If you’re still laughing after reading that headline, you should stop.
It’s a legitimate question and with the way things have gone in recent years, especially this college football season, the answer is not a slam dunk.
Consider the specifics, then and now.
Go back to 1972, that’s 50 football seasons ago. Coach Paul Bryant had returned to his alma mater 15 years earlier. He had won national championships, but none in the past seven seasons.
Four years earlier (1969), his team lost five games and finished eighth in the 10-team Southeastern Conference. In three of the losses, Bama surrendered 41 points to Tennessee, 47 points to Colorado and 49 points to Auburn. The Crimson Tide lost to Vanderbilt and barely beat Virginia Tech (known then as VPI, years before it was considered powerful).
Three years before (1970), Alabama also lost five games, giving up 42 points to Southern Cal, 48 points to Ole Miss, and were shut out by Tennessee. It lost to Auburn again and for the second consecutive season didn’t win its bowl game. It improved to seventh in the SEC standings.
Two years earlier (1971) was a successful season with the Crimson Tide winning the SEC title and earning the chance to face Nebraska for the mythical national championship. Bama was massacred, 38-6.
Now it’s 1972, and again Alabama is in position to play for the national title. But in the season’s biggest game against No. 9 Auburn, the Tide blows a 16-point fourth quarter lead, and loses to the Tigers for the third time in the past four seasons. Then, it fails to win a bowl game for the fourth consecutive time.
That’s what happened back then.
Now, jump to the 2021 season and think about how things have changed in those five decades.
Salaries and contract incentives have gone through the roof. Athletic budgets have exploded. Many new facilities seem more like the Taj Mahal than like a place to watch ball games.
The perspective of subsequent generations of fans has changed. It’s a “win big and do it now” mindset. Gigantic salaries and budgets have contributed to that. So have the College Football Playoffs, especially with its unfair, unwise four-team limit for championship playoff selection. Everybody wants to be in the Final Four and if you don’t make it, something must be wrong. There needs to be a change.
Is that a realistic observation? Consider these …
Ed Orgeron, only two seasons removed from an undefeated LSU national championship with a team thought by many to be the best ever in the SEC, was fired midseason. Could there ever be a personality and background better suited for each other than Orgeron and LSU?
Dan Mullen, only one season removed from an SEC Eastern Division championship for Florida and a near victory in the SEC Championship Game, was fired with one game left in the season. His 2021 team had six losses, including blowout defeats by Georgia and South Carolina.
Similar situations have happened around the country, including other major programs.
Clay Helton was fired at Southern Cal early in the season, his sixth as Trojan head coach. During those seasons, his teams won two-thirds of their games, won a Pac-12 championship and three Pac-12 South Division titles, including last season (2020).
Gary Patterson, in his 22nd season at TCU, was fired during the season after suffering five losses. He was the second longest tenured head coach in FBS football, behind only Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz. He had won Big 12 and national Coach of the Year honors as Horned Frogs’ head coach.
Matt Wells was fired at Texas Tech despite having a winning record for the season, already with five victories. Other teams that released their head coach this season include Virginia Tech, Washington, Washington State and others. More head coaches were fired before November this year than in the past four seasons combined.
Major programs have become quicker to pull the head-coaching trigger over the past couple of decades.
Tennessee has had eight different head coaches since 2008. Texas had had four head coaches since 2013. Florida State has had four since 2017. Arkansas has had seven since 2011; Ole Miss has had six since 2004; and from 1997 to 2007 Alabama had five.
It’s true that not all firings this season were solely due to won-loss records. There have been other reasons – rules violations, indiscretions, family concerns, off-field player situations. But those factors are also pertinent when considering back then … versus now.
Fifty years ago, we didn’t have e-mail, Instagram, Twitter, cell phones (with cameras). It wasn’t a digital world. No social media. People didn’t clamor for instant news and instant gratification. If something happened, it couldn’t be known and seen in a matter of minutes around the world … literally.
Personal weaknesses, poor decisions, legal issues, addictions, everything said and done – Those things didn’t become common knowledge about every coach and every player. They weren’t discussed every day at every water cooler and sports bar.
So, what about the original question?
If the same criteria, the same impatience, the same technology, the same financial factors, the same demands were in place five decades ago, would Coach Bryant have survived, especially after the 1969 and 1970 seasons, the 1971 and 1972 end-of-season collapses, and the string of consecutive bowl losses?
The same question could be asked about Coach Jordan at Auburn, Coach Dodd at Georgia Tech, Coach Vaught at Ole Miss and other legendary coaches at traditional football power programs in the South and around the country. They all had mediocre seasons. They all had troubled players. They all had significant losses.
What if they also had to meet the expectations brought on by gigantic salaries and “what have you done for me lately” mindsets? What if technology was what it is today, so that every move in life was available to the world?
How would it have been … if then, was now?
I’m not sure about the answer to that question, but for what it’s worth, I liked things a whole lot better back then.
