Newlyweds at a 1950 Auburn Football Game

I recently came across the aerial shot below in one of the Auburn University Libraries digital collections. The photo of the Cliff Hare football stadium in 1950 with a game in progress grabbed my attention because my parents were living in Auburn at the time. Mom tells me they were probably at this homecoming game since they attended home football games regularly that fall.

Mom and dad had been married in September 1950 and returned to campus so dad could finish the final semester of his degree. The football team had a discouraging season that year under coach Earl Brown. In fact, Auburn did not score at all in seven games and lost that homecoming game 41-0 to #11 Clemson. The team finished 0-10. Brown was fired and Shug Jordan hired. Mom tells me about the only thing Auburn fans had to cheer about during the games that year were first downs. 

Of course, Auburn University was actually the Alabama Polytechnic Institute or API at this time, but mom said no one called it that. The school was known then and had been for a long time as "Auburn". Founded in 1856 as the East Alabama Male College, the school was renamed Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama in 1872 when it became the state's first land-grant university. 

In 1892 Auburn became the first four-year coeducational school in Alabama. Renamed API in 1899, that name held officially until 1960 when the change to Auburn University was finally made. AU is now one of the few American universities that has land-grant, sea-grant and space-grant research designation.

Today, the football stadium is a bit bigger.

Source: Auburn University Digital Library 

Action during the 1950 homecoming game

Source: Auburn University Digital Library

Mom and dad pose at their wedding cake at the First Methodist Church in Haleyville on September 10, 1950. The town's other claim to fame is the nation's first 911 emergency service that began in February 1968. 

Old Alabama Stuff (8): The "Alabama Antelope" in "Football Thrills"

One of the football greats at the University of Alabama before World War II was Don Hutson. Born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, in 1913, Hutson graduated from Alabama in 1934. Six different organizations named him first-team All-American after his senior year playing receiver, safety and kicker on the football team.

Hutson signed with the Green Bay Packers in 1935 and played eleven seasons of pro football. By the time he retired he held eighteen National Football League records and had created many of the routes used by receivers today. He is considered one of the greatest receivers in NFL history and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963. 

Hutson is featured on four pages of the second issue of Football Thrills, a comic book that appeared in 1952. You can read those pages below. The entire comic can be found at the Comic Book Plus site if you also want a larger size and to read the stories about Bronco Nagurski or Casual Kazmaier.  

This comic book was supposedly edited by "Red" Grange, another football great known as the "Galloping Ghost." Grange played running back at the University of Illinois and for the Chicago Bears. He was a charter member of both the College and Pro football halls of fame. Be sure and read Grange's opening comments on Hutson.

Whatever happened to such great nicknames for football players? 

Football Thrills Issue #2, fall 1952

Don Hutson

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama/UA Bryant Museum

This issue also featured an ad for the exciting "Jim Prentice Electric Football" game!



A Brief History of Pelham High School Football

            Supporters of football at Pelham High School were no doubt disappointed by the team’s 3-7 finish in the 2014 season. Yet that record has an historical connection; the school’s very first team also finished 3-7.

           Pelham High School opened in September 1974 and fielded its first football team two years later. The first game was played at Shelby County on Saturday, August 28. The schedule that year included several teams each from divisions 3A, 2A and 1A. Pelham’s three wins all came against 1A opponents: Maplesville, Thorsby and Verbena. The losses included a 35-6 one to a 1A team, Isabella. Pelham’s other lopsided losses that season were all to 3A teams: Shelby County, Childersburg and B.B. Comer.

            David Bailey was the head coach of that first team, and he coached three more seasons. His 1979 team finished 5-5, thus becoming Pelham High’s first team with a non-losing season. In his one year in 1980, head coach Steve Rivers’ team also went 5-5. Pelham did not have a winning season until a 6-4 campaign in 1986 in Billy Tohill’s fourth season as head coach.

            The school’s most successful coach has been Rick Rhoades from the 1996 through the 2000 seasons. He posted a 41-19 record and playoff appearances each year.

                Details of all Pelham High School football teams and many others around the state can be found on the Alabama High School Football Historical Society web site .