In ’79, Alabama finished undefeated, untied and undisputed

EDITOR’S NOTE: Every day until Aug. 29, Creg Stephenson is counting down significant numbers in Alabama football history, both in the lead-up to the 2025 football season and in commemoration of the Crimson Tide’s first national championship 100 years ago. The number could be attached to a year, a uniform number or even a football-specific statistic. We hope you enjoy.

Heading into the 1979 season, Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant had won five national championships, but only one of those had been undisputed.

The Crimson Tide’s 1964 and 1973 titles were tainted by bowl game losses, to Texas in the former year and to Notre Dame in the latter. The Associated Press did not permanently begin picking its national champion after the bowls until 1967, the coaches poll until 1974.

Alabama’s 1965 championship ended in a split with Michigan State, which claimed the coaches poll title prior to the bowl games. The Crimson Tide’s 1978 title was a split with USC, which had beaten Alabama during the regular season before losing to an inferior Arizona State team.

Only in 1961, when Alabama went 11-0 and took home both the AP and coaches poll national championships, had there been no controversy or split championship. The Crimson Tide repeated the feat (and then some) 18 years later, in what wound up being Bryant’s final championship.

Bolstered by a wishbone offense that averaged 344.7 yards per game rushing and a defense that allowed a nation’s best 5.3 points per game, Alabama buried its first five opponents by a combined score of 219-9. Included in that fast start was a 66-3 mud-holing of Vanderbilt on Sept. 29 in Nashville, which led sports writer Jimmy Bryan to craft one of the all-time opening paragraphs on his story for the following day’s Birmingham News.

“Inflation killed the Vanderbilt Commodores Saturday,” Bryan wrote. “Once the football was inflated, Vanderbilt was dead.”

On the same day (Oct. 13) that No. 2 Alabama dismantled Florida 40-0 in Gainesville, top-ranked USC tied Stanford 21-21 in Los Angeles. That allowed the Crimson Tide to move into the top spot in the polls.

Alabama then held off Tennessee 27-17 in Birmingham before routing Virginia Tech, Mississippi State and Miami down the stretch. A 3-0 victory over LSU on a rainy November night in Baton Rouge kept the Crimson Tide’s perfect season alive (barely) heading into the Dec. 1 Iron Bowl vs. Auburn in Birmingham.

The Crimson Tide nearly fumbled away (literally) its national title hopes at Legion Field, blowing a 14-point lead and trailing by one early in the fourth quarter. But All-SEC quarterback Steadman Shealy scored a go-ahead touchdown and added a two-point conversion and the Alabama defense twice turned away Auburn in Crimson Tide territory to win 25-18.

The comeback win didn’t impress AP pollsters, who dropped Alabama to No. 2 behind fellow unbeaten Ohio State, which had won its rivalry game over Michigan 18-15 two weeks earlier. Bryant, at least, took the snub in stride.

“No, I’m not upset,” Bryant said after a speaking engagement in Selma. “It’s not going to change our game plan for the Sugar Bowl.”

Alabama remained No. 1 in the coaches poll, but the drop to No. 2 in the AP rankings meant an undisputed national championship was out of the Crimson Tide’s control. If Ohio State beat No. 3 USC in the Rose Bowl, the Buckeyes would likely claim at least a share of the national championship even if Alabama beat No. 4 Arkansas in New Orleans.

If not for some late-season upsets in the SEC and Southwest Conference, the Crimson Tide might have faced No. 4 (and unbeaten) Florida State in the Orange Bowl. Houston claimed the SWC’s spot in the Cotton Bowl after Texas lost its regular-season finale to Texas A&M, sending 10-1 Arkansas — which had lost to Houston but beaten Texas — to the Sugar.

Georgia would have gone to the Sugar Bowl as SEC co-champion (the game then had a practice of inviting the team which had been least recently and Alabama had played in New Orleans in both 1977 and 1978), but the Bulldogs lost 33-13 to Auburn in mid-November. That meant New Orleans for Alabama and no bowl for Georgia (which finished 6-5 overall, but was 5-1 in SEC play).

As it turned out, USC did the Crimson Tide a huge favor by edging Ohio State 17-16 in Pasadena on the afternoon of New Year’s Day. Once-beaten Oklahoma also knocked off Florida State 24-7 in the Orange Bowl, meaning an Alabama win over Arkansas would give the Crimson Tide a second straight championship.

The Sugar Bowl — played before a Superdome record crowd of 77,486 — was not much of a contest. Major Ogilvie ran for two first-half touchdowns, and Steve Whitman added a 12-yard dash in the fourth quarter as Alabama won 24-9. It was the Crimson Tide’s fifth straight bowl win, with four of them coming in New Orleans.

Two days later, Alabama was voted No. 1 in both polls, albeit by fairly slim margins. The Crimson Tide outpointed USC — which had finished 11-0-1 — by 28 points in the AP, 20 in the coaches’ rankings.

“I’m certainly mighty proud of players and coaches,” Bryant said after the polls were released. “Any time you have a winning team, a lot of people contribute.”It was Bryant’s sixth national championship at Alabama, extending a record that would not be surpassed until Nick Saban won seven — including one at LSU. It also capped a remarkable decade of dominance for the Crimson Tide, which won three national titles, eight SEC championships and posted a record of 103-16-1 during the decade of the 1970s.