"Football is the game of the
future"
- William G. Little, 1892
Football's Origin at Alabama
Mr. W.G. Little, of Livingston, AL, was the first
man to introduce football at the University. Mr. Little
had been a student at Phillips Exeter Academy in New
Hampshire, where he was introduced to a new rugby-like
sport callled football. Due to the untimely death of his
brother, Little returned home to take care of his family.
He soon enrolled at the University of Alabama for the fall
semester of 1892. He had encouraged a few his schoolmates
into participating in this new sport with the season
beginning in October of that year.
Alabama's first game was played in Birmingham on
Friday afternoon, November 11, 1892, at Lakeview Park.
Little served as the team captain with E.B. Beaumont
selected as Alabama's first coach. Opposition was
furnished by a picked team from Professor Taylor's School
and Birmingham high schools, with Alabama winning 56-0.
Early teams were a bit tougher than current squads, it
seems, as the following afternoon Alabama played the
Birmingham Athletic Club, losing 5-4 when Ross, of B.A.C.,
kicked a 65-yard field goal. Impossible though it may
seem, this field goal was listed as a collegiate record at
one time and Birmingham papers of the day featured its
distance in writeups of the game.
The following year marked the first Iron Bowl
meeting between Alabama and Auburn. It occured February
22, 1893 in Birmingham with Auburn upsetting Bama 32-22.
Officially this game was listed on the 1892 schedule since
it was the '92-93 school year. Alabama wore white shirts
with red lettered U of A on them along with red stockings.
The next football season saw a new head coach, Eli
Abbott (pictured below right), who was also a player. It seems he helped his
team more as a player than a coach as he scored four
touchdowns in a victory over Tulane as well as two
touchdowns in Bama's first victory over Auburn. Alabama
was soon given the nickname, "The Thin Red Line" by local
newspapers.
The gridiron sport rapidly caught the student's
fancy and the game became a favorite with University
athletes. in 1896 the University's Board of Trustees
passed a rule forbidding athletic teams from traveling off
the campus. The following season only one game was played
and in 1898 football was abandoned at Alabama. Student
opposition was so strong that the trustees lifted the
travel ban and football was resumed in 1899.
1901 marked the origination of the Tennessee series,
a game which was called because of darkness with the score
tied at 6-6. A crowd of more than 2,000 spectators rushed
the Birmingham field in protest when the contest was
stopped. Alabama's football success steadily grew and in
1915, saw it's first All-American, W.T. "Bully"
VandeGraffe (pictured left). He was a standout on offense and defense and
was hailed as the best kicker of his era for his punting
and placekicking abilities.
With the severity of World War I,
Alabama didn't field a team in 1918, however, the
following year saw play resume near the war's end. Alabama
splashed onto the
national scene on November 4, 1922 when they vanquished a
favored Pennsylvania Quakers team 9-7 in front of a crowd
of 25,000 (a mob scene back then). Alabama was well
on
its way to becoming a national powerhouse in college
football.
How the "Crimson Tide" Got Its
Name
In the early newspaper accounts of Alabama football,
the team was simply listed as the "varsity" or the
"Crimson White" after the school colors. The first
nickname to become popular and used by headline writers
was the "Thin Red Line." The nickname was used until
1906. The name "Crimson Tide" 
is supposed to
have first
been used by Hugh Roberts, former sports editor of the
Birmingham Age-Herald. He used "Crimson Tide" in
describing an Alabama-Auburn game played in Birmingham in
1907, the last football contest between the two schools
until 1948 when the series resumed. The game was
played in a sea of mud and Auburn was the heavy favorite
to win. But, evidently, the "Thin
Red Line" played a
great game in the red mud and held Auburn to a 6-6 tie,
thus gaining the name "Crimson Tide." Zipp Newman, former
sports editor of the Birmingham News, probably popularized
the name more than any other writer.
THE EARLY YEARS
1892-1922
