Against the Tide: Scared to Death

While the crowd was stunned by the number of black players from Southern California, Alabama's John Hannah admits he was "scared to death" of the more experienced USC team. Against the Tide premieres Friday November 15 at 10PM ET/PT on Showtime.

[KJinTX]

"Hell, that's GRAMBLING out there!!" 😂😂😂 My favorite line from the entire documentary..lol

[georgesouthwick]

Bear Bryant asked McKay to bring USC to Alabama in order to force integration to the team. Bryant had wanted to sign black players for some time and having the fans see how good the USC black players were gave him the leverage he needed. It was said that Sam Cunningham did more to integrate the Alabama football team than the NAACP.

[foundscott]

So in short, black athletes ability to play football made Alabama not be racist when it came to its football team.

[legendarysoldier]

Alabama knew the day of judgment, was upon them.

[Unknown-bqid]

The Crimson Tide was lucky it wasn't the late 1960s USC teams with O.J. Simpson at running back--say what you will about his off the field behavior, but O.J. was GOOD at the position...

[josephbennett]

That game was highly over rated all white teams in the SEC beat Bama just as bad that year. Plus the next year Bama went to USC the next year with basically the same team and beat them and I'm pretty sure Cunningham was still on their team

[theknowitall]

This whole thing is so overblown. Bama was a bad team that year first of all. Bama went 6-5 losing to 4 other all white football teams. Bryant had already started to integrate Bama 2 years before this. Bama went out to Los Angeles the next year and beat USC... WITH Sam Cunningham...nobody ever mentions this... with basically the same team. The difference was USC was better in 1970 and Bama was better in 1971. It had nothing to do with race it had more to do with the quality of players. Bama in 1970 was made up of guys that had just moved up from the JV squad. USC was made up of Seniors. 1971 Bama was a seasoned team that won 11 games and only lost to National Champ Nebraska in the Orange Bowl. USC was breaking in a lot of new players. THAT was the difference. As Bryant said, I don't have black players, I dont have white players, I have football players. This untrue "urban legend" has grown old and tired.