Fifty Years Ago Today - Georgia Tech vs Alabama

quote:

---

The Game

The game was remembered as the starting point of hatred between Alabama and Georgia Tech because of a serious injury followed by an irresponsible action. It was an incident that displayed dirty football by Darwin Holt, a senior linebacker from Alabama. Georgia Tech player Chick Graning was running down field without any opposition, he assumed the play was over and left his guard down. Then Alabama player, Darwin Holt, jumped at Graning, and punched him in the face with his forearm. Holt struck Chick in the face with his left elbow. According to 'Engineering The New South', the full diagnosis, as indicated by the Tech team physician, was: “fracture of facial bones, five missing upper teeth and remaining front teeth broken, fracture of nasal bone, fracture of right maxillary sinus and sinus filled with blood, fracture of bone beneath right eye, cerebral concussion, possible fracture of base of skull.” [2]. The local newspaper and the articles from later in the year published many articles about the dirty football sport in general, especially about the game between Alabama and Georgia Tech. Due to this incident Chick was not able to finish the season for the Yellow Jackets. The Atlanta Constitution ran photos of the "brutalized young Graning lying in his hospital bed with his face smothered in bandages, and the papers called for Holt to be suspended for what was, to them, an obviously late and dirty hit" [3]. There was another reason why this game was very famous around the world. It was Coach Bryant. Despite the violation of sportsmanship, clearly recorded on film and in people's memories, Coach Bryant refused to announce a public apology and did not remove Holt from the team. In January 1962, Coach Dodd described Bryant’s behavior as the "expiration of the contract in 1964". The contract was originally between Georgia Tech and Alabama and agreed on appropriate and clean football games. Furthermore, Dodd's announcement showed that the contract was not important to him anymore because of Coach Bryant's reaction. Subsequently, in that time, "Bryant [had] already earned a reputation as an outlaw school that not only played dirty, but also received in their reputation as a dirty football team" [4]. The Graning incident served to confirm what other people already believed about Coach Bryant's reputation, and that hurt him externally. In fact, even local newspapers in Alabama criticized Bryant's actions. Georgia Tech also announced that Tech would no longer play Alabama, even though years later Tech decided to play against Alabama shortly before Bryant’s death, at that point memories of the incident had subsided.

---