With the college football season coming up, I decided to re-watch an eight-part docuseries called Saturdays in the South. It’s directed by Fritz Mitchell, produced by John Dahl and narrated by Flip Pallot. This series sets up the impossible task of telling the 150 years of college football and how the SEC has impacted the sport.
Part One:
Part 1 talks about how football helped the South regain its pride again after the Civil War. From the first game in 1892 between Georgia and Auburn to the 1925 National Championship team at Alabama, Southerners have gravitated to this sport invented by their former enemies in the North…Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
Part Two:
Part 2 describes how football got the South through the Depression and World War II. From another Alabama Championship team in 1931 to players who played during and after the war. The SEC Conference was founded in 1933. Until then, all of the teams used to be in the larger Southern Conference. Teams like LSU in the 1950s were starting to take stride as well, but dark times were ahead, and again, football would be a guiding light.
Civil War:
In this episode they talked about the Civil Rights Movement. For certain states, the violence was worse than others. In Alabama, there were negative figures like George Wallace and Bull Connor, yet there was also, without question, the most powerful coach in the country Paul “Bear” Bryant. Mississippi, for example, there were negative people like Ross Barnett who denied African American James Meredith access to the University of Mississippi while the state also had coaches like John Vaught who were leading the Rebels to the promise land of a National Championship. It showed that then, and in the future, states like Alabama and Mississippi had football coaches who were more powerful than politicians.
Conference Championships:
The next episode highlights integration throughout the conference programs. It was tough to convince some teams like Alabama, but if teams lose enough, people will listen. When Alabama lost to USC thanks to the efforts of African American running back Sam “Bam” Cunningham, those in charge decided to make a change. Coach Bryant had been wanting to recruit African American players since his time in Kentucky in the early 1950s, but every time, the administration told him the public was not ready. But now, they were ready to listen.
Only one year after the USC game, linebacker Wilbur Jackson became the first African American to sign at the University of Alabama. Then Eastern Arizona transfer defensive end John Mitchell became the first African American player to start at the University of Alabama. The Tide ended up winning three more Championships bringing Coach Bryant’s total championships to six, a record that stood for decades.
The Bear:
In the 5th episode, I learned about a new era in the 1980’s. The Bear was getting old and new superstars like Auburn’s Bo Jackson and Georgia’s Herschel Walker were making it hard to keep up. The Bear ended up retiring in 1983, winning his final game at the Liberty Bowl in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, against Illinois. He died a few weeks later. A lot of people attended the funeral and tried to catch a glimpse of the hearse along the highway from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham where he was buried.
Bear Bryant coached Alabama from 1958 to 1983 and his legacy is still around. I still see people wearing houndstooth hats everywhere in Tuscaloosa and even in Memphis. Walker ended up leading Georgia to a National Championship in 1980. During the championship parade, a scene that stood out to me was when a man was trying to get to Walker. Security would not let him, but Walker said to let him pass. He told Walker he used to be one of the biggest Klansman in the state of Georgia, but he changed his point of view because Georgia won the Championship. He couldn’t thank him enough…Go Bulldogs! That is the power of sports in my opinion.
Times Were Changing:
In the next episode, I learned about the 1990s and how the South was changing. Companies were setting up locations and sometimes relocating there because of the lower business taxes. Even though that was changing, there was another coming to the SEC and to the rest of college football. In 1992, SEC Commissioner, Roy F. Kramer, decided he would add an extra game to the schedule, the SEC Championship game.
Many people were against. Alabama had a chance to go the National Championship game, but if they lost this game against Florida at Legion Field in Birmingham, they probably would be out of the picture. Fortunately, Alabama won and went on to win the National Championship. Two years later, the commissioner moved the game from Birmingham to Atlanta which changed college football forever. It used to be whomever had the best record would win the conference and be declared conference champions, but now every conference from the Big 10 to the Sun Belt had a conference championship game.
There was also a colorful coach at Florida named Steve Spurrier. It was a common sight to see him wearing his visor and screaming on the sideline. He and quarterback Danny Wuerffel led Florida to its first National Championship in 1996. The 90s also saw the addition of two more schools to the conference: Arkansas and South Carolina. As the 90s closed and a new millennium began, the SEC was changing once again.
9/11: Never Forget:
The episode about the 2000s began with images of 9/11 and detailed how football healed the South and much of America. On one Thursday night after the attacks, South Carolina played at Mississippi State marking the first college game played after 9/11. Even though Mississippi State lost the game, I don’t think fans cared. They just wanted a return to normalcy.
In 2003, a legend and a role model of mine was born. Even though he’d been coaching for decades, when Nick Saban arrived at LSU and helped the Tigers win a championship, he became immortalized. In 2007, Saban returned to college coaching after a failed attempt in the NFL. He has gone on to win 7 national championships, one at LSU and the rest at Alabama.
Unexpected Championship:
The 8th and final episode highlights Auburn winning a championship in 2010, its first since 1957. It also focused on the adding of two more schools to the conference. Missouri and Texas A&M came to the SEC from the Big 12 in 2012. It also focuses on the Alabama team that healed the Tuscaloosa area after a devastating tornado in 2011 with a national championship against LSU, and again in 2012 against Notre Dame (my favorite championship game). In 2014, the BCS folded and a new format was born – the College Football Playoff. A committee would decide the four best teams in the country and those four teams would play in a semifinal/final format. Alabama has won 3 championships since then, my favorite being the team that beat Georgia in 2018 with the infamous 2nd and 26 touchdown pass from Tua Tagovailoa to Devonta Smith. (Eat your hearts out, Georgia fans). The documentary series concluded with LSU coach Ed Orgeron and quarterback Joe Burrow going to the national championship in the 150th anniversary of college football.
In Conclusion:
This docu-series covered how college football healed the South. Through good times and bad, there is always football. Whether a loved one is suffering or you’re suffering yourself, there is still a football season to look forward to. As Rick Bragg, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer at the New York Times said, “Some people think football is like religion down here…. He also said “I don’t think that is true however it is pretty close”.
You can watch the series on the SEC ESPN network or stream it on Hulu and ESPN+. I would highly recommend it.