Customer Reviews

The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize

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I am a member of the 1966 Alabama football team.

I strongly recommend reading this book. The author is to be commended for his accurate account of the factual information presented. For me, the book iterated 40 year old memories of the '66 season in a manner that seemed as though they happened yesterday. Once I started reading the book, I could not put it down.

Keith Dunnavant's research and presentation of the story is complete and impeccable. He brought a ball club from a FOOTNOTE to the SPOTLIGHT!!

Mike Hall

We like to think of sports as being something pure and simple, but of course it isn't. From Hitler determined to show the world the superiority of the Aryan race (and being foiled by Jessee Owens) to the boycotts of the Summer Olympics by the United States in 1980 and by the Soviet Union in 1984, real world politics has intruded into the sports arena.

In this book Mr. Dunnavant writes about the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide coached by Bear Bryant and having arguably the best football team in the country. Despite having an undefeated season, they were not awarded the national championship.

The reason, according to Mr. Dunnavant was that the university got caught up in the integration battles of the time. Alabama had an all-white segregated team. And they were denied the championship. True? Quite possibly. Fair? Depends upon your point of view. You have to ask, if you were an African-American how would you have voted. And I note that in the pictures in the middle of the book there is not one of George Wallace refusing to admit negro (the word at the time) students to the university.

A fascinating book looking at that time in our history through a different set of glasses.

This book's subtitle is "How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize." The Tide were the defending back-to-back national champions in 1966. They were ranked first in both polls as the season began. They finished the season undefeated and untied - yet managed to end up ranked third behind Notre Dame and Michigan State, who had played each other to a 10-10 tie in the regular season. This book was intended to explore why that took place.

Dunnavant posits two reasons. The first is the most common argument: Notre Dame has been the most popular team in the country since the Jazz Age and routinely places higher in the polls than schools with superior records because they are the darlings of predominantly northern and eastern sportswriters. Irish head coach Ara Parseghian decided to play to preserve the tie against MSU - to sit on the ball with two minutes left to play - rather than fight for the win. His detractors claim this is because he knew they would be treated well by the pollsters in spite of the decision. He was right.

The second argument is that the season occured during the height of the civil rights movement and there was a media bias against the still-segregated Crimson Tide team and against the entire state of Alabama, the bastion of Bull Connor and George Wallace. He believes the team fell from first place simply because of politics even before Parseghian's Machiavellian move.

Virtually no one who wears Crimson will argue with the first point. Many who were not alive at the time might not have considered the second but it makes sense given the climate of 1966. All that could have been covered in a book half this size.

But the 'The Missing Ring' also seeks to illustrate why the Alabama team deserved the title, not just why the other two schools didn't. It is filled with wonderful details about the players and coaches who comprised one of the best teams in college football history and the system Paul Bryant used to create it. Each chapter has a theme and spotlights players and games from the 1966 season that exemplify it. Dunnavant does a great job of setting the atmosphere of the times both on campus and in the state of Alabama and paints colorful portraits of many young men who have become mere names in the record books but are still alive to share anecdotes and attitudes.

My only misgivings about this book are Dunnavant's tendency to repeat himself, often verbatim (I lost count of how many times he used the phrase "Bryant used this tactic to great effect in molding a team into champions" - often on facing pages), his often clumsy attempts at foreshadowing, and his unabashed boosterism. I'm aware he's an alum (although that fact is mentioned nowhere in the book or on it's dustjacket) but if he is going to build an effective case that Alabama was robbed of a threepeat he must try to at least feign objectivity. Dunnavant shows no such restraint when he arrives at the conclusion of the book. As he recounts Ara Parseghian's admittedly gutless decision to sit on the ball and trust his team's fortune to the pollsters' sycophantic relationship with Notre Dame, Dunnavant bursts into outright apoplexy, calling Parseghian everything but an Armenian-American football coach. He sounds more like a blogger than a journalist.

There were plenty of people to quote if he wanted to include the (accurate) labels gutless, cynical, cowardly, and shameful. Instead, he uses them himself. I kept wanting to reach through the book and grab Keith by the collar: "Don't do it! Hold off! Show some class. Let the facts speak for themselves. It'll just look like sour grapes if you go this route." But alas, the deed was done. It's like he had driven the ball the length of the field and into the edzone and then ruined it all with a penalty in the final seconds that negated the winning touchdown.

This was the only blemish on an otherwise fascinating book on Crimson Tide football history. I still recommend it, however, for the excellent player profiles.

Does a #3 ranked football team from 40 years ago deserve an entire book devoted to it? Absolutely! Any college football fan who is old enough to remember the 1966 season knows the story. Paul Bear Bryant's Crimson Tide of Alabama had won National Championships in 1961, 1964, and 1965. The Tide entered the 1966 season with the chance to become the first college football team to win three consecutive National Championships. This was not to be, however. By late October Notre Dame was ranked #1 and Michigan State #2. The two teams played to a 10-10 tie on November 19, 1966, in what was billed as the game of the century. The tie delighted Alabama fans, but amazingly neither team dropped in the polls. Notre Dame and Michigan State finished their seasons with no loses and one tie. Meanwhile, Alabama, led by quarterback Kenny Stabler and a defense that was almost impossible to score upon, completed a perfect season and defeated a good Nebraska team 34-7 in the Sugar Bowl. In the end Alabama's perfect record (the only perfect record that year) was not good enough. Alabama placed third in the final polls.

The Missing Ring is the story of the 1966 season, the year that haunts Alabama fans to this day. The book is not a diatribe about not winning a championship. Author Keith Dunnavant tells us how Coach Bryant molded a group of young men into one of the most dominant college football teams of all time. Along the way Dunnavant exposes some truths that will cause the politically correct crowd to squirm uncomfortably in their faux-leather recliners. Alabama was not awarded the National Championship for a variety of reasons, none of which had anything to do with football.

We will never know if Notre Dame and Michigan State were better teams than Alabama. It doesn't matter, there was only one undefeated and untied team in the nation in 1966. Alabama was the defending National Champion, started the season #1, and never faltered. Since the origins of preseason polling, no team has ever started #1, finished the season undefeated, and not been named the National Champion, except Alabama in 1966. After reading The Missing Ring you still won't know which team was best, but you will know which team deserved the 1966 National Championship. Dunnavant's well-researched and excellent book will appeal to all serious fans of college football, not just Alabama fans.

I enjoyed the first half of the book, the story of the hard work, dedication, and discipline of the young men that made up the 1966 Alabama football team. By the second half of the book, however, I couldn't wait for it to end. The problem was not that my opinion of the protagonists had changed. What had changed was that I couldn't put up with Keith Dunnavant's never ceasing editoral comments of Alabama brilliance or non-Alabama ignorance. This takes hero-worship of Bear Bryant and his Alabama players to a level that will alienate anyone that doesn't bleed crimson. And that's too bad because this story deserves being told to a wider audience. The sacrifices and the hard work of the players reveal the heart of a champion. But, Dunnavant's over the top cheerleading turned a 5 star story into a 3 star read.

Alabama was snubbed in 1966 for one simple reason: it was,by preference, a segregated football team. The emerging leftist politics of the time could not tolerate it. It mattered not who was the best team, who had the best record, who played the best schedule, or who had won the most games, any of which criteria would have made the Tide no. 1, it only mattered that the fractious state of Alabama was still insisting on a segregated football team and a largely segregated society. The Tide had eleven wins (to ND's and MSU's eight apiece); the ONLY perfect record in the nation; the best QB in the country (Ken Stabler, compared to Hanratty of ND or Jimmy Raye of MSU); a blowout 35 to 6 bowl victory over a fine Nebraska team (neither ND or MSU even played in a bowl that year); and, of course, the best coach in America. But the polls said they could not be no. 1 because they had no black players. One could argue (meekly) that even this overwhelming preponderance of evidence cannot actually prove that Bama was the best team, but lacking a national playoff to decide it, we can only go on the evidence of who DESERVED it, and on that issue there can be no room for doubt. The true national champion that year, unfortunately, was political correctness.

And if Bama and ND had actully pklayed? My bet is on the Tide, by two or three touchdowns, This was the University of Alabama's greatest team ever.

As a footnote, and in fairness, Alabama didn't deserve the national championship of 1964; Texas beat Bama in the Orange Bowl that year, and Arkansas, the only team to beat Texas, beat Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl, thereby becoming the only team in '64 to complete a perfect season.

Having worked as a sports writer for some 30 years and a graduate of The University of Alabama I enjoy reading books about Coach Bryant and his great teams. However, few of these books live up to what I experienced as a student intern on Coach Bryant's staff. This book is truly the exception. Keith Dunnavant has produced a WINNER !!

Not only does this book take you into the locker room and the huddle from the off season workouts to the practice field and on the field for many thrilling victories but it also takes you above the action where a much larger view teaches you about the social conditions and how they denied a championship team their just rewards.

I grew up in a Catholic family in the North and was steeped in the Notre Dame mystique. I watched every play of the epic 1966 Michigan State - Notre Dame battle. I left that game with a sad and empty feeling. Why would a great University play for a tie ?

That question plagued me until I became a student at The University of Alabama in 1969 and dug behind the scenes to get the answer. When it was revealed it was a shocker.

This great book will help you understand why also. It's much more than a book about football. It transcends the playing field and reveals the true story of how a team and a region were distained. Not because they didn't deserve a title but because politics denied a group of young men and their coaches something they toiled for, sweated for and bled for.

Truly a Winner, Dunnavant has delivered his best work to date. Anyone who is a football fan, a fan of politics or a student of social justice must read this book.

Dunnavant is a good historian, but he isn't a good writer. His prose is plodding and pedestrian at best, and antagonistic at worst. He's clearly outraged by the treatment Alabama received, but the book might be better served by an author who editorialized slightly less. Better book on Bryant: "The Last Coach," by Allen Barra.

I am not a sports fan. This book is more a microcosm of southern culture than a discussion of 1966 Alabama football. It profiles the dedication of the young men involved, the tragedy of Jim Crow, and the rank discrimination against southerners that has existed for 150 years. This is a very enjoyable book...a real page turner.

This book is an excellent read. Keith Dunnavant has not only written a sports book about the 1966 undefeated and untied University of Alabama football team, he has written a thought provoking book that answers for many why a two time defending NCAA champion was denied a third title.

In this book you will get to know the players and the sacrifices they made for the greatest coach in collegiate history. Some of you will hear for the first time the phrase "breaking your plate" which is intricately woven into the book in a way that will touch your heart and will make you want to know more about these special young men that were on this team.

Why was Alabama denied the championship in 1966 after having won the title in 1964 and 1965 and going undefeated and untied in 1966? Did politics play a role? Did the image the state of Alabama had in the eyes of the country have an influence in the voting for the eventual champion? All good questions and this book will make you ponder these and many more.

Buy this book you will not regret it. You will not be able to put it down!