In 1923, Wallace Wade, an iron disciplinarian, arrived in Tuscaloosa from his assistant's job at Vanderbilt, taking over for the popular Xen C. Scott, a man forced to relinquish his position due to a fatal bout with cancer. Wade's first year as coach produced a 7-2-1 squad, one which ventured to Syracuse, NY, to play in a 23-0 losing cause to the Orangemen, a loss Wade later claimed taught him more about football than any other game he coached in his career.
And what a lesson Coach Wade must have learned for the next year Alabama was Southern Conference Champions and ended the season with an impressive 8-1 record. Then came the 1925 season, and what a season it was. The '25 squad
garnered Alabama's first National Championship by posting a perfect 10-0 record and beating heavily favored Washington 20-19 in the Rose Bowl. It marked the first time a Southern team had been to Pasadena and the locals appeared stunned by the Bama victory. Bama was led by the talented duo of Johnny Mack Brown and Pooley Hubert. After the visit to Pasadena, Brown would later return to California as a star in the motion picture industry. Both Brown and Hubert would become College Football Hall of Famers.
The 1926 season saw the Crimson Tide receive its second National Title. Besides Alabama, three other teams (Stanford, Navy and Lafayette) had been declaired winners of the national championship before Bama reached Pasadena to play mighty Stanford, coached by the legendary Pop Warner. A 7-7 standoff between the Southern and Western Champs did notsettle any scores New Year's Day, 1927. Alabama was however deemed National Champions by the Helms Athletic Foundation, a leading football authority at the time, so they could claim their stake as back-to-back champions. With most of the cast from the 1925-26 season graduated, Wallace Wade had his first major rebuilding job.
The next three seasons proved disappointing as Bama endured a 17-10-1 record. 1927 was a landmark year in that Alabama played their first game in the present day Legion Field (then called Birmingham Municipal Stadium) against Georgia on November 27th.
In the spring of 1930 Coach Wallace Wade shocked many Bama followers when he announced the upcoming season would be his last at the Capstone. Wade had signed to be head coach of Duke, but this would not interfere with the well being of the '30 squad. A 10-0 season, a 24-0 whitewashing to Washington State in the Rose Bowl and a third Wade National Championship ended an era of Tide football on a glorious note. Incredibly in the Rose Bowl, Wade started his second string team, feeling his team was vastly superior to the West Coast Champs. Alabama not only shut out Washington State with their second string team but the Tide also shut out 7 other foes, with only Tennessee and Vanderbilt holding the distinciton of scoring on the 1930 National Champions. Making the trip with Bama to California was the man hired to replace Wade, Coach Frank Thomas.
The Frank Thomas Era officially commenced at the Capstone
and the former Notre Dame roomate of Irish immortal George
Gipp quickly proved the "Box Formation" was the offense of
the 1930s. Alabama finished 9-1 and outscored its foes
370-57. The 1932 season marked the end of the Southern
Conference conglomeration and saw the conception of the
SEC being designed by its forefathers in Knoxville that
December. Quite fittingly, Bama earned the first ever SEC
Championship the following year.
No one ever called Bama's coach a Doubting-Thomas in 1934
as Alabama collected their fourth National Championship
with a 10-0 record. Frank Thomas called the '34 squad the
best team he ever coached. All Americans Dixie Howell (#60),
Bill Lee and the immortal Don Hutson (#37) highlighted the Crimson Tide. Don Hutson, some 56 years later, would be
named to the all-time college football team and displayed
the skills that would one day earn him induction into
seven different Hall of Fames (Alabama, Arkansas, Green
Bay Packers, NFL, College, Wisconsin and Helms
Foundation).
With the losses of Lee, Howell and Hutson, the next few
years proved to be rebuilding years. However, on a
fateful third Saturday in October in 1935,
Paul "Bear" Bryant (#12) displayed the iron resolution that
would become his
trademark in years to come by playing with a broken leg
against old foe, Tennessee. Bryant was magnificent in a
25-0 victory. An Atlanta paper doubting the veracity of
the report of the fractured bone requested x-rays to
impugn the credibility of the Tide medical staff. The
x-rays proved without question, the end named Bear Bryant
had indeed competed in an agonizing situation. The
following four years yielded very respectible seasons as
Alabama finished the decade of the 1930s with a record of
79-11-5.
With the threat of War looming around the corner, Alabama
once again posted its fifth National Championship in 1941,
despite a 9-2 record. While a majortity of pollsters
chose Minnesota as national champs, The Football Thesaurus
chose the Crimson Tide based on a system of strength of
schedule. This was a gifted team nevertheless, with
brilliant end Holt Rast earning unanimous All-American
honors. Besides a 29-21 victory over SWC Champion Texas
A&M in the Cotton Bowl, significant wins came aginst
Georgia featuring future Heisman Trophy winner Frankie
Sinkwich, Tennessee, Georgia Tech and Miami.
The following year Coach Thomas produced an Orange Bowl
Championship team, but this game on New Year's Day would
be the last for a while. In 1943 the escalation of the
War for all intents and purposes shut down college
football throughtout the country. With World War II still
engulfing global events, the following year Alabama
reluctantly fielded a squad. Despite a 5-2-2 record,
stars like Vaughn Mancha and freshman phenom #52 Harry Gilmer
had banner years, sending a promising signal for years to
come.
Despite a perfect 10-0 season and a romp over Southern Cal
in the Rose Bowl, Bama could only finish second behind
Army in the polls. After the Crimson Tide's easy 34-14
victory over the Trojans and with their dominance over
Western teams, officials in Pasadena opted for an annual
Big 10-Pac 10 matchup hoping to restore pride to West
Coast football, thus ending Bama's Rose Bowl legacy.
Alabama was the first and the last Southern team to play
in the "Grandaddy of All Bowl Games," but echos of Bama's
Rose Bowl appearances and their significance can still be
heard in the fight song, "Yea Alabama!" Coach Frank
Thomas' last season as head coach of Alabama came in 1946
as a result of a debilitating state of health. His
coaching abilities did however earn him a spot in the Hall
of Fame as he posted a 115-24-7 record highlighted by
three SEC Championships and two National Championships.
The story of how Alabama became associated with the
elephant goes back to the 1930 season when coach Wallace
Wade had assembled a great football team. On October 8,
1930, sports writer Everett Strupper of the Atlanta
Journal wrote a story of the Alabama-Mississippi game he
had witnessed in Tuscaloosa four days earlier. Strupper
wrote "That Alabama team of 1930 is a typical Wade
machine, powerful, big, tough, fast, aggressive,
well-schooled in fundamentals, and the best blocking team
for this early in the season that I have ever seen. When
those big brutes hit you I mean you go down and stay down,
often for an additional two minutes."
