1926 Alabama Crimson Tide football team

The 1926 Alabama Crimson Tide football team (variously "Alabama", "UA" or "Bama") represented the University of Alabama in the 1926 college football season. It was the Crimson Tide's 33rd overall and 5th season as a member of the Southern Conference (SoCon). The team was led by head coach Wallace Wade, in his fourth year, and played their home games at Denny Field in Tuscaloosa, at Rickwood Field in Birmingham and at the Cramton Bowl in Montgomery, Alabama. They finished the season with a record of nine wins, zero losses and one tie (9–0–1 overall, 8–0 in the SoCon), as Southern Conference champions and as national champions after they tied Stanford in the Rose Bowl.

Game notes
Hubert, Brown, Bill Buckler, and other stars from the 1925 team were gone, but Alabama still went 9-0, in almost as dominating a fashion as it had the year before. Against Mississippi State, Alabama intercepted seven passes. The Tide held Georgia Tech to two first downs in a 21–0 victory. Only one game was close. Against Sewanee, Alabama had multiple scoring chances but could not convert. Once Bama was stopped at the Sewanee 9, and in the fourth quarter Alabama was stopped at the Sewanee 1. Sewanee did not move the ball as much as Alabama did but reached the Alabama 6 in the second quarter before a 15-yard penalty threw them back. The game almost ended in a scoreless tie, but late in the fourth Alabama blocked a Sewanee punt which rolled out the back of the end zone for a safety and a 2–0 Tide victory.

Alabama's win over Sewanee was the last close game in a series that dated all the way back to 1893, was dominated by Sewanee early (9–1–1 Tiger advantage between 1893 and 1915), and was one of the Tide's biggest rivalries. Sewanee was dominant in the South in the early days of college football, but in the 1920s the Tigers were left behind by the growing football powers of the Southern Conference. The Alabama-Sewanee series continued as a series of blowouts periodically through 1938; Sewanee now competes in Division III of the NCAA.

Again the season was extended as Alabama received another invitation to play in the Rose Bowl. The 1927 Rose Bowl was the first sporting event to ever be nationally broadcast on radio. Alabama's opponent was the Stanford Cardinal, also 9–0 and coached by football legend Pop Warner. Stanford mounted a 63-yard drive in the first quarter to take a 7–0 lead. Stanford dominated play for much of the rest of the game, outgaining Alabama 305 yards to 98, but could not score again. Late in the fourth Bama got the big play it needed: Clarke Pearce blocked a punt by Frankie Wilton of Stanford, setting up the Tide at the Cardinal 14. Five plays later, with only seconds remaining, Alabama punched it in from the 1 to make the score 7–6. The two-point conversion would not become a rule in college football for another 32 years, so Alabama lined up for the game-tying extra point. As the teams came to the line, Emile Barnes of Alabama shouted "Signals off!". Stanford took that to mean that Alabama was resetting and relaxed. Instead, Alabama promptly snapped and kicked the extra point to tie the game. Stanford ran only two plays before time expired and the game ended a 7–7 tie.

The NCAA retroactively named Alabama and Stanford co-national champions for 1926 due to each being chosen by several of the ranking authorities. It was a second consecutive national championship for Wallace Wade and the Crimson Tide. The tie with Stanford snapped a 20-game winning streak that remains the second-longest in school history, behind two 28-game winning streaks from 1978 to 1980 and another from 1991 to 1993.

Schedule

 * Source: Rolltide.com: 1925 Alabama football schedule

Coaching staff
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