Published: September 27, 2008 02:47 am            

Crimson Tide book author guest speaker at luncheon

By Trent Moore

Staff Writer

University of Alabama football lore was the topic of choice at this month’s Cullman Chamber of Commerce fourth Friday luncheon, with sports author Keith Dunnavant as the keynote speaker.

Dunnavant is the author of the recently released “The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize.”

He has also penned the college football themed works “Coach: The Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant,” and “The Fifty-Year Seduction: How Television Manipulated College Football, from the Birth of the Modern NCAA to the Creation of the BCS.”

Dunnavant reminisced about how he first began covering Southeastern Conference (SEC) college football, as a young man in Athens, Ala.

“I was 14 years old, too young to get a job, so I rode my 10-speed bike to meet the publisher of this little weekly paper there,” he said. “I told her she’d get more readers with a sports section, and that I was the one to do it. ... Then she just gave me a shot.”

Dunnavant also recounted the first time he met former Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant.

“I had a personal interview in Coach Bear Bryant’s office,” he said. “I have interviewed a lot of important people, but none of them had his presence.”

Dunnavant said he made such an impact on Bryant, that Bryant offered him a scholarship out of high school, and a job in the athletic information department at the university.

“I was 118 pounds soaking wet,” he said. “I must have been the scrawniest kid ever on an athletic scholarship.”

As he grew up, Dunnavant said his ingrained adoration for the University of Alabama led him to eventually write a book about his favorite team, and how he believes they were robbed of a third consecutive national championship in 1966.

“I’ve always been fascinated with that team,” the football enthusiast said.

Though the book is about a football team, Dunnavant said the real story is about the changes in the nation, and in Alabama, that occurred in the 1960s.

“The backdrop is the world of the 1960s,” he said. “There was the civil rights issue ... the Kennedy assassination ... the world was definitely changing.”

The success of the University of Alabama football team at that time, Dunnavant said, gave the region something positive to focus on.

“The success of the Tide at the time was proof that we weren’t defined by the negative media,” he said.

It is because of the way the South was perceived in the 1960s, Dunnavant added, that he believes they were robbed of the 1966 championship.

“Alabama lost its rightful place in history,” he said. “This book isn’t about a 40-year-old grudge, it’s about the greatest injustice in college football. It’s a story about the ring they lost, and the transformation of those men.”

All of Durravant’s works are available at online retailers, such as Amazon.com, and at some bookstores.

        

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