Huey Long's Courtship of Alabama's Frank Thomas

Huey Long chats with officials prior to the
LSU vs Arkansas game in the late 1920s.

In 1934, Alabama rolled to an undefeated regular season and garnered an invite to the Rose Bowl to face Stanford. It marked an apogee for Crimson Tide head coach Frank Thomas who had lead Alabama to a 33-4-1 record in four seasons. He had seen Alabama play in the Pasadena classic the year prior to his arrival in Tuscaloosa and now he was taking the Tide there himself.

On the way to the game Louisiana's powerful Senator, Huey P. Long, allegedly made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

LSU was coached by Biff Jones who had lead the Tigers to a 20-5-6 record over three years and had claimed the Southern Conference Championship his inaugural season. A confrontation between Long - who took a major interest in the team - and the coach outside the locker room at halftime of the final game of the season against Oregon had resulted in his resignation. Long promised he would make a big-time hire and he set his sights on Thomas.

The Alabama coach had been given a five-year contract by UA president George Denny extension following the 1934 season that included "a nice increase" over his previous salary. The move came after Thomas name surfaced as a replacement for Tennessee's Robert Neyland who had been called away by the military for active service in Panama.

The first candidate Long considered was Clark Shaughnessy who had lead Tulane for more than a decade but had just finished his first season at the University of Chicago. When that offer was rebuffed the Kingfish turned his attention to Alabama's Thomas who, as chance would have it was in New Orleans.

When the Crimson Tide train stopped in the Crescent City on the way to California for the bowl game, a secret meeting was arranged between Thomas and Long, according to LSU's Athletic Director at the time, T.P. Heard. Long offered Thomas a $15,000 salary and salaries of $7,500 for two assistants of his choosing. Thomas accepted the offer on a handshake but demanded secrecy given the situation.

"If any hint of this talk gets into the papers," he reportedly told Long. "The deal is off."

Heard accompanied Thomas to Pasadena to keep Long appraised of the situation. Before the train arrived in Los Angeles, the Kingfish had changed his mind. Bernie Moore, an assistant at LSU since the late 20s, was given the job after a recommendation by Vanderbilt's Dan McGugin.

Alabama won the 1935 Rose Bowl and Thomas returned to Tuscaloosa where he coached for another nine seasons before retiring from the profession due to ill health. His final record at The Capstone was 115-24-7. Moore took the Tigers to two SEC Championships in his first two seasons then remained in Baton Rouge until 1947, finishing with a 83-39-6 record.

Alabama's Experiment with the Head Coach In Waiting

Wallace Wade handed off the Alabama head
coaching duties to Frank Thomas in 1930.

Just more than 80 years ago, Alabama tried the head-coach-in-waiting strategy in order to maintain stability in the football program. In the Spring of 1930 head coach Wallace Wade stunned Alabama by accepting the head coaching job at Duke University. Three months later his hand-picked successor, Frank Thomas, agreed to be the Crimson Tide head coach - after the 1930 season.

Wade then lead Alabama to an undefeated season, the 1931 Rose Bowl and a national championship as Thomas waited in the wings. At the conclusion of the season Wade left for Durham, N.C. and Thomas began his fantastically successful 15-year run as the Crimson Tide coach.

More on this story is available at Roll Bama Roll.

The Deal That Dealt Army Wrong

Ernest Newquist, in an letter on behalf of Southern California football fans opposing the deal in 1947 that limited the Rose Bowl Game to members of the Pacific Coast and Big Nine Conferences. Army had been considered to play in the game that season but was replaced by Illinois due to the agreement.

The whole story is on Prolate Spheroid

The East Coast Rose Bowl

Duke Stadium, Jan. 1, 1942

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 disrupted every aspect of life in the United States and the Rose Bowl was certainly no exception. In late November, Duke's undefeated and untied squad  - led by former Alabama coach Wallace Wade - had been tapped to play Oregon State in the New Year's Day contest but with the country's entry into World War II, the fate of the game was in doubt.

The destruction of the Pacific outpost was followed by concerns of a follow-up attack somewhere on the West Coast. The US government prohibited larger gatherings on the Pacific seaboard and, in response, officials at Duke University offered to host the game in Durham, North Carolina.

The capacity of Duke Stadium was expanded almost 60 percent using bleachers on loan from the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State. Despite the cold and rainy weather, more than 55,000 fans packed into the venue to watch the Oregon State Beavers  upset the Blue Devils 20-16.

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.