Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[AlabamAlum]

Final thought on the Sam Cunningham thing: Bama opens with USC next year. I will have to hear the Sam Cunningham BS countless times in the weeks leading up to the game. I should really copy these posts and have them on a clipboard for posting as needed.

[hedge]

IIRC, the players and coaches they interviewed were about split on whether they thought there was any of that sort of motivation behind scheduling the game. I can see it both ways. Guess we'll never really know what was in Bryant's mind. But I'm like you, I don't think it really matters...

[Professor Tiger]

JD, perhaps you never got the memo: NEVER post something that is less than worshipful of Alabama football. It gets AA all riled up.

[Toemeesleather]

Doesn't matter about Alabama or football, JD's penchant for posting anything that is fact deficit is the problem.

[10ac]

For what it's worth.

http://www.teamspeedkills.com/2012/5/9/ ... conference


UT had the first black QB in the SEC.

https://youtu.be/_pY-KIwP46E

[AlabamAlum]

JD, perhaps you never got the memo: NEVER post something that is less than worshipful of Alabama football. It gets AA all riled up.

You ....are a moron. What I posted was not pro Bama or anti-Bama. Mouth-breathing idiot. Likewise, what JD posted wasn't either.

It is simply disputing the fable that Sam Cunningham was a huge merchant of social change in the south.

Seriously, your stupidity prof...well, it's shocking.

[AlabamAlum]

IIRC, the players and coaches they interviewed were about split on whether they thought there was any of that sort of motivation behind scheduling the game. I can see it both ways. Guess we'll never really know what was in Bryant's mind. But I'm like you, I don't think it really matters...

I think the evidence that supports the game being scheduled by Bryant to get support for his already underway intergration is, at best, specious. For that matter, when Bryant agreed to take Bama to Philly to play Penn State (more than a decade earlier) in 1959 and lost, why didn't Charles Janerette get some pub?

It's just such a manufactured fable, but it's a feel-good story and people like those things.

[AlabamAlum]

And Janerette was killed by cops, iirc. The rasicm synchronicity comes full circle.

[Jungle Rat]

FUCK ALL YOU WHITE HONKEYS!!

[AlabamAlum]

Janerette was...

http://talesfromtheamericanfootballleag ... janerette/

[AlabamAlum]

Charlie Janerette and Bill Cosby were friends. And Janerette was the inspiration for Fat Albert!

[Professor Tiger]

JD, perhaps you never got the memo: NEVER post something that is less than worshipful of Alabama football. It gets AA all riled up.

You ....are a moron. What I posted was not pro Bama or anti-Bama. Mouth-breathing idiot. Likewise, what JD posted wasn't either.

It is simply disputing the fable that Sam Cunningham was a huge merchant of social change in the south.

Seriously, your stupidity prof...well, it's shocking.

JD, see what I mean?

[AlabamAlum]

JD, perhaps you never got the memo: NEVER post something that is less than worshipful of Alabama football. It gets AA all riled up.

You ....are a moron. What I posted was not pro Bama or anti-Bama. Mouth-breathing idiot. Likewise, what JD posted wasn't either.

It is simply disputing the fable that Sam Cunningham was a huge merchant of social change in the south.

Seriously, your stupidity prof...well, it's shocking.

JD, see what I mean?

Idiot. If anything, the Sam C fable makes Bama and Bryant look good. The thought that he went through this plan, to schedule and lose a game to get blacks on the team...

[Professor Tiger]

That's nothing compared to UGA Coach Wally Butts throwing games to Bryant.

[AlabamAlum]

Both were fables and Butts and Bryant sued and nearly shuttered 'The Saturday Evening Post" due to the libel.

[hedge]

"I think the evidence that supports the game being scheduled by Bryant to get support for his already underway intergration is, at best, specious."

I guess what gives the story some purchase (at least partially) is that, irregardless of Bryant's personal and professional opinions about the matter of integration (which I don't doubt were on the right side of history), it's undeniable that the opinion of a large segment of the South (and therefor a large segment of southern universities' fan bases), even at that relatively late date, were not in line with Bryant's. Maybe he didn't give a fuck what anybody else thought, maybe he figured he could do whatever he damn well pleased with or without the support of the majority of his fan base, maybe none of the above. But certainly the dramatic element of the conflict b/w the fans' personal opinions about integration vs. their desire to have the best team is the reason the story has, at the very least, a whiff of credence. And without that, it wouldn't be a story at all, whether it's "true" or not (which, according to what you've said, I now kinda doubt)...

[AlabamAlum]

Well sure, hedge. That's what made it a nice story and gave it wings. But having a single defeat to a team with blacks wouldn't sway many true racists even if Bryant hadn't have recruited Mitchell and Jackson well before that game with USC. A racist would likely just view the loss as an outlier (like they did with Penn State in 1959) and dismiss it out-of-hand. Bryant was pragmatic enough to know that and proceeded with his plans to add blacks to the roster as early as 1967. It's not like Bama had never played (and lost to and beaten) teams with blacks on the roster.

And he knew the majority of the university, its graduates, faculty, and governor of the state of Alabama (Brewer) supported him- so the racist sidewalk fan living in Sixtoe, Alabama could either support it or move along because the times, they were a-changing. The late 1960's and early 1970's at UA were a time of great growth. Besides Bryant signing blacks, and having black students and graduates, there were blacks on the homecoming court in 1969, a black homecoming queen in '73, black faculty and black grad students in the mid and late 1960's. The thought that Sam Cunningham in 1970 brought about that change is just a fairy tale and it does a disservice to the people who fought hard for that change well before the USC game.

But the Sam the Bam story is twice-told and beloved, so it will stick around. And one must never let facts get in the way of a good story. I just hate it for Charlie Jenerette playing for Penn State in 1959.

[Johnette's Daddy]

Well sure, hedge. That's what made it a nice story and gave it wings. But having a single defeat to a team with blacks wouldn't sway many true racists even if Bryant hadn't have recruited Mitchell and Jackson well before that game with USC. A racist would likely just view the loss as an outlier (like they did with Penn State in 1959) and dismiss it out-of-hand. Bryant was pragmatic enough to know that and proceeded with his plans to add blacks to the roster as early as 1967. It's not like Bama had never played (and lost to and beaten) teams with blacks on the roster.

And he knew the majority of the university, its graduates, faculty, and governor of the state of Alabama (Brewer) supported him- so the racist sidewalk fan living in Sixtoe, Alabama could either support it or move along because the times, they were a-changing. The late 1960's and early 1970's at UA were a time of great growth. Besides Bryant signing blacks, and having black students and graduates, there were blacks on the homecoming court in 1969, a black homecoming queen in '73, black faculty and black grad students in the mid and late 1960's. The thought that Sam Cunningham in 1970 brought about that change is just a fairy tale and it does a disservice to the people who fought hard for that change well before the USC game.

But the Sam the Bam story is twice-told and beloved, so it will stick around. And one must never let facts get in the way of a good story. I just hate it for Charlie Jenerette playing for Penn State in 1959.

Here's a different take: http://espn.go.com/page2/s/halberstam/021220.html

We know, as a football man, the Bear was a great success, a winner, tough, hard on himself and on his players, and we are assured by the movie that the end was worth the means. But we are all judged in this life on more than that, and it is here on something that seemed ancillary at first, the issue of race, that Bryant's life story is far more interesting and complicated, and the rankings of the time, No. 1 in the country, on his way to yet another bowl game, mean so little.

The great test of him as a man was not whether he gave or did not give water to his players that first summer. The great test of him was how he handled the subject of race as Alabama's football coach -- as the South's signature coach on a subject of great importance, whether or not to go after black players despite regional prejudice -- during a terrible time, when the entire nation, but most importantly the deep South, was being torn apart on the issues of race, prejudice and traditional culture. I happened to be working as a reporter in the South in those years, and I remember what he did not do, as well as what he did do. The Supreme Court in 1954 had mandated integration, but the deep South states, most especially Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia were complete in their resistance to change. And Bear Bryant had arrived in Alabama, his old school, in 1958, in time to be there through much of the most bitter and painful part of that struggle.

In Alabama, lest we forget, those were the George Corley Wallace years -- his mantra was segregation yesterday, segregation today, segregation forever. And the Bear was coaching at the University of Alabama in those years. More, he was an icon in the state at the time. And he was a formidable football coach and football coaches are supposed to judge players on talent and character, and not on anything else, not on any exterior prejudices. And he was a smart enough man to know that all kinds of great football players from Alabama, some of whom just happened to be black and were not able to play for him because of the prevailing prejudice, in many cases young men who were on their way to the pros, and he knew as well that he had the law of the nation on his side now if he wanted to play them, and that only local prejudice kept him from recruiting them, and most important of all, he was the one man in all of Alabama who could go ahead and recruit them, and stand up to George Wallace, and bring the culture along with him.

And for 13 years, when he could have made a great difference, he did very little and did not really dissent from the biases of the region. Yes, he let 'Bama play an integrated Penn State team in the Liberty Bowl in 1959. But that was good for him and his players and changed very little. In truth, he denied native sons of Alabama, great players, players better than he was when he was their age, their rightful place on the state university team. It did not take a genius at that time to know something was wrong with this picture, and to know that his failure to stand apart from the worst of the region's culture diminished him as a man on something profoundly important.

We know that he knew better, that he knew that what he was going along with was wrong, and that in the end he was placing a severe ceiling on the quality of his teams, which soon would not be able to compete with the best teams in the nation. We know that in 1970, he arranged a game with Southern Cal, and that Sam (Bam) Cunningham scored two touchdowns in the first half as USC destroyed Alabama 42-21, thus changing the course of deep South football because the Alabama program was integrated the next year. And all the good old boys could later laugh and say that old Sam Cunningham did more to integrate Alabama in 30 minutes than Martin Luther King did in 16 years.

But the Bear was very late to the dance, especially because people are always talking about football coaches as leaders. In this case, he did not lead very well. We know that he was a divided man on this, and we know that he was slow, much too slow to act, and so here we have a real test of a man in conflict with himself, and of the complexity that takes us inside even the honored and most successful of men. This is subject matter for a very good movie. If I'm grading Bear Bryant -- and remember, I was working in the South during some of those terrible painful years -- I grade him out with a C+ on this one. At best a B-.

And it's the one test that really matters, the one historians are going to remember. There's a line early in the film in which Bryant, meeting with his players for the first time, tells them he doesn't care who their daddies were. But the system did care who their daddies were, and the system cared that their daddies were white. So it leaves us once again with a sense that traditional definitions of the words "strong" and "tough" are often wrong, that Bear Bryant was self evidently very tough, but I am not so sure how strong a man he was. It's a different kind of strength, of course, the strength to take risks and be different from the conventional mores, when those mores are self-evidently wrong; it's the willingness to stand up for an idea that is seemingly very far from the football field.

But, ultimately, he did not take on George Wallace when he should have ... at least, not back when it really mattered.

[AlabamAlum]

I think Bryant would agree that he should have acted sooner. But the rest of the article is just wrong.

The thing is, Bryant came to Bama (to coach) in 1958. He didn't really have true "power" until the late 60's...at least until after 1966, and he wasn't "immortal" until the late 70's. He started recruiting blacks in 1967, and allowed black walk-ons then. He signed his first two black players in December of 1969 and March of 1970.

No, if he had tried that in 1963 or whatever, he would have simply been "let go". George Wallace would have seen to it. Albert Brewer becoming Governor and Bryant going undefeated in 1966 changed the dynamic.

But, yeah...BAD BEAR!

[hedge]

"so the racist sidewalk fan living in Sixtoe, Alabama could either support it or move along"

Come on, now. It wouldn't be Alabama football without Phyllis from Mulga...