If there is one defensive player who exemplified the early Paul “Bear” Bryant era of Alabama football, it’s linebacker Darwin Holt.
The classic undersized overachiever, Holt was a tough-as-nails Texan who followed Bryant from Texas A&M to Alabama. He’d played on the freshman team with the Aggies in 1957, then transferred to junior college for a year (to avoid accusations of tampering) before re-joining his old coach in Tuscaloosa in 1959.
Listed at 5-foot-10 and 172 pounds (but probably smaller than that), Holt was part of an Alabama defense that scarcely allowed a point and rarely even a yard. In the two seasons Holt started at linebacker — 1960 and 1961 — the Crimson Tide surrendered a total of 81 points (3.7 per game) and less than 150 yards per game.
Alabama won the first of six national championships under Bryant in 1961, going a perfect 11-0 and allowing just 25 points all year. Holt was a key member of that defense, along with fellow linebacker Lee Roy Jordan and two-way tackle Billy Neighbors.
“They played like it was a sin to give up a point,” Bryant wrote in Bear, his 1975 autobiography.
Alabama shut out six of its opponents: Tulane (9-0), Houston (17-0), Mississippi State (24-0), Richmond (66-0), Georgia Tech (10-0) and Auburn (34-0). The latter five “goose eggs” came in succession in the final five games of the regular reason.
“Our defensive record, I wish they’d put it on the wall down there and let them shoot for it,” Holt said in a 2018 interview with AL.com.
It was in that Nov. 18 game vs. Georgia Tech that Holt would be involved in the play that would unfortunately define his legacy. Bobby Dodd’s Yellow Jackets had been the dominant program in the SEC in the mid-1950s, but that began to change once Bryant returned to Tuscaloosa as head coach in 1958.
Alabama won its first three games vs. Georgia Tech under Bryant, including a 16-15 victory in 1960 in Atlanta on a late field goal by Richard “Digger” O’Dell. The Yellow Jackets were 6-2 when they faced the 8-0 and second-ranked Crimson Tide before a record crowd of 53,000 at Legion Field.
Alabama emerged with a methodical 10-0 victory, scoring on Mike Fracchia’s 17-yard touchdown run in the first quarter and Tim Davis’ 32-yard field goal in the fourth. Tech managed just 96 yards and six first downs all day.
The two teams combined for 16 punts, with one Crimson Tide kick in the fourth quarter taking on a life of its own. On the play in question, Holt delivered a forearm to the jaw of Georgia Tech halfback Chick Graning — a move that was either violent-but-clean or outright dirty, depending on one’s point of view.
Graning suffered severe facial injuries on the play, including a concussion, a fractured nasal bone and several broken teeth, and was hospitalized for a time. Holt said he visited Graning in the hospital and apologized, but the damage — to both Graning’s face and Holt’s reputation — had been done.
Georgia Tech coach Bobby Dodd decried the play as an example of the brutal tactics taught by Bryant, and demanded that the Alabama coach suspend Holt. Bryant refused (as many have noted, Holt was not penalized on the play), drawing the ire of not only Dodd, but many in the media.
The Atlanta newspapers in particular were outraged. Atlanta Constitution sports editor Jesse Outlar called for Holt to be kicked off the Alabama team, while Furman Bisher of the Atlanta Journal described Holt as a “little ruffian from Gainesville, Texas” who would have been “jailed and prosecuted” had he hit Graning in such a fashion on a street corner rather than on a football field.
The issue was further inflamed the following fall, when Bisher wrote an article for the Saturday Evening Post entitled “College Football is Going Berserk,” laying the blame for much of the sport’s brutality at the feet of Bryant and the Crimson Tide. Dodd was quoted extensively in the story, implying that Bryant and his Crimson Tide coaches taught “dirty” tactics.
Holt — who died in 2023 at age 84 — always insisted the play was a clean one in intent, that the taller Graning had leaned downward just as the shorter Holt was delivering what he planned to be a block to the chest. Bryant wrote in his autobiography that Holt probably should have been called for a penalty, but refused to suspend his senior linebacker.
“There’s no doubt Darwin fouled Chick Graning, and the officials should have penalized us, which they didn’t,” Bryant wrote. “But it could have been anybody in the secondary, not just him. I probably would have disciplined him my own way if those Atlanta sportswriters hadn’t set out to crucify him. A penalty is one thing, a crucifixion is another. After that I wouldn’t have done anything if they had burned the university down.”
The affair damaged the friendship between Bryant and Dodd, and led indirectly to Georgia Tech leaving the SEC at the end of the 1963 season. The Crimson Tide and Yellow Jackets played through 1964, but wouldn’t meet again until 1979, by which time Dodd had long since retired.
(It was in that final game vs. the Yellow Jackets that Bryant had a little fun with the heated nature of the rivarly. He wore a helmet walking off the field in Atlanta after the Crimson Tide had won the game 24-7).
Holt told AL.com in 2018 that he believed the incident with Graning cost him a spot on the various All-SEC and All-America teams. He coached briefly on the junior-college level, but said in a 2003 interview with the Birmingham News that his reputation as a dirty player pushed him into the insurance business.
“I knew that if one of my players ever hurt anybody, they would say that I had taught them to do that,” Holt said. “So, I gave up coaching and got into business.”
