"The Wishbone Boys" documentary about Alabama Football in the 70s finally to be released

quote:

---

Tim Card’s 50-year fascination with Alabama’s wishbone offense hits the big screen next month.

“The Wishbone Boys,” which tells the story of the Crimson Tide’s dominant football run utilizing that seemingly unstoppable offense from 1971-82 under coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, debuts Aug. 28 at the Bama Theater in downtown Tuscaloosa. Card, a 57-year-old movie and television stuntman-turned-filmmaker who was born in Mobile and grew up in Atlanta, is the documentary’s creator, producer and director.

---

quote:

---

Containing interviews with dozens of former Alabama players, coaches, fans and observers as well as archival footage, “The Wishbone Boys” was nearly a decade in the making. Though he did not attend Alabama (he is a University of South Alabama graduate), Card had a cousin who worked in the Crimson Tide’s athletic department in the 1970s and was able to broker a meeting with athletics director Mal Moore in 2011.

Moore — who was Alabama’s quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator during the wishbone days — was very receptive to the idea, Card said, and immediately pledged his support. Another relative, Wintzell’s Oyster House CEO Buffy Donlon, came up with the idea of holding a reunion of players and coaches from Alabama’s wishbone era at her restaurant’s Orange Beach location, an event that took place in 2014.

“The reunion at Orange Beach went over like a symphony,” Card said. “The players loved it. And that’s when we started production on the film. We interviewed 50 players and coaches that weekend.”

Still, funding issues slowed production. Moore died suddenly in 2013, with the filmmakers losing a key contact and early champion of their efforts.

And yet, Card and his small team — which includes executive producer Donlon, co-producer A.P. Steadham and social media manager/line producer Michelle Ryan — soldiered on, financing “The Wishbone Boys” almost entirely out of their own pockets. As with most other things, the COVID-19 pandemic put another kink in the works in 2020 (a companion book to the film, co-authored by Card and Robert Wray, was released in 2018).

---

quote:

---

Beginning with that 17-10 victory over USC at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Alabama reeled off 123 victories (against 19 losses and one tie), nine SEC championships and three national championships in 12 seasons running the wishbone before Bryant retired following the 1982 season. It was the greatest era of sustained success at Alabama — or anywhere in college football, arguably — until Nick Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa some 35 years later.

The story of how the wishbone — so-called because the way the quarterback and three running backs are aligned prior to the snap resembles the eponymous fork-shaped chicken breastbone — was installed adds another level of intrigue to the story. Coming off back-to-back mediocre seasons in 1969 and 1970, Bryant visited old friend Darrell Royal at Texas prior to the 1971 season and learned the offense from Royal and Longhorns offensive coordinator Emory Bellard.

---