TO’s remaining. Once the ball was spotted, the clock would start. He would have to get to the LOS and throw the ball out of bounds (spiking wasn’t legal in those days) to stop the clock in order to get the FG unit on the field. Collier could have possibly* done it but it would have been close. When Jones called the TO, the point was moot. I remember sitting there thinking “what is he doing?!!!!!”.

Bryant indeed did “fall on his sword” for Robbie. Afterwards he said “I told Robbie any time you think there is confusion out there, take a timeout. He did what I had told him to do.”

In typical Legion Field fashion, I had paid some $5 to park my car in a yard near the stadium. I came out to find someone had let the air out one on my tires. Every car in that yard had one flat tire.

Edit: The Legion Field parking shakedown. Many times people would charge you to park in their yard. Problem was it wasn’t “their yard”. Often you came out to find situations where you had to deal with an irate actual homeowner. The other shakedown was paying someone to “watch your car” in addition to paying to park. Five bucks to park it, and another five to make sure it was “safe”.

Yeah, you just provided a great example of what I mean by context.


Back then - and yeah, I recall this myself - QBs couldn't spike the ball to stop the clock, they had to do that time consuming "take the snap, take a step back, and throw it into the bleachers." The spike rule was introduced in 1990 - and wonder of wonders, it was part of what caused the whole Fifth Down debacle with Colorado (it was a perfect storm of a new rule, a guy having a heart attack and receiving CPR behind the guy with the down marker, the slippery turf, and Missouri trying to delay lining up - and refusing to call their own timeout to point out it was 5th Down).

1981 was a really weird year around the Alabama program (for those not there) because everyone knew Bryant BY LAW had to retire at the end of the 1983 season, and there were attempts to circumvent or change the law just for him. And the Southern Miss game and the question of, "Why did that old man call timeout" was in the air in the media for several days, proof of his "encroaching senility." Remember folks - being 68 years old in 1981 was A LOT DIFFERENT than being 68 today as far as healthcare and what you might expect to live if you abused your body as Bryant admitted doing.

He was also the center of attention because it was known that as successful as Alabama had been since 1971, Bryant was more than likely going to pass A.A. Stagg in wins at some point in November (an undefeated season would have meant passing it against MSU in the revenge game on Halloween).

It later turned out, of course, that Bryant was never actually at any time the wins leader.

But there was another log on the fire.

At the end of September 1981 there was a news report that Bryant was "harsher" towards black players on the Alabama team than the white ones, reopening a barely closed wound. Bryant had pushed more back towards his brutal earlier coaching style and one look at the record shows why; when Alabama lost the shocker to Ga Tech, it made the Tide's record 4-3 in their last seven games. Keep in mind that Alabama had only lost two of their previous 45 games and they had now lost three in seven. So the old man growled louder - and the media suddenly began making the connections of "didn't integrate his team until just 10 years ago, most of the players disciplined recently are all black, blah blah."

The fact "anonymous black players" told these complaints of unfairness to - of all sources - THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION (yep) made it even more enraging on a personal level for Bryant. But give the man credit because it UNITED the team at least for a day, and we blew Ole Miss off the field. And Tennessee. And Rutgers. The tie with Southern and the close call with #7 Mississippi State and then we blew Penn State off the field and he won #315 against Auburn.

We didn't win it all, but he did compile one last good run before the sunset on him and us in 1982.

 

[arthurdawg]

Bryant was dying from heart failure in that last season... And our ability to treat that was so much worse than even ten years later. With today's knowledge and medicines he most likely would have lived for a number of years.

 

[jabcmb]

If the other team comes back to tie, it feels like a close loss.
The Tn tie in 93 definitely felt like a small win. When Tn won 24-0 in 1970, THAT’s what a loss feels like.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Bryant was dying from heart failure in that last season... And our ability to treat that was so much worse than even ten years later. With today's knowledge and medicines he most likely would have lived for a number of years.

I think this is reasonable given what we now know.

I recall reading years ago - there was a bye week between Penn State and Auburn, which had the effect of increasing national knowledge and interest in "Bryant going for the record" in the finale. (The LSU game had been scheduled for November 21, but the two teams agreed to advance it for a rare Saturday night treat in prime time similar to Alabama and Nebraska moving their 1978 game up to the opener).

I recall reading that during that bye week, Bryant went and saw his physician for an annual check-up and was basically told he needed to give serious thought to retirement, he was a (then) 68-year-old man who had abused his body with Chesterfields and booze and in a very stressful job. Plus, Dye was already running around the state recruiting with "he ain't gonna be there when you're a senior" and the 1976 scholarship restrictions to level the playing field were starting to bite the major programs (it's no accident that in 1983, Illinois won their first B1G title in 20 years, Auburn won their first SEC title since 1957, and Miami won their first national championship after never having finished a year higher than 6th - the filtering of talent had a great effect on creating parity).

Bryant was a man with failing health in a young man's game with a known expiration date for his coaching, and he was also contending with talent diffusion and the new style offenses that eventually turned CFB from a runner's game to a passer's game.

 

[Bruce014]

The 1993 tie against Tennessee is the only one I felt decent about. After all, we had not lost to Tennessee, who is (for me) the most hated of our rivals.

In general, ties are anywhere from meh to infuriating.

Example of the latter is Notre Dame vs. Michigan State in 1966, which cost us a national championship*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Notre_Dame_vs._Michigan_State_football_game

*note: there are other theories, as well, but I will not go into those

 

[Chechem]

Generally ties were not considered a good thing. One of the worst I remember was the 1967 tie with FSU (who wasn't very good back then). We had Kenny Stabler and had gone undefeated in 1966, so this first-game tie was a gut punch. We were shocked when FSU started ahead 14-0, and we battled back the entire day. Finally in the 4th Q FSU tied the game, but we had the ball and were driving for the win. Kenny was intercepted, then we intercepted them just as the game ended. We felt like we lost the game. I'd rather KISS MY SISTER than tie a lesser team.

 

[BamaBoySince89]

I remember that 93 game and feeling like we won because if I recall correctly we had the nations longest winning streak at the time only for it to be snapped when we played LSU