Correspondence

CORRESPONDENCE WITH DAVID HOUSEL, ATHLETIC DIRECTOR, AUBURN UNIVERSITY, AND COACH CHARLIE STUBBS, OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA

In the year 2000, David Housel was Athletic Director of Auburn University. Our paths crossed occasionally, mostly when he would come to the Wetumpka Rotary Club at the invitation of Ford dealer and Auburn enthusiast Jimmy Collier to talk about Auburn football. He was well aware of the only documented story for the coining of the famous “War Eagle” yell. In fact, David had put the documented story in his book about Auburn football. That gave David Housel and me something to talk about because Ehrman Thrasher (E.T.) Enslen, who was the first to yell “War Eagle” in the context of Auburn football, was my great uncle. (See separate story “The True Origin of the ‘War Eagle’ Yell”)
 
Regarding this correspondence with David, I need to present some background. I think I will start with Legion Field in Birmingham which hosted its first football game in 1927, a cross-town rivalry between Howard College (now Samford University) and Birmingham-Southern.
 
After not playing each other for 41 years, Alabama and Auburn renewed their intrastate football rivalry in 1948 at Legion Field which by then seated 42,000. Alabama and Auburn would play one another at Legion Field year after year, in which tickets were split 50-50, alternating the denomination as “home” team. Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant won his 315th game in the 1981 Iron Bowl to become at that time football’s all-time winningest coach.
 
But all of the Iron Bowl games at Legion Field felt more like Alabama “home” games because that is where Alabama played most of its other home games—especially the high-caliber games. Auburn’s opposition to playing at Legion Field in Birmingham grew over time, and in 1989, the rivalry game was played on the Auburn campus. Alabama did not at that time follow suit. Alabama kept playing its Iron Bowl “home” games in Birmingham until the year 2000, and Auburn actually had one regrettable relapse in 1991. [It is this 2000 Iron Bowl in Tuscaloosa game that is the subject matter of my letters with David and Charlie.]
 
Dianne and I quit going to Legion Field for the Iron Bowl and other games sometime in the early 1980’s when we had to pay $20 “protection money” to street thugs for parking our car in a legal parking place.
 
Please bear with me for one more aside regarding Legion Field. I was a sophomore quarterback in high school in the fall of 1962. Daddy secured for us tickets to Alabama’s season opening game at Legion Field against the Georgia Bulldogs. The stadium would now seat 54,000-plus. The game would feature the debut of sophomore quarterback sensation Joe Namath, a Pennsylvania Yankee who Coach Bryant would rename Joe Willie Namath, a double name that would make him more compatible to those of southern culture. (Freshmen were not allowed to play varsity college football until 1972.)
 
Daddy and I felt a little like guinea pigs after taking our seats in the relatively new, hardly used, 9,000-seat upper deck that actually swayed sufficiently for us to feel it. (This upper deck would later be demolished for safety reasons in 2005.) In that September 22, 1962, opener, Alabama soundly defeated Georgia 35-0. Alabama’s captains were Lee Roy Jordan and little Jimmy Sharpe. I can recall Joe Willie’s accurate passing, his nimbleness preceding his subsequent knee injuries, a touchdown catch by Richard Williamson, and the zigzag running and touchdown pass catching by speedy Cotton Clark.
 
As it turned out, this was the very game that would make its way into the national spotlight after The Saturday Evening Post featured a story in March 1963 claiming that Coach Wally Butts of Georgia had basically thrown the game Alabama’s way. (“The Story of a College Football Fix” by Frank Graham) Mistrust of the media received a major boost from Alabama fans.
 
An insurance salesman, some say financially strapped insurance salesman, in Atlanta named George Burnett allegedly overheard, via a connection mix-up, a telephone conversation just days before the game wherein Butts, the Athletic Director at the University of Georgia, revealed to Bryant Georgia’s playbook and player assessment. Burnett sold his story to the Post for $5,000.00. It was not a good investment for the Post. Heavy libel verdicts in favor of Butts and Bryant, eventually upheld by the United States Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, brought about the final demise of the large-in-size, iconic, colorful national magazine.
 
When I reported as a freshman football player at Clemson University in the fall of 1965, one of the other members of my team was a linebacker by the name of George Burnett, Jr. Yes, he was the son of the insurance salesman who overheard a conversation, but came away with the wrong interpretation of it—at least in the eyes of a jury. George, Jr., appeared to me to be quite self-conscious about his familial connection.
 
With that monumental amount of rambling behind me, here is the letter I wrote to David Housel, followed by the letter I wrote to Charlie Stubbs with whom I now share four wonderful grandchildren. I still need to ask Charlie if he ever found occasion to use the quote from Coach Jordan.

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