Notre Dame Robbed Alabama | The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied...

Required reading for player vignettes | The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most ... | Keith Dunnavant

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	• The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most ... Keith Dunnavant St. Martin's Griffin, 2007 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Bama Grad weighs in.

Admittedly, this book is regional in nature, appealing to the 'Bama fan of any age. Growing up in Birmingham, attending The University, and remaining a loyal Tide fan, I found this book hard to put down. It is a quick read. Being generally aware of this sequence of events during the 1966 season, I was enthralled at the background and behind the scenes information offered by the author.

The focus on Coach Bryant and his harshness in molding championship football teams has been well documented, but what strikes me in this book is the contrast in his admonition to do everything one can to be a champion and then letting the polls sort things out in a just manner. In this instance racism, regionality, prejudice, and primitive media capabilities prevented a true NCAA Football Champion. I felt sympathy for MY team...having done all to achieve a goal and STILL not getting the prize. A lifelong lesson at such a tender age!
I have read most of the books about Bear Bryant and Alabama football, but by far, this is the most entertaining of them all. If you are an Alabama fan or a follower of college football, I highly recommend this book. Those who could care less about SEC football and the sport in general might be better served by another subject. I would have scored this book Five Stars had it not been so regional in nature. I however loved every page. Roll Tide!!! BAW c.1976

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Notre Dame Robbed Alabama

Alabama was ripped off in 1966 and this book proves the point.

Never again will ND get away with such a fiasco.

Required reading for player vignettes

This book's subtitle is "How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize." The Tide were the defending back-to-back national champions in 1966. They were ranked first in both polls as the season began. They finished the season undefeated and untied - yet managed to end up ranked third behind Notre Dame and Michigan State, who had played each other to a 10-10 tie in the regular season. This book was intended to explore why that took place.

Dunnavant posits two reasons. The first is the most common argument: Notre Dame has been the most popular team in the country since the Jazz Age and routinely places higher in the polls than schools with superior records because they are the darlings of predominantly northern and eastern sportswriters. Irish head coach Ara Parseghian decided to play to preserve the tie against MSU - to sit on the ball with two minutes left to play - rather than fight for the win. His detractors claim this is because he knew they would be treated well by the pollsters in spite of the decision. He was right.

The second argument is that the season occured during the height of the civil rights movement and there was a media bias against the still-segregated Crimson Tide team and against the entire state of Alabama, the bastion of Bull Connor and George Wallace. He believes the team fell from first place simply because of politics even before Parseghian's Machiavellian move.

Virtually no one who wears Crimson will argue with the first point. Many who were not alive at the time might not have considered the second but it makes sense given the climate of 1966. All that could have been covered in a book half this size.

But the 'The Missing Ring' also seeks to illustrate why the Alabama team deserved the title, not just why the other two schools didn't. It is filled with wonderful details about the players and coaches who comprised one of the best teams in college football history and the system Paul Bryant used to create it. Each chapter has a theme and spotlights players and games from the 1966 season that exemplify it. Dunnavant does a great job of setting the atmosphere of the times both on campus and in the state of Alabama and paints colorful portraits of many young men who have become mere names in the record books but are still alive to share anecdotes and attitudes.

My only misgivings about this book are Dunnavant's tendency to repeat himself, often verbatim (I lost count of how many times he used the phrase "Bryant used this tactic to great effect in molding a team into champions" - often on facing pages), his often clumsy attempts at foreshadowing, and his unabashed boosterism. I'm aware he's an alum (although that fact is mentioned nowhere in the book or on it's dustjacket) but if he is going to build an effective case that Alabama was robbed of a threepeat he must try to at least feign objectivity. Dunnavant shows no such restraint when he arrives at the conclusion of the book. As he recounts Ara Parseghian's admittedly gutless decision to sit on the ball and trust his team's fortune to the pollsters' sycophantic relationship with Notre Dame, Dunnavant bursts into outright apoplexy, calling Parseghian everything but an Armenian-American football coach. He sounds more like a blogger than a journalist.

There were plenty of people to quote if he wanted to include the (accurate) labels gutless, cynical, cowardly, and shameful. Instead, he uses them himself. I kept wanting to reach through the book and grab Keith by the collar: "Don't do it! Hold off! Show some class. Let the facts speak for themselves. It'll just look like sour grapes if you go this route." But alas, the deed was done. It's like he had driven the ball the length of the field and into the edzone and then ruined it all with a penalty in the final seconds that negated the winning touchdown.

This was the only blemish on an otherwise fascinating book on Crimson Tide football history. I still recommend it, however, for the excellent player profiles.

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Great Book, Questionable Thesis

Let me say first of all that I really enjoyed this book. As an inside look at the great 66 team as well as the context of the times, I recommend it highly. On the other hand, I can't agree that Bryant and his team were unfairly cheated out of a national championship. As good as the team was, the Tide's schedule was hardly arduous, especially in light of its failure to include the two other top teams in the SEC that year, Georgia and Florida. Bear Bryant had done very well in the context of the league, but if Alabama had to go up against heavier teams with talented black athletes, I doubt the team would have fared as well. Regardless of efforts to pump up the reputation of the 66 Nebraska team, it was certainly not a great one by any means. If Alabama had played the two teams that it trailed in the 66 polls, it would probably have lost to Michigan State and almost definitely would have been beaten by Notre Dame. Either of those teams would have reduced the Tide's running attack to non-existance and Stabler's passing alone wouldn't have been enough to compensate. Cecil Dowdy was a great player, but Bubba Smith took him apart in a post season all-star game. In short, a good big one beats a good little one every time. I can certainly understand, from their perspective at least, why Bama fans might feel cheated by the poll results. In the end, however, the Tide ended up about right where they belonged.

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The Missing Logic

The first two-thirds of this work provides an interesting and insightful tale of how a magical coach molded an amazing bunch of overachievers into a team that nearly won a third consecutive national championship in 1966. A nice book on an interesting piece of sports history. But after describing the crucial 10-10 tie between Michigan St. and Notre Dame, the author begins to sound like the president of the University of Alabama booster club and the League of South. (Note: the author's bio on the back cover, at least in the paperback version, fails to mention that he attended Alabama). He leaves out facts that might cloud his thesis that Alabama, and the South in general, was put upon by northern liberals with a superiority complex. His use of sports facts is selective as well. For instance, while complaining that Notre Dame was awarded the national championship in 1966 before the bowls games were played, he fails to point out that two of the Alabama national championships ('64 and'73) were won in years in which they were awarded the titles before LOSING bowl games to Texas and Notre Dame. He actually mentions the fact that Notre Dame beat Alabama after the '73 season, he just doesn't mention his unjustly persecuted Crimson Tide had already been awarded at least a partial national championship. In general, the author seeks to re-enforce the belief by some Southern sports fans that Notre Dame and non-Southern teams have gotten "gift" championships over the years, while Alabama hasn't gotten what it deserves. Alabama has been awarded the national championship at least a dozen times. It has a glorious football history, much of it built by the masterful motivation of Bear Bryant. For two-thirds of this book, the author tells that tale. His work could have done without the whining, preaching and cliched pop sociology.

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?Keith Dunnavant?s triumph is that he takes us into the heart of Alabama, into the darkness and the light, and there we see Joe Namath, Kenny Stabler, Ray Perkins, and their band of brothers play football for Bear Bryant the way life should be lived, at full throttle, indomitably.?
---Dave Kindred, author of Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship

The Missing Ring is more than a football book. It is both a story of a changing era and of an extraordinary team on a championship quest.

Very few institutions in American sports can match the enduring excellence of the University of Alabama football program. Across a wide swath of the last century, the tradition-rich Crimson Tide has claimed twelve national championships, captured twenty-five conference titles, finished thirty-four times among the country?s top ten, and played in fifty-three bowl games.
Especially dominant during the era of the legendary Paul ?Bear? Bryant, the larger-than-life figure who towered over the landscape like no man before or since, Alabama entered the 1966 season with the chance to become the first college football team to win three consecutive national championships. Every aspect of Bryant?s grueling system was geared around competing for the big prize each and every year, and in 1966 the idea of the threepeat tantalized the players, pushing them toward greatness. Driven by Bryant?s enthusiasm, dedication, and perseverance, players were made to believe in their team and themselves. Led by the electrifying force of quarterback Kenny ?Snake? Stabler and one of the most punishing defenses in the storied annals of the Southeastern Conference, the Crimson Tide cruised to a magical season, finishing as the nation?s only undefeated, untied team. But something happened on the way to the history books.
The Missing Ring is the story of the one that got away, the one that haunts Alabama fans still, and native Alabamian Keith Dunnavant takes readers deep inside the Crimson Tide program during a more innocent time, before widespread telecasting, before scholarship limitations, before end-zone dances. Meticulously revealing the strategies, tactics, and personal dramas that bring the overachieving boys of 1966 to life, Dunnavant?s insightful, anecdotally rich narrative shows how Bryant molded a diverse group of young men into a powerful force that overcame various obstacles to achieve perfection in an imperfect world.
Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, the still-escalating Vietnam War, and a world and a sport teetering on the brink of change in a variety of ways, The Missing Ring tells an important story about the collision between football and culture. Ultimately, it is this clash that produces the Crimson Tide?s most implacable foe, enabling the greatest injustice in college football history. ?Keith Dunnavant has written yet another fabulous book about the fabled Alabama football program. You will be amazed at how one of the great injustices in the history of college football cost them their rightful place in history. And you just thought the system was screwed up now.?
---Jim Dent, author of The Junction Boys

?Keith Dunnavant nails it: all the sacrifices the 1966 Alabama team made to win three national championships in a row, and how we were robbed at the ballot box.?
---Jerry Duncan, one of the boys of 1966

?Dunnavant infuses reportage and passion into a tale that every Alabamian of a certain age knows: For all the crying about Penn State in 1969, Penn State in 1994, or Auburn in 2004, no team ever got shafted the way the 1966 Crimson Tide did. It?s all here: the churning legs, the churning stomachs, and the dreaded gym classes where Bear Bryant?s boys made the sacrifices he demanded in order to become champions. They conquered their opponents on the field, but proved to be no match for the politics of the day off the field. The ?66 Tide is still waiting for the Missing Ring. Thanks to Dunnavant, we don?t have to.?
---Ivan Maisel, senior writer, ESPN.com, and co-author of A War in Dixie

?Absolutely stunning. The Missing Ring left me breathless. Keith Dunnavant has proven again why he is one of America?s greatest sports authors and historians. With so much having been written about Bryant and Alabama, I had my doubts going into this book that there was something I didn?t know or hadn?t read. Yet Dunnavant has managed to strike gold with The Missing Ring in every way and shape imaginable. His quiet prose goes down as effortlessly as bourbon and branch water. Fans of college football will marvel at his painstaking research. Dunnavant turned the clock back forty years and it was 1966 all over again. The pain and the glory, the pride and the prejudice, all brought to life in the pages of this extraordinary book.?
---Paul Finebaum, Paul Finebaum Radio Network

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