Throwback Theater W2WF: Alabama (1984)

The surreality of last year's Alabama football season started at the end of 1982. The tumble out of the national rankings after holding the No. 2 spot in mid-October precipitated the end of Paul "Bear" Bryant's legendary career, and the greatest head coach in college football history retired after a win over Illinois in the Liberty Bowl. Less than a month later, Bryant passed away after suffering a heart attack.

It cast a pall over the entire offseason for Alabama. Ray Perkins became the first new head coach since the Eisenhower administration, and Alabama won five in a row to challenge for national championship status. Two consecutive losses followed, but Perkins earned enough of a game reputation to ready the team for a final ride into the end of the season. It was 7-2 when it had its final non-conference game, and a road trip to the Northeast was the only thing standing between Alabama and Legion Field showdown with Auburn.

I'm still not really sure anyone expected BC to win that game, but the Eagles walked out of Sullivan Stadium in Foxboro with one of its biggest program victories. The defense forced six fumbles, and the tandem of head coach Jack Bicknell and Doug Flutie, which hadn't beaten a ranked opponent before that point, earned its biggest victory. It propelled BC onto the national stage, and it derailed Alabama, which lost the Iron Bowl for the second consecutive season. It was the first time Alabama lost back-to-back games to Auburn since the 1969 and 1970 seasons.

The win reverberated through the entire nation because Boston College was never on the same level as a team like Alabama. The Crimson Tide held nine of 11 Southeastern Conference championships between between 1971 and 1981, and three of those seasons ended in a national championship. In 1979, the last of those titles came on the heels of a perfect season, meaning the title was anything but divided like it was in 1978.

The Bear Bryant era waned after that for a number of reasons, but the Crimson Tide entered last season two years removed from its last conference championship. That makes it impossible to delineate if Bryant lost his magic at the end or if Alabama simply became a victim of its own success. Either way, losing to BC in 1983? Unthinkable.

That sets the backdrop for a game resembling nothing like its predecessor on a surface level. Last year's game was in Massachusetts, in cold and wet conditions. It was right before the Iron Bowl, and BC simply sideswiped Alabama. It was the end of a long season. Things are less fluid now, and therefore it's a little less confusing.

This year is at Legion Field, a stadium deep in the heart of Roll Tide country. It's Ray Perkins' second season, meaning he has a team full of his own recruits. It's a team ready to move out of Bear Bryant's shadow, if that's possible. It's also a team in its opening game against an opponent that it lost to last year.

BC isn't going to fool Alabama this time around, and the Crimson Tide will not let the Eagles or Doug Flutie or Jack Bicknell or anyone else sneak up on them again. Alabama is supposed to be a perennial national championship contender. Boston College wants in on that lodge club.

It's a matchup rife with memories of what happened a year ago. What happens this week will determine who, if either, can potentially compete for a national championship.

Here's what to watch for when the No. 19 Eagles heat up a rematch with No. 9 Alabama:

****
Weekly Storylines

Open says me.

This game feels like the true season-opener, but BC blasted Western Carolina last week, 44-24, in a warm-up or tune-up for its game in Alabama. The Eagles amassed 604 yards of total offense, and quarterback Doug Flutie tied the program record for career touchdowns passes as the team scored 44 points in just under three quarters.

"We checked off a lot on the passing stuff," head coach Jack Bicknell said. "(The one interception) - Flutie missed a check. And he was so mad at himself coming back at the bench...you don't have to tell him when he makes a mistake. He knows it.'

Flutie exited the game in the third quarter after completing a 45-yard touchdown pass to Kelvin Martin, giving snaps to backup quarterback Shawn Halloran. He finished 22-for-31 for 330 yards and four touchdowns. The long ball to Martin helped him to a two-score game with 110 yards on only four receptions while Gerard Phelan finished with 121 yards on 10 catches. Troy Stradford, meanwhile, ran for 101 yards on 19 carries.

Western Carolina is a Division I-AA team, so it's hard to read into the numbers. What is clear this year, though, is that Flutie hasn't changed one bit. He's still shifty and quick, and he can still deliver strikes. That could be problematic for the Alabama defensive line, which would be burned repeatedly if it blitzed around the edge. BC is a pass-first offense with Flutie, which is something not really seen at the college game, and if Alabama doesn't adjust after last year's disappointment in Foxboro, things could turn up Eagles in a hurry.

Get the iron and clean it up.

Not everything about the first game of the year felt rosy. Western Carolina finished with more than 400 yards on offense, though the bulk of it came after the Eagles cannonballed to their massive lead. Quarterback Jeff Gilbert finished with 300 yards passing, 184 of which went to diminutive receiver Eric Rasheed, and he completed just under half his passes, going 20-of-41.

"It was a little frustrating," Mike Ruth said after the game. "We kept pretty basic on defense the whole game, which meant you were constantly being doubled or tripled. You'd get by another guy and then another guy and then another, and then quarterback."

Coach Bicknell didn't scheme the game to reveal too much before Alabama, choosing to leave complexity out of everything for a week. The only fear is that the Catamounts didn't necessarily shake off the rust and instead exposed a couple of design flaws, though BC seemed to indicate the former moreso than the latter. The three interceptions didn't hurt, either.

"Considering we had won the game," Tony Thurman said, "why show a lot to give our upcoming opponents a shot to see what we're doing?"

Roll with the Tide.

The small taste of BC last week didn't really change anyone's local perception because the Eagles returned so many players. Alabama is a different story because the team enters with more than three dozen freshmen and sophomores on the roster. That's an incredibly young team, even though it's littered with a number of solid athletes. There's also Ray Perkins, who runs a straight-ahead style of play left over from his years as head coach of the New York Giants.

Much of the responsibility of the professional style offense will fall on quarterback Mike Shula, the one player who can overcome inexperience with pedigree. He took four snaps all of last year, but the sophomore is the younger son of Miami Dolphins head coach Don Shula. He quarterbacked his high school to a Florida state championship, all while his father rebuilt the Miami Dolphins around a rookie quarterback.

Shula doesn't have to do much, though, except hand off to a pair of contrasting running backs. Fullback Ricky Moore is a load at 235 pounds, and Kerry Goode will look to build off his 600-plus yards from last season. The Crimson Tide will formationally play similar to BC with its off-set pro formations, but those stretch and off-tackle runs have been a bread-and-butter approach for the Ray Perkins offense. It will set up Shula's arm, which only needs to make enough throws downfield to win the game.

*****
Meteorology 101

It doesn't matter what the weather is like in Birmingham this week because it won't be Foxboro during last year's game. It was freezing cold, and the weather didn't cooperate one bit. It clearly impacted Alabama on the Astroturf surface at Sullivan Stadium, while Doug Flutie and Boston College looked comfortable playing on the ice skating rink down on Route 1.

All of that changes under the lights at Legion Field. The lack of slick, snowy, gross weather clearly negates BC's biggest advantage in the Northeast, and the Eagles have had their share of trouble winning in the South. The 1982 win over Texas A&M came over a team that wasn't a particularly strong Southwest Conference team, but it stung that the next week, BC outplayed Clemson on the road and tied.

The years prior to that are littered with big losses. There's Florida State in 1980, Miami in 1979, Texas and Tennessee in 1978. All of that leads a straight line from the 1976 win at Tulane, so this week, BC is going to need to overcome whatever kryptonite seems to get in the water bottles when it goes to the warmer part of the country.

*****
Scoreboard Watching

Miami rocked the college football establishment last year when head coach Howard Schnellenberger led the Hurricanes to their first-ever national championship. It fulfilled a well-publicized five-year plan to turn South Florida into a football hotbed, but it also marked the end of the era because he left shortly after the Orange Bowl.

His replacement, Jimmy Johnson, is shifting in from Oklahoma State, though he interviewed last season for the Arkansas job vacated by Lou Holtz, who is now at Minnesota. Now Miami, back at No. 1 in the nation after beating Auburn and Florida, is at Michigan to play a third consecutive nationally-ranked powerhouse.

As for the rest of the polls, No. 2 Nebraska hosts Wyoming, and No. 3 Clemson is at Virginia. Out west, No. 4 UCLA is traveling further south to play San Diego State, while No. 6 Ohio State hosts Oregon State. Out in Iowa, the No. 10 Hawkeyes are hosting their in-state rival, Iowa State.

The game that intrigues me the most is out in Indiana, where the Hoosiers will play their second consecutive season opener under a new coach. Sam Wyche is gone after one season, having become the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals, but Bill Mallory is an intriguing coach to me. He moves over from Northern Illinois, which went 10-2 last year and won the California Bowl. The Hoosiers play Duke this week, and if they can't beat the hapless Blue Devils, it could be a really long season just two years after firing Lee Corso.

On the local radar, it's a huge week for Boston University, which plays Grambling in the Whitney Young Memorial Classic at Yankee Stadium. It's a brilliant opportunity for the two-time defending Yankee Conference champion Terriers. They won their first-ever NCAA Division I-AA playoff game last year when they beat Eastern Kentucky, 24-20, and it's going to be really interesting to see if they can finally outright win the championship this year after sharing it in 1982 and 1983.

*****
Pregame Quote and Prediction

There's a lot of blood, sweat, and guts between dreams and success. -Bear Bryant

The defining line between swagger and arrogance is built by a team's success. Coaches want their teams to exude confidence, but they also know it needs backup in results. Alabama's a prime example because college football rules the roost in the state, but the Crimson Tide hold the national record for most bowl games. Last year's Sun Bowl was their 37th bowl game, seven more than Texas.

Consider how difficult it is to get into bowl games. Virginia Tech won nine games, shutting out four opponents, but didn't receive an invitation to a game last year. BC went to the Liberty Bowl, its fifth-ever bowl game and second consecutive appearance after a 40-year drought.

That's why this matchup is so interesting. Alabama is a football blue blood two years removed from contending for a national championship under Bear Bryant. BC won more than it lost in the last decade but was never good enough to earn that type of consideration until Doug Flutie burst onto the scene. It's redefined Northeast football, but it's never made in-roads against the Deep South tradition.

That all changed last year when the Eagles upended Alabama, but the game was in Massachusetts. Boston College might be a darling-in-waiting for the national media this year, but it won't sneak up on the Crimson Tide this time. Alabama will be waiting with a coach leading a group of players ready to make their own mark on the program's trunk. This is a new era for the program, one starting to pull away from Bear Bryant's long, looming shadow. I think the team could be hungrier than ever, especially since this game's on home turf.

One thing is for sure, though. This could be a program-defining game for both teams for the 1980s decade, and it's one great way to begin what both teams hope will be a memorable 1984 season.

All quotes originally provided to The Boston Globe.

Related Videos