Joe Namath returns this weekend to Tuscaloosa, the place where he first earned national recognition more than 60 years ago.
Namath, Alabama’s starting quarterback from 1962-64, will serve as an honorary captain for Saturday’s showdown with fellow SEC unbeaten Georgia at Bryant-Denny Stadium. And it was against the Bulldogs that Namath first made a name for himself as a member of the Crimson Tide.
Namath threw three touchdown passes in his first career start, a 35-0 rout of Georgia at Legion Field in Birmingham on Sept. 22, 1962. It was the season-opener for defending national champion Alabama and the varsity debut for Namath, who had starred for the Crimson Tide’s freshman team the previous fall.
Namath’s legend only grew after his stunning introduction to the college football world, eventually becoming one of the most recognizable athletes in American history as the handsome, brash, rifle-armed quarterback of the New York Jets. And that sophomore year shutout of Georgia would soon after become notorious for reasons totally unrelated to the young star from Beaver Falls, Pa.
Here’s a look back at the 1962 Alabama-Georgia game and its aftermath, 62 years and one day later.
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Pat Trammell had quarterbacked Alabama to an undefeated national championship season in 1961, the first of six titles it would win under coach Paul “Bear” Bryant. But Trammell — whom Bryant later called his favorite person, let alone his favorite player — graduated after that season, leaving a huge hole at the controls of the Crimson Tide offense.
Enter Namath, whom Bryant had somehow stolen away from the Eastern football powers and brought to the SEC. The story goes that Namath initially planned to go to Maryland but didn’t score high enough on his college board exams, so Terrapins coaches steered him to Alabama in order to keep him away from schools on their schedule who might have less-stringent admissions standards for athletes.
Namath starred for the Alabama freshman squad in 1961 (11 years before first-year players became eligible for varsity teams), and quickly earned a reputation around campus for his outstanding athletic ability. Tales began to circulate not only about his elite speed and throwing arm in football, but also his ease in dunking a basketball during pickup games against other Crimson Tide athletes.
There were six quarterbacks competing for the starting job at Alabama in the spring of 1962, including highly touted Rice transfer Jack Hurlbut. But it’s perhaps no coincidence that Namath was issued No. 12, the same number Trammell had worn the previous season.
Namath and Hurlbut continued to compete for the starting job into fall camp, though Namath appeared to take control of the position after passing for 156 yards and two touchdowns and rushing for 61 yards in a preseason scrimmage in early September. On Sept. 20 (just two days before the Georgia game), The Montgomery Advertiser reported that Namath had secured the quarterback job on Alabama’s Red squad — that is, the first of three offensive units that might see action at any given time.
As the season-opener approached, the buzz around Namath grew, and not just locally. The Knoxville News Sentinel’s Tom Siler wrote on Sept. 18 that Namath “is rated with the best sophomores in the land,” while The Associated Press’ Vernon Butler wrote on Sept. 20 that Namath “has the tools to be the finest quarterback Paul Bryant ever coached.”
Alabama had rarely passed the ball in the days when Trammell was quarterback, preferring to grind out yards and victories on the ground. A talented arm such as Namath was sure to change the Crimson Tide’s offensive strategy, but Bryant wasn’t giving anything away in the days leading up to the game.
Typical was this exchange between Bryant and Atlanta Constitution columnist Jesse Outlar, who visited practice in mid-September.
“With Namath here, will you be throwing the football more?” Outlar asked.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you,” Bryant replied.
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Alabama’s rise as an SEC power in the early 1960s paralleled Georgia’s decline. Bryant’s second Crimson Tide team went 7-2-2 and played in the Liberty Bowl, the same year Wally Butts’ Bulldogs went 10-1 and won both the SEC championship and the Orange Bowl.
Georgia took a step back to 6-4 in 1960, and Butts resigned under pressure after 22 seasons and 140 victories (though he remained on as athletics director). Alabama finished 8-1-2 that season, which included a 21-6 victory over the Bulldogs in Birmingham.
John Griffith, a former Georgia player and coach under Butts, replaced his mentor as head coach. His first Bulldogs team finished 3-7, losing 32-6 in Athens to an Alabama team on its way to the national championship.
Alabama came into the 1962 season ranked No. 3 nationally and was listed as a 17-point favorite over Georgia in the opener. More than 50,000 people were expected at Legion Field for an 8 p.m. kickoff on Saturday, Sept. 22.
The blowout everyone anticipated in fact came to pass, and in fairly short order. Namath threw a 52-yard touchdown pass to Richard Williamson on the Crimson Tide’s fourth snap of the game, and Alabama’s defense added a safety to lead 9-0 after one quarter.
Namath hit Cotton Clark for a 10-yard touchdown on the ensuing possession, and Alabama led 15-0 at halftime. In the third quarter, a 50-yard completion to Williamson set up Namath’s third touchdown pass of the day, a 12-yarder to Clark for a 21-0 Crimson Tide advantage.
Hurlbut replaced Namath under center later in the third quarter, and led a march that ended in Clark’s 4-yard touchdown run and a 2-point pass to Butch Wilson for a 29-0 Alabama lead early in the fourth. Hudson Harris’ 25-yard touchdown run capped the scoring and provided the exclamation point on the Crimson Tide’s worst beating of Georgia since a 36-0 shellacking in 1923.
Alabama outgained Georgia 464 yards to 116 in the game. Despite playing less than three full quarters, Namath completed 10 of 14 passes for 179 yards and three touchdowns, while rushing for 36.
“Pat Trammell couldn’t throw it like that,” Williamson later told Namath biographer Mark Kriegel. “We hadn’t seen anyone who could throw it like that.”
The reports in the following day’s newspapers were just as effusive. Under the headline “Namath bows, wows; Tide romps,” The Birmingham News’ Benny Marshall wrote “Alabama’s defense was national championship tough again Saturday night at Legion Field, made of iron and muscle and mighty determination. Alabama’s offense had Joe Namath.”
“The passing put us out of business quick,” Georgia’s Griffith said. “Namath is a great one.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s John Logue called Namath the “most menacing 19-year-old sophomore to violate SEC sod since … Charley Trippi suited up for Georgia in 1942.” Logue added that Namath’s stunning performance was the subject on everyone in attendance’s mind by the end of the second quarter.
“At halftime, a melee of college scouts clogged the press box corridor,” Logue wrote. “The groups represented every university in the Southeastern Conference, but two words dominated every conversation: ‘Joe Namath.’”
Logue quoted former Georgia quarterback John Rauch, a Tulane assistant coach in 1962 who later coached the Oakland Raiders to a Super Bowl, as among those blown away by Namath.
“I saw it but I don’t have to believe it,” Rauch said. “Can you imagine this Namath is playing his first college game in front of 53,000 fans, against the University of Georgia, and he looks like he’s bored when he doesn’t have the ball.
“He can do anything I ever heard of a quarterback being asked to do.”
Even the normally laconic and reserved Bryant conceded that Namath did a “beautiful job.”
With Namath at the controls on offense and All-American Lee Roy Jordan leading another stingy defense, Alabama won its first eight games of 1962 by a combined score of 229-29 and was ranked No. 1 headed into a Nov. 17 game with Georgia Tech in Atlanta. The Yellow Jackets were out for blood after the infamous Holt-Graning incident of the previous year, and emerged with a stunning 7-6 victory on a day in which Namath threw three interceptions.
Alabama bounced back to beat Auburn 38-0 and Oklahoma 17-0 in the Orange Bowl to finish 10-1 and ranked No. 5 nationally. Namath ended the year with 1,192 yards and 13 touchdown passes in 10 games, both Crimson Tide program records at the time.
Georgia ended the 1962 season with a record of 3-4-3, and Griffith was fired after a 4-5-1 finish in 1963. His replacement was former Auburn quarterback and assistant coach Vince Dooley, who went on to win 201 games, six SEC championships and the 1980 national title in a tenure that spanned 25 years with the Bulldogs.
Namath spent his final two college seasons in and out of the lineup due to injuries and suspensions, but helped Alabama to a national championship as a senior in 1964. His two-touchdown performance off the bench in the Jan. 1, 1965, Orange Bowl loss to Texas led the Jets — who had drafted Namath No. 1 overall in November — to lavish him with a then unheard-of $400,000 signing bonus.
Namath led the Jets to a Super Bowl championship at the end of the 1968 season, making good on his pre-game “guarantee” that his team would beat the highly favored Baltimore Colts. He retired from football in 1977 and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985.
Beyond his football exploits, Namath has achieved a rarified level of fame over the years as an advertising pitch man, movie and television star and quintessential sex symbol of the swinging 1960s and early 70s. Even at age 81, he still draws a crowd, as he no doubt will on Saturday in Tuscaloosa.
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Of course, the 1962 Alabama-Georgia game has achieved a level of infamy that has nothing to do with Namath. On March 23, 1963, The Saturday Evening Post magazine published an explosive story with the headline “The Story of a College Football Fix.”
The alleged “fix” at issue in the story written by freelance journalist Frank Graham Jr. was of course Alabama’s rout of Georgia the previous fall, with Butts accused of giving Bryant inside information on the Bulldogs’ plays and formations in a phone call some 10 days before the game. How the story came about was strange and highly convoluted.
An insurance agent named George Burnett walked into an Atlanta office building on Sept. 13, 1962, to make a phone call and was somehow patched into a call that turned out to be between Butts and Bryant. (Many readers may be too young to remember the vagaries of landline technology, but suffice it to say that phone lines getting crossed in such a fashion was not entirely unheard-of in the early 1960s.)
Burnett told Graham he was not a football expert per se, but tried to jot down everything he had heard. It was asserted in the story — which included reporting from Atlanta Journal sports editor and columnist Furman Bisher — that Bryant used the information in his game-planning and practices leading up to the Georgia game, and that Butts had given it to his old friend because he was bitter he’d been forced out as coach.
Bryant and Butts not only denied the allegations, but Butts filed a libel lawsuit in federal court against Curtis Publishing, The Post’s parent company. He sought $5 million in compensatory damages and an additional $5 million in punitive damages.
Bryant, Butts and a number of Alabama and Georgia players testified in the 11-day trial during the summer of 1963. The general thrust of the plaintiffs’ argument was that there was no fix, and if there was, anything in Graham’s notes would have been of little help to mighty Alabama against a far weaker team like Georgia.
The jury ultimately ruled in Butts’ favor, ordering Curtis Publishing to pay damages of $3.06 million to the former Georgia coach. Bryant settled a separate suit — involving both the “fix” story and one by Bisher the year before that was spurred on by the Holt-Graning incident and accused Bryant and Alabama of “brutal” football tactics — for a little more than $300,000 in January 1964.
The legacy of the Bryant-Butts scandal is a complicated one. The easy narrative (and one still subscribed to by many ardent football fans) is that Burnett, Graham and Bisher were at worst out to get Bryant and Butts and entirely fabricated the story, or at best (as the courts ruled) were so haphazard in their reporting as to have played fast and loose with the truth.
There have been two non-fiction books written about the Bryant-Butts case: 1986′s Fumble, by James Kirby, a University of Tennessee law professor who was the SEC’s official observer at the 1963 trial; and 2018′s Fumbled Call by David E. Sumner, a retired journalism professor from Ball State University. Both make the case that the Bryant-Butts phone call likely happened as Burnett said it did, but numerous circumstances — including poor strategy by Curtis Publishing’s lawyers, possible perjury by key witnesses, as well as sports writers and jurors who were sympathetic to and/or in awe of two legendary college football coaches — kept it from blowing up into something that would have permanently tarnished Butts’ and Bryant’s reputations.
What really happened during the Butts-Bryant phone call and how it might have affected the 1962 Alabama-Georgia game is lost to history. What we do know is that Namath’s performance that night in Birmingham marked the true beginning of one of the most fascinating careers in football history.
Georgia is a slight betting favorite over Alabama on Saturday, so don’t look for a 35-0 blowout this time. And given the game takes place in Week 5 of the season, it’s unlikely we’ll see some previously unknown phenom emerge as an instant college football star the way Joe Namath did more than six decades ago.
Creg Stephenson has worked for AL.com since 2010 and has written about college footbal for a variety of publications since 1994. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @CregStephenson.
