Alabama football: Highlights of the Crimson Tide-Georgia series

Alabama football and the Georgia Bulldogs will meet for the 68th time in the Monday night national championship match. Let’s look back a few key games.

The series between Alabama football and Georgia goes back to 1895 when the Bulldogs trounced Alabama 30-6. The game was an annual affair from the early 1940’s through 1965. In the last twenty years, the teams have only played five times.

There has been some serious unpleasantness involving the schools. In March 1963, the Saturday Evening Post published a story titled The Story of a College Football Fix. The magazine claimed that Georgia coach Wally Butts and Bear Bryant “rigged” the 1962 game between the Crimson Tide and the Bulldogs. Alabama won that game 35-0.

Butts and Bryant sued the Post and won a $3 million dollar judgment. Butts and Bryant settled with the magazine for less than one million, with Bryant accepting three hundred thousand.

"In his autobiography, Bryant said the strain of the experience had “taken 10 years off my life.”"

The 1965 Game

Before reviewing this game, take a close look at the photo in the tweet below.

Even Georgia faithful admit a horrible no-call by the officials gave Georgia the game. Vince Dooley was rebuilding the Dawgs in his second season. The Tide was coming off its second national championship in four seasons.

Georgia led 10-0 in the first half. The Tide stormed back to take a 17-10 lead with just over three minutes to play. Georgia ran a flea-flicker play with the wideout pictured above tossing the ball back to a teammate who raced to the end zone. The Bulldogs successfully converted a two-point play for the winning margin. Exciting stuff but with one big problem. The Georgia receiver was on his knees before he made the lateral. He was clearly down and the play should have been whistled dead about 65 yards short of the end zone.