Alabama Football: A Tie Is Like Kissing Your Sister – 10 Crimson Tide Tie Games
By Ronald Evans
Alabama Football and Kissing Your Sister – Games ended in ties for decades – Just how bad was it to experience a tie?
Various coaches have been cited as the original source of “kissing your sister” football comparisons: Paul Bryant, Darrell Royal, Edgar Miller and Eddie Erdelatz are a few. Alabama football fans who wonder about the real origin of football ties and “kissing your sister” should consider the late college football historian, Beano Cook as an excellent source. Beano Cook commented on the use of the phrase: http://www.espn.com/page2/s/beano/001129.html
"Glenn Davis and Doc Blanchard, played their last game against Navy in a 1946 classic. With the score 21-18 in favor of the Cadets, seconds left and the Midshipmen in easy field-goal range, spectators rushed the field and Navy never got off a final play. there was nobody to stop spectators from preventing the Midshipmen from running a potentially game-winning final play. After the game, Navy coach Tom Hamilton, who was one of Navy’s greatest players in the 20s, was asked about kicking a tying field goal. Hamilton, later the athletic director at the University of Pittsburgh, where he gave yours truly his first job in college athletics, famously said, “A tie is like kissing your sister.” Or did he? Years later, I asked him about the quote, and he said that he didn’t remember saying it."
If you don’t know Beano Cook, Beano was known as the “Cardinal of College Football.” He died in 2012 after working most of his last forty-five plus years for ABC and ESPN. He was the nation’s best-known and most-loved College Football Historian. Read more about Beano here:
The only possible complaint a southern college football lover could raise about Beano is his perspective was more sectional than national. He grew up with Eastern college football and lived 74 of his 81 years in Pittsburgh.
What follows are summaries of ten Alabama football games that ended in a tie. Some of these ties were so disappointing they were barely better than a loss. Could those heart-breaking ties have been worse than kissing your sister? Don’t answer if kissing your sister means anything to you beyond a metaphorical construct.