What Alabama fans wanted to do near the end of the Georgia game actually happened in 1901. On Thanksgiving, Nov. 28, 1901, Alabama and Tennessee played for the first time. The game was at West End Park in Birmingham. After a controversial officiating call, Alabama fans rushed the field and physical altercations followed. To end the fracas, officials ended the game, with the score tied 6-6. Unlike Saturday night's no-call on a blatant pass interference by Georgia, the 1901 fracas came after an offsides call.
Robert Neyland got the better of Alabama
From 1901 through 1912, Alabama played nine games against the Vols. Eight of them were in Birmingham. The Crimson Tide lost just one. The teams didn't play after 1914 until 1928. In his third head coaching season, Robert Neyland persuaded Wallace Wade to schedule Tennessee. Marvin West recounted the "con job" Neyland did on Wade: "Neyland told Wade that Tennessee was improving but wasn’t in Alabama’s class. He said the Vols needed the experience and exposure of playing somebody really good if they were ever going to get on the college football map."
Neyland even suggested Alabama could use a second-half running clock to limit a blowout. The Vols won 15-13. And so the rivalry began. When Bryant was still called Paul more often than Bear, he played against Tennessee with a leg fracture. Hating Tennessee became second nature to Bryant, who faced Neyland seven times as Kentucky's head coach. Neyland, known then as The General, beat Bryant every time. Neyland was an actual military General and one of the SEC's best-ever football coaches.
Alabama's tradition of smoking a cigar after a win over Tennessee began in 1961. Bryant's trainer was Smokey Harper, whose treatments for Alabama players were as elemental as 'rub some dirt on it'. Harper was always in Bryant's Amen corner, which meant he, too, hated the Vols.
These old stories won't be in the hearts and minds of players on Saturday. History might give a team an advantage at times, but nothing in this old rivalry will affect which team wins a game most necessary to both teams. I'll have a cigar ready, though, to celebrate another Alabama Crimson Tide victory.
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