Keith Dunnavant > Quotes

“Did you know Granddaddy was a famous quarterback with the Green Bay Packers?” she said breathlessly. “My friends at school told me he won these things called Super Bowls and championships…” She didn’t”
― Keith Dunnavant, Bart Starr: America's Quarterback and the Rise of the National Football League

“The greatest glory is being knocked to your knees and then rising again. Lombardi repeated this phrase often, until it rang in the head of every single Packer, like a ubiquitous radio jingle.”
― Keith Dunnavant, Bart Starr: America's Quarterback and the Rise of the National Football League

“At the urging of the tennis coach, Bryant, Alabama’s athletic director, helped push a rule change through the conference to allow women to compete on men’s teams in noncontact sports. Several coaches and players at rival schools resisted, some to the point of forfeiting matches to avoid facing a woman on the court. “Some people just weren’t ready for women athletes in those days,” said Allison, who played for the Crimson Tide a decade before Title IX led to the creation of broad-based women’s sports programs across the country.”
― Keith Dunnavant, The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize

“Some people believe Alabama has little to be proud of, only because they refuse to see.”
― Keith Dunnavant, The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize

“John Mitchell, the first African American to start for the Crimson Tide, offered a powerful statement about the future of Alabama football by making the tackle on the opening kickoff. As a senior in 1972, Mitchell was recognized as Alabama’s first All-American with a black face.”
― Keith Dunnavant, The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize

“In practice, whenever Stabler rolled down the line on the option and tossed some wild pitch at precisely the right time, the Bear often clicked on his bullhorn and yelled down from the tower: “Stabler, you’re luckier than a shit-house rat!” The big man also liked to remind him, in front of the team, “I’ve never trusted left-handed crap shooters or left-handed quarterbacks.”
― Keith Dunnavant, The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize

“Early in 1969, Bryant gave C. M. Newton, his new head basketball coach, the go-ahead to sign Wendell Hudson, who became the school’s first African-American scholarship athlete in any sport.”
― Keith Dunnavant, The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize

“Becoming a champion is about taking the field and proving something. At the core, it is the very American act of earning something that cannot be bestowed. Becoming a champion is not and will never be about cowering in fear and taking the path of least resistance.”
― Keith Dunnavant, The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize

“What he tried to explain to his players was that being humbled—having some sort of setback—was inevitable in life, but that the real measure of a man was how he reacted to being knocked down. Would he wallow on the ground feeling sorry for himself? Accepting his ultimate defeat? Or would he climb off the turf and go back to work, infused with a renewed determination to transcend the setback?”
― Keith Dunnavant, Bart Starr: America's Quarterback and the Rise of the National Football League

“The whole atmosphere was team, team, team,” Bratkowski said, “and that was really refreshing.”
― Keith Dunnavant, Bart Starr: America's Quarterback and the Rise of the National Football League

“By 1930, despite its important place in a Bible Belt culture dominated by Protestant Christianity, a large percentage of the University of Alabama’s student body was Jewish, including hundreds of young people attracted from the northeast by the gathering fame of the Crimson Tide.”
― Keith Dunnavant, The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize

“Women’s intercollegiate athletics were nonexistent in the Southeastern Conference in those days, and when Alabama signed Alexander City tennis phenom Roberta Allison to play on the men’s team in 1962, no one fully appreciated the significance of the event. “I didn’t go into it wanting to be a pioneer,” said Allison, the first female to earn an athletic scholarship to Alabama. “I just wanted to play tennis.”
― Keith Dunnavant, The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize

“In 1966, when the median household income was $7,254 and only 34 percent of women worked outside the home, you could buy a three-bedroom house in Alabama for $10,000, a gallon of regular gas for 32 cents, a bottle of Coca-Cola for a nickel, and a pack of cigarettes for 30 cents. Cigarette advertising still could be seen all over network television. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 13 decision in Miranda v. Arizona, law enforcement officers were suddenly required to advise accused criminals of their Constitutional rights.”
― Keith Dunnavant, The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize

“Once considered a liberal on matters of race, Wallace lost his first gubernatorial bid in 1958 to John Patterson, who struck a much harder line on the still-building civil rights movement. In the aftermath of the bitter defeat, he remarked, “I’ll never be out-niggered again.” And he was not. Like some tragic Shakespearean figure, Wallace abandoned his principles and became a prisoner of his ambition, which led him down a dark path. Sweeping into office in 1962, he vowed to defend segregation at all costs, which led directly to the stand in the schoolhouse door. Painting himself as a defender of the Southern way of life against the intrusion of the federal government, “outside agitators,” and the elites he liked to call “pointy-headed intellectuals,” the onetime boxer, onetime circuit court judge became a hero to a great many people in Alabama and throughout the South. In fact, Wallace was well on his way to striking a chord with disaffected voters all across the country. Appealing to the fear of many white voters who saw forced integration, African-American suffrage, and other aspects of the civil rights movement as a threat, Wallace proved to be little more than an irritant against the historic struggle led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. During his four-year term, virtually every remaining aspect of segregation was destroyed or mortally wounded and King emerged as the international embodiment of nonviolent resistance to an unjust system, winning the Nobel Peace Price in 1964. Two years later, it was only a matter of time before the last vestiges of state-sponsored racism were swept away for good.”
― Keith Dunnavant, The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize

“Nobody had to say anything,” recalled halfback Donny Anderson, “because nine years of Vince Lombardi was in the huddle with”
― Keith Dunnavant, Bart Starr: America's Quarterback and the Rise of the National Football League