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re: Who still thinks Bear Bryant was all that great?
Posted on 6/14/09 at 10:31 am to trackem
Posted on 6/14/09 at 10:31 am to trackem
Great Heroes Deserve Degrees
But back to classes again. After we had found all the "crip" courses we could for the Red Shirts and the varsity men, we turned to our problem children. These were the postgrads.
This squad was composed exclusively of Great Heroes-the fellows who had played out all their years of eligibility and now had returned from the wars to rest on their laurels while we poor brain trusters sweated to get them some kind of degree. Hank Crisp, it seems, has a sense of honor. He doesn't mind firing off the inept by the hundreds, but when a guy has fought and bled for the alma mater for five or ten years, he not only deserves an all-something-or-other but he also deserves a college degree. And Crisp was one to see that he got it. Or rather Crisp was one to see that I saw that he got it.
We called these great heroes the postgrad squad for two reasons. First, because the sports writers had already mournfully announced the Tide was losing them through "graduation," and second, there was the morale to think of, as Dr. Goebbels might say. After all, when a worshipful freshman got inquisitive at the frat house, these great heroes had to have some explanation for their continued presence around the campus.
"Oh, I'm hanging around doing a little postgrad work," they would remark loftily.
They couldn't afford to tell the frosh they still hadn't passed freshman English. It would have been bad for the morale.
For the most part these postgrads were the fellows who abused the privilege of being dumb. The most affable, probably without degrees, would have already left the campus to sell bonds or insurance. Those who had been given degrees would be teaching and coaching in high schools and developing new prospects for the machine.
I could give you many amusing stories of my labors with these boys. From the day they had left elementary school they had been passed through their classes because of football. Consequently, they had the formal education of the average kid in the sixth grade. Algebra was a required subject for a degree at Alabama. Can you picture one of these big fellows trying to solve the simplest algebraic equation? Or scanning a line from Browning? There was usually nothing for me to do but find the right prof and make a deal.
I remember in particular one great hero who was an All-America guard. He had been on the campus for seven years, and we had labored and dragged him through everything but elementary English. I would sit and read to him and point out and define the various parts of speech. "Here, Spike," I would say, "is a noun. And here is a verb."
He would nod his head, and I would read on. After six lines I would point back to the two words and ask him what they were. He would give me a blank stare, and the session would be ended.
I got Spike his pass in English, however, and the night he marched up and received his degree his professor and I sat in Tuscaloosa's most respectable bar and drank a toast to the great American system of public education.
A Triumph for Education
The classic story of the Alabama campus is the one about the football player in the history class. Having failed all his exams, the professor consented to give him one last special exam.
"I'm going to give you one question," he said. "If you can answer it, I will pass you. The question is: What is the capital of Alabama?"
The beefer studied for a long moment and answered: "Wetumpka."
"All right," replied the professor. "Had you answered 'Montgomery, your grade would have been 100. Since Wetumpka is 18 miles from Montgomery, I'll subtract 18 from 100 and your grade will be 82 for the course. I congratulate you.
Seriously, however, most of the passing was done through the system of fellowship students at the university. These students teach some of the elementary classes, and they grade virtually all the examination papers. They know that the football team is an asset to the school, and they know what must be done to keep many of the players eligible. They are the ones who furnish most of the elastic consciences.
But the colossal injustice only begins when the great hero gets his degree. He now becomes a favored applicant for a coaching position in some high school. But high schools in the South can't afford full-time coaches. The coach has to be a member of the faculty and spend part of his time teaching history or math or chemistry. And I had to sell those great heroes to school boards as teachers as well as coaches.
When I think of some of the scenes that must have transpired in Alabama schoolrooms during the past ten years, I wonder if I can ever atone for the sins I have committed against the rising generation.
Having been connected with the machine, I naturally dropped into the ranks of "active alumni" when I left the university. I choked back my cynicism with all the usual arguments about the value of team play and high ideals and die-for-dear-old-Siwash. And think of those fellows who would never get an "education" if it weren't for football. Besides, I enjoyed the spectacle, the business rivalry, and, as one ambitious for my school, I couldn't deny that football was our most negotiable asset.
Alabama is now the largest state university in the South, and its growth parallels exactly the growth of its football team in national prestige. Its huge stadium was paid for out of the half-million derived from Rose Bowl games.
But as the Great Dane would say, here's the rub for me now. I know that as my son grows up I'm going to do everything in my power to keep him from being sucked into the football mill. I was saved myself by being too little. Then how can I honestly go on recruiting other men's sons for a system in which I know the cards are stacked against them?
But back to classes again. After we had found all the "crip" courses we could for the Red Shirts and the varsity men, we turned to our problem children. These were the postgrads.
This squad was composed exclusively of Great Heroes-the fellows who had played out all their years of eligibility and now had returned from the wars to rest on their laurels while we poor brain trusters sweated to get them some kind of degree. Hank Crisp, it seems, has a sense of honor. He doesn't mind firing off the inept by the hundreds, but when a guy has fought and bled for the alma mater for five or ten years, he not only deserves an all-something-or-other but he also deserves a college degree. And Crisp was one to see that he got it. Or rather Crisp was one to see that I saw that he got it.
We called these great heroes the postgrad squad for two reasons. First, because the sports writers had already mournfully announced the Tide was losing them through "graduation," and second, there was the morale to think of, as Dr. Goebbels might say. After all, when a worshipful freshman got inquisitive at the frat house, these great heroes had to have some explanation for their continued presence around the campus.
"Oh, I'm hanging around doing a little postgrad work," they would remark loftily.
They couldn't afford to tell the frosh they still hadn't passed freshman English. It would have been bad for the morale.
For the most part these postgrads were the fellows who abused the privilege of being dumb. The most affable, probably without degrees, would have already left the campus to sell bonds or insurance. Those who had been given degrees would be teaching and coaching in high schools and developing new prospects for the machine.
I could give you many amusing stories of my labors with these boys. From the day they had left elementary school they had been passed through their classes because of football. Consequently, they had the formal education of the average kid in the sixth grade. Algebra was a required subject for a degree at Alabama. Can you picture one of these big fellows trying to solve the simplest algebraic equation? Or scanning a line from Browning? There was usually nothing for me to do but find the right prof and make a deal.
I remember in particular one great hero who was an All-America guard. He had been on the campus for seven years, and we had labored and dragged him through everything but elementary English. I would sit and read to him and point out and define the various parts of speech. "Here, Spike," I would say, "is a noun. And here is a verb."
He would nod his head, and I would read on. After six lines I would point back to the two words and ask him what they were. He would give me a blank stare, and the session would be ended.
I got Spike his pass in English, however, and the night he marched up and received his degree his professor and I sat in Tuscaloosa's most respectable bar and drank a toast to the great American system of public education.
A Triumph for Education
The classic story of the Alabama campus is the one about the football player in the history class. Having failed all his exams, the professor consented to give him one last special exam.
"I'm going to give you one question," he said. "If you can answer it, I will pass you. The question is: What is the capital of Alabama?"
The beefer studied for a long moment and answered: "Wetumpka."
"All right," replied the professor. "Had you answered 'Montgomery, your grade would have been 100. Since Wetumpka is 18 miles from Montgomery, I'll subtract 18 from 100 and your grade will be 82 for the course. I congratulate you.
Seriously, however, most of the passing was done through the system of fellowship students at the university. These students teach some of the elementary classes, and they grade virtually all the examination papers. They know that the football team is an asset to the school, and they know what must be done to keep many of the players eligible. They are the ones who furnish most of the elastic consciences.
But the colossal injustice only begins when the great hero gets his degree. He now becomes a favored applicant for a coaching position in some high school. But high schools in the South can't afford full-time coaches. The coach has to be a member of the faculty and spend part of his time teaching history or math or chemistry. And I had to sell those great heroes to school boards as teachers as well as coaches.
When I think of some of the scenes that must have transpired in Alabama schoolrooms during the past ten years, I wonder if I can ever atone for the sins I have committed against the rising generation.
Having been connected with the machine, I naturally dropped into the ranks of "active alumni" when I left the university. I choked back my cynicism with all the usual arguments about the value of team play and high ideals and die-for-dear-old-Siwash. And think of those fellows who would never get an "education" if it weren't for football. Besides, I enjoyed the spectacle, the business rivalry, and, as one ambitious for my school, I couldn't deny that football was our most negotiable asset.
Alabama is now the largest state university in the South, and its growth parallels exactly the growth of its football team in national prestige. Its huge stadium was paid for out of the half-million derived from Rose Bowl games.
But as the Great Dane would say, here's the rub for me now. I know that as my son grows up I'm going to do everything in my power to keep him from being sucked into the football mill. I was saved myself by being too little. Then how can I honestly go on recruiting other men's sons for a system in which I know the cards are stacked against them?
1
Posted on 6/14/09 at 10:32 am to trackem
Boys are Only Human
Take the average American boy today in first or second year high school. The day he goes out and makes the football squad he takes a dangerous step. For he soon begins to neglect his classwork. He learns that he belongs to a favored group-that he doesn't have to study- that if he's good at football he's going to be passed anyway. Human nature being what it is, most of them take the easy way. From the day a boy starts playing football until he falls out somewhere up the ladder, his chief interest is going to be football. It has to be. The system demands it. And the day he falls out-whether it's on the freshman squad or whether he goes on to join the great heroes-he is going to discover that he knows how to do just one thing-play football. He is going to find out that during the years in which he might have been fitting himself to earn a living, he has been occupied with mousetraps and cross-blocks.
Some weeks ago, with Collier's cameraman Hans Groenhoff, I examined the records of a hundred or more products of the Alabama machine. We traveled many miles and interviewed boys all the way from the Tennessee Valley to the Black Belt fans in southern Alabama. Many of them were coaching and "teaching" in small-town high schools-manufacturing new prospects for the Tide-at salaries of $900 to $1,350 a year. The rest ranged from complete unemployment with "no prospect of work" up to Big John Miller, All-Southern guard in 1931, who, as premier snuff salesman in four TVA counties, seemed to be faring best of all.
We found Roy "The Ripper" White living in the teacherage at a D.A.R. high school on Sand Mountain. His wife teaches home economics at the school, and The Ripper, unemployed, hunts squirrels and helps around the house. A smashed knee has given him a deep limp. His younger brother died a few weeks ago after lying paralyzed for a month as a result of injuries received in a high-school football scrimmage.
"I played two years of freshman and Red Shirt ball," The Ripper said, "and in '33 1 was third man behind Dixie Howell at left half. I got in the Stan- ford game for two minutes. But in '34 I got hurt and crossed up with Thomas, and they threw me to the 'automatics.' I transferred to a smaller school and tried to carry on with my education, but it was no use." (By being "thrown to the automatics," The Ripper was referring to the university rule which automatically expels any student who fails to pass eight semester hours of work. When a football-scholarship player is dropped from any of the various squads, "the automatics" usually catch him, since he no longer receives tutoring or influential aid.)
Tony Holm, All-America fullback in '29, played pro football for six seasons, but when "five freight trains" hit him on a kickoff in Pittsburgh, a knee buckled the wrong way and his playing days were over. He has worked as a bouncer in a gambling house outside Birmingham, a clerk in a state whisky store and now has a commission job in a Birmingham furniture store.
Jimmie Moss was playing with his two children the night we called at his four-room farmhouse in Morgan County. Jimmie and I were kids together. In elementary school he was smart enough. But in high school he learned he was a star tackle. He went to Alabama the year I did, on a football scholarship. I remember the day he left the university. It was three months after he had entered. His knee had been wrenched the first week out and he had had no chance to make himself seen among those scores of striving freshmen. His scholarship had soon played out. He was a picture of dejection. He was heading back to the small town we came from, and there'd be no band to meet him.
"How can I go on?" he asked me. "If I had studied in high school and planned my education, I wouldn't mind working my way through. There's nothing for me to do now but go back home and try to get a job." Jimmie is now working as a helper in a Decatur steel-fabricating plant, trying at thirty-three to learn a trade he might have learned in high school. I've been told that when the rest of his crew are cocking their ears toward the football broadcasts on Saturday afternoon, Jimmie hammers doggedly on and on and doesn't bother to listen.
In 1928 Dwight "Pug" Deal, a sophomore at the university, was hailed as the toughest blocking back in the school's history, but he was fired off the squad by Coach Wade after Alabama lost to Tennessee.
We found Deal working on a farm in Tuscaloosa County.
"It's been tough since those days," he said. "But I've gotten over my bitterness. Wade knew I wasn't any more guilty of taking a drink than the other fellows, but he had to make an example of somebody."
N. A. "Nap" Powell now drives a soft-drink truck in Selma, Alabama, after spending several years "taking in washing" for a laundry. Alumni from Thomasville, Alabama, recruited him from Selma for their high-school team, and then sent him to Alabama. He fell out of the Red Shirts.
Neil Rogers is a WPA interviewer in Florence. Don Campbell has fought back to become the announcer for a tiny radio station in Selma after buckling a knee with the Red Shirts.
Three thousand hopeful young men have entered the University of Alabama to play football during the fifteen years I have been close to that machine. Fifteen hundred fell out by the end of the first semester. All of these initial casualties had played football in high school and had learned little else. When the athletic department dropped them, what could they do? Even if their parents could afford to send them to classes, they were not prepared. They had come to college prepared only to play football. Had football not robbed them of their opportunities in high school some of them might have worked out successful college careers.
Yet the 1,500 who fell out first were more fortunate than most of those who stuck. They got their jolts sooner and have had more time to recover.
Take the average American boy today in first or second year high school. The day he goes out and makes the football squad he takes a dangerous step. For he soon begins to neglect his classwork. He learns that he belongs to a favored group-that he doesn't have to study- that if he's good at football he's going to be passed anyway. Human nature being what it is, most of them take the easy way. From the day a boy starts playing football until he falls out somewhere up the ladder, his chief interest is going to be football. It has to be. The system demands it. And the day he falls out-whether it's on the freshman squad or whether he goes on to join the great heroes-he is going to discover that he knows how to do just one thing-play football. He is going to find out that during the years in which he might have been fitting himself to earn a living, he has been occupied with mousetraps and cross-blocks.
Some weeks ago, with Collier's cameraman Hans Groenhoff, I examined the records of a hundred or more products of the Alabama machine. We traveled many miles and interviewed boys all the way from the Tennessee Valley to the Black Belt fans in southern Alabama. Many of them were coaching and "teaching" in small-town high schools-manufacturing new prospects for the Tide-at salaries of $900 to $1,350 a year. The rest ranged from complete unemployment with "no prospect of work" up to Big John Miller, All-Southern guard in 1931, who, as premier snuff salesman in four TVA counties, seemed to be faring best of all.
We found Roy "The Ripper" White living in the teacherage at a D.A.R. high school on Sand Mountain. His wife teaches home economics at the school, and The Ripper, unemployed, hunts squirrels and helps around the house. A smashed knee has given him a deep limp. His younger brother died a few weeks ago after lying paralyzed for a month as a result of injuries received in a high-school football scrimmage.
"I played two years of freshman and Red Shirt ball," The Ripper said, "and in '33 1 was third man behind Dixie Howell at left half. I got in the Stan- ford game for two minutes. But in '34 I got hurt and crossed up with Thomas, and they threw me to the 'automatics.' I transferred to a smaller school and tried to carry on with my education, but it was no use." (By being "thrown to the automatics," The Ripper was referring to the university rule which automatically expels any student who fails to pass eight semester hours of work. When a football-scholarship player is dropped from any of the various squads, "the automatics" usually catch him, since he no longer receives tutoring or influential aid.)
Tony Holm, All-America fullback in '29, played pro football for six seasons, but when "five freight trains" hit him on a kickoff in Pittsburgh, a knee buckled the wrong way and his playing days were over. He has worked as a bouncer in a gambling house outside Birmingham, a clerk in a state whisky store and now has a commission job in a Birmingham furniture store.
Jimmie Moss was playing with his two children the night we called at his four-room farmhouse in Morgan County. Jimmie and I were kids together. In elementary school he was smart enough. But in high school he learned he was a star tackle. He went to Alabama the year I did, on a football scholarship. I remember the day he left the university. It was three months after he had entered. His knee had been wrenched the first week out and he had had no chance to make himself seen among those scores of striving freshmen. His scholarship had soon played out. He was a picture of dejection. He was heading back to the small town we came from, and there'd be no band to meet him.
"How can I go on?" he asked me. "If I had studied in high school and planned my education, I wouldn't mind working my way through. There's nothing for me to do now but go back home and try to get a job." Jimmie is now working as a helper in a Decatur steel-fabricating plant, trying at thirty-three to learn a trade he might have learned in high school. I've been told that when the rest of his crew are cocking their ears toward the football broadcasts on Saturday afternoon, Jimmie hammers doggedly on and on and doesn't bother to listen.
In 1928 Dwight "Pug" Deal, a sophomore at the university, was hailed as the toughest blocking back in the school's history, but he was fired off the squad by Coach Wade after Alabama lost to Tennessee.
We found Deal working on a farm in Tuscaloosa County.
"It's been tough since those days," he said. "But I've gotten over my bitterness. Wade knew I wasn't any more guilty of taking a drink than the other fellows, but he had to make an example of somebody."
N. A. "Nap" Powell now drives a soft-drink truck in Selma, Alabama, after spending several years "taking in washing" for a laundry. Alumni from Thomasville, Alabama, recruited him from Selma for their high-school team, and then sent him to Alabama. He fell out of the Red Shirts.
Neil Rogers is a WPA interviewer in Florence. Don Campbell has fought back to become the announcer for a tiny radio station in Selma after buckling a knee with the Red Shirts.
Three thousand hopeful young men have entered the University of Alabama to play football during the fifteen years I have been close to that machine. Fifteen hundred fell out by the end of the first semester. All of these initial casualties had played football in high school and had learned little else. When the athletic department dropped them, what could they do? Even if their parents could afford to send them to classes, they were not prepared. They had come to college prepared only to play football. Had football not robbed them of their opportunities in high school some of them might have worked out successful college careers.
Yet the 1,500 who fell out first were more fortunate than most of those who stuck. They got their jolts sooner and have had more time to recover.
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