The 1927 Tournament of Roses Program

Graham McNamee & the Inaugural Rose Bowl Radio Broadcast

Graham McNamee broadcasting
the 1924 World Series.

McNamee rose to national prominence with the spread of sports radio broadcasts in the 1920s. He is credited as the first "color commentator" and his dramatic depictions of the action electrified his broadcasts.
 
The Radio Corporation of America experienced a boom in sales during the 1920s fueled mostly by the availability of free over-the-air sales. By 1924, more than 2.5 million units had been sold to customers across the United States and as many as twice that were in use by 1927.

Initially, live radio accounts of sporting events were simple descriptions of the action by newspaper writers. For listeners further afield, they were forced to make do with local radio announcers reading telegraph and phone reports of the action.

When McNamee was hired by WEAF in New York in 1923, that changed completely. Despite his relative ignorance of the games he called, his vivid accounts of the action fueled by his apparent enthusiasm revolutionized sports broadcasts.

In November of 1926, RCA formed the National Broadcasting Corporation and began presenting music and comedy shows on a network of 25 stations across the United States. The fledgling network - already known by the moniker NBC - immediately snapped up exclusive broadcast rights from the Tournament of Roses.

So when Alabama headed to Pasadena to face the Stanford Indians in the Crimson Tide's second Rose Bowl, the network  chose to make the game the first coast-to-coast network broadcast. McNamee was tapped to call the game and launched a new era in popularity for the inter-sectional contest. NBC was so pleased with the response they agreed to purchase broadcast rights to the game for another seven years.

In 1984, McNamee was part of the inaugural class inducted into the American Sportscasters Association's Hall of Fame.

Alabama's Live Elephant Mascots

Up until the 1950s, Alabama would sometimes parade a pair of live elephant mascots around Tuscaloosa (and even on the field of Denny Stadium) on gameday such as this pair in the Quad in1945. The practice was suspended when caring for the animals became too expensive.

John Heisman's Bulletin Board Material

In 1922, Alabama head coach Xen Scott took his team on a trip north to Philadelphia to play the University of Pennsylvania on historic Franklin Field.

Heisman at Penn

The coach of the Quakers that season was none other than John Heisman who had landed at Penn after a divorce settlement forced him to leave Georgia Tech (the couple agreed to not live in the same city and his former wife chose to stay in Atlanta).

Penn was viewed as a power that season after trouncing Navy and the Quakers were undefeated heading into the Nov. 4 contest with the Crimson Tide. Heisman went so far as to tell a local newspaper that he didn't want to embarrass Alabama so he planned to pull his starters after "a 25 or 30 point lead."

That quip, according to Bernie Perry, the Crimson Tide's manager that year,  prompted a mad scramble by the Alabama staff.

"[Athletic Director Charles] Bernier and I bought up all the available papers and he saw that every boy had a copy," he told the Birmingham Post-Herald in a 1959 story about the game.

The Crimson Tide beat the Quakers 9-7.

The 1931 Tournament of Roses Parade

A silent home movie of the 1931 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California. via The Legend of Pancho Barnes.

The 1935 Rose Bowl Champions

Alabama's 29-13 victory over Stanford on Jan. 1, 1935 brought out large
crowds to greet the team when they returned from the West Coast.

William Bradford Huie's "How To Keep Football Stars in College"

On Jan. 4, 1941 William Bradford Huie's first story in a major magazine was published and it immediately set off a firestorm of criticism. The University of Alabama graduate's piece in Collier's: The National Weekly magazine, "How to Keep Football Stars in College," accused the Crimson Tide football program of a litany of abuses.

Using a lively and colorful manner that became his hallmark, Huie alleged Alabama engaged in a regular practice of paying players,  used local high schools to process ineligible players from out-of-state and a relentless purging of players who were unable to perform on the football field. Huie even claimed to have been hired by the school as a tutor charged with keeping academically inept athletes qualified scholastically so they could play.

"I guess I'm trying to kid myself into believing there is more good than bad in the collegiate football system," he wrote.

A university faculty committee issued an exhaustive report a month later finding all the accusations in the article baseless. Three months later, Collier's retracted the story and offered apology to the school for publishing it:

Huie would go onto a long and distinguished career as a muckraking journalist, screenwriter and author, including numerous groundbreaking works on the civil rights movement. He was inducted into the University of Alabama's College of Communication and Information Sciences Hall of Fame in 1998.