New book: How gambling and game-fixing allegations nearly sank Bear Bryant

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The Auburn-Alabama football rivalry is one of the fiercest and most consequential in college football, with 27 national championships (and counting) between the two Yellowhammer State rivals. A new book, IRON IN THE BLOOD, by Yahoo Sports senior writer Jay Busbee, traces the entirety of the rivalry, from the origins of both schools right on through 2025, with deep dives on the most significant moments and figures in the rivalry, from the Kick Six to Ken Stabler, Gravedigger to Bo Jackson, Punt Bama Punt to Nick Saban.

And then, of course, there’s Bear Bryant.

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By the early 1960s, Bear Bryant’s legend — as both a champion and a sideline terror — was already fixed in granite. In this excerpt from IRON IN THE BLOOD, Bryant faced what would be the toughest challenge of his career … and it had nothing to do with football.

The 1962 season — and the beginning of Joe Namath’s varsity Alabama career — began with a game against the Georgia Bulldogs. The youthful Dawgs would be relying on a sophomore-heavy lineup, which meant Bryant hadn’t been able to effectively scout the Georgia team. He had no idea what to expect, and he was placing his hopes in the hands of his own sophomore quarterback.

Prior to the game, Bryant — as was his custom — took Namath for a little walk around Legion Field in Birmingham. As they walked, he took a deep draw on his Chesterfield and turned to Namath.

“Joe, you got the plan?”

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“Yes, sir,” Namath replied. “I think so.”

“You think so?” Bryant growled. “Damn, son, it’s time you know. The hay is in the barn.”

On his first play from scrimmage, Namath was so nervous, he called a quarterback sneak just to rattle his own cage and set himself straight. It worked: three snaps later, he threw a 52-yard touchdown pass. Georgia crossed midfield only twice, and didn’t get any closer to Alabama’s end zone than the Tide’s 45-yard line . . . and that was on the last play of the game. The 35–0 victory was so overwhelming that, ironically enough, it would end up becoming one of Bryant’s greatest losses.

Off the field, Bryant’s troubles were starting to mount. After the 35–0 Georgia beatdown, the blood was in the water for the Alabama coach, and Furman Bisher, a sportswriter with the Atlanta Journal, was the lead shark. Bryant feared no man, but Bisher did a good job of enraging him with an article in the Oct. 20, 1962, issue of the Saturday Evening Post headlined “College Football Is Going Berserk.”

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In the article, no less than Auburn head coach Shug Jordan himself condemned the rise of “this new hell-for-leather, helmet-busting, gang-tackling brand of football.” Jordan also had a handy rationale for why the state of affairs was so terrifying: “Since Bear Bryant came back to Alabama [in 1958],” he said, “it’s the only kind of game which can win.”

The article accused Bryant of effectively encouraging his players to commit assault and battery in the name of winning a football game. That’s the kind of claim that can veer into the libelous, and Bryant filed a $500,000 defamation suit against Bisher and Curtis Publishing, the Saturday Evening Post’s parent company.

If Bryant expected a lawsuit to scare off his pursuers, though, he was wrong. Within just a few months, he’d find out just how wrong he was.

Even with the 1962 libel suit from the college football brutality article hanging over its head, the Saturday Evening Post in 1963 published a legitimate bombshell of a story: that Bryant and former Georgia head coach Wally Butts had conspired to fix the previous year’s game between the two teams.

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The article appeared in the March 23, 1963, edition with the provocative headline “THE STORY OF A COLLEGE FOOTBALL FIX.” According to the story, Bryant received secret information from Butts in a telephone call nine days before the two teams would play at Legion Field.

The source of the allegations: an Atlanta businessman named George Burnett, who claimed he’d been plugged into the conversation via crossed wires on Sept. 13, 1962. Burnett had been attempting to call Jackson 5-3536, the number to the public relations firm in Atlanta where Butts often made his phone calls, and to his shock, Burnett could hear an operator say, “Coach Bryant is out on the field, Coach Butts, but he is on his way to the phone. Do you want to hold, or do you want him to return the call?” Butts said he would hold, and Burnett silently listened in.

Bryant came on the line. “Hello, Bear,” Butts said.

“Hi, Wally,” Bryant replied. “Do you have anything for me?”

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Burnett took notes on the conversation, and those notes — and the line “Do you have anything for me?” — became the basis of the article.

Burnett listened as Butts, who was Georgia’s athletic director at the time, ran through his players, his coaches, his formations, and his plays for almost 15 minutes. Bryant offered nothing about Alabama, and only spoke to ask questions of Butts.

Burnett then showed his business partners the information, and they emphasized that he should forget he heard anything. And he did, until he saw a headline: “Tide Mauls Bulldogs.” He read about how badly Alabama had beaten Georgia . . . and matters began to take shape in his mind.

Burnett kept his silence until January 1963, when he talked to a colleague who was close with Georgia’s head coach, Johnny Griffith. When Griffith and Burnett met, Burnett showed the coach his notes, and Griffith was outraged.

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“This looks like our game plan,” he said. “I figured someone had given information to Alabama. This game was like a couple of others; we were just stymied — couldn’t get anything going.” (Furman Bisher would later allege that Butts, wounded at being relieved of his coaching duties at Georgia, would make several such calls around the Southeastern Conference.)

Once Georgia officials took possession of Burnett’s notes, an investigation cranked up. At the same time, freelance writer Frank Graham Jr. was dispatched by the Saturday Evening Post to investigate the story. The Post paid Burnett $2,000 upon acquisition of the story and another $3,000 upon its publication.

In an editor’s note, the Saturday Evening Post left no doubt about its perspective on the issue: “Not since the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series has there been a sports story as shocking as this one. … The corrupt were two men — Butts and Bryant — employed to educate and to guide young men.”

“This was the damning aspect of the situation,” Bisher would later write, “not what Graham had written, but this lead-in that likened the action to the Black Sox baseball scandal of 1919, an out-and-out case of game-fixing.”

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The article closed with a thunderous declaration: “The chances are that Wally Butts will never help any football team again. Bear Bryant may well follow him into oblivion — a special hell for that grim extrovert — for in a very real sense he betrayed the boys he was pledged to lead.”

Both Bryant and Butts held press conferences to denounce the charges, and both indicated that they had warned the Post against publishing the article. The magazine nonetheless ran the story.

The reaction was immediate and immense. The attorneys general of both Georgia and Alabama opened investigations into the matter. Bryant went on statewide TV in Alabama to declare his innocence, and the Alabama establishment supported him. Butts, meanwhile, passed a lie detector test, but didn’t enjoy the same level of institutional backing.

Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated all pointed out the holes in the Post article. Red Smith of the New York Herald Tribune, quoted in the Birmingham News, summed the entire issue up: “If it were established that one embittered man had done the old school dirty, this would hardly constitute evidence of corruption in a conference,” Smith said. “Nothing more has been charged than unseemly conduct between two men.”

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Sports Illustrated convened a panel of experts that agreed there was little information that Bryant could have used to his advantage. Butts’s assessments as described in the article were some combination of opinion, meaninglessness, and self-evident obviousness.

Alabama Gov. George Wallace gleefully torched the messenger, saying, “I don’t know anything about it, but I’ll tell you this — the Saturday Evening Post is the sorriest authority on the truth.” The Alabama legislature introduced resolutions condemning the Post, while a U.S. district attorney in Birmingham even called for a federal grand jury investigation of the magazine.

Georgia Gov. Carl Sanders, a Georgia alum, directed the state’s attorney general to investigate the matter to determine if criminal prosecution was warranted. The attorney general’s report found no criminal violation, but nonetheless contended that the conversation “might well have vitally affected the outcome of the game in points and margin of victory.”

The Saturday Evening Post was already fighting one battle against Bryant; a second article, documenting his underhandedness, would only help both the publication’s bottom line and its court battle. Crucially, the Post never did get a look at Burnett’s notes, which remained in the possession of Georgia officials who were investigating the story themselves. The Post relied only on Burnett’s affidavit, as well as hearsay and secondhand information. Finally, the Atlanta Journal, which had intended to publish a concurrent article, backed away from the story — a story on which its own writer was a contributor — which by all reasonable means of investigation should have been a strong clue to the Post.

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In its April 27, 1963, issue, the Post stood behind its charges, adding, “Our philosophy is radical. We believe that any coach who rigs a football game should be exposed. We will continue to cling to this radical belief despite what our detractors in and out of the publishing business may say about us.” Bryant, in response, filed a second lawsuit for another $5 million.

This was a high-risk gambit for Bryant. Had Butts lost his case against the Post, there would be calls for Bryant to be fired. And if Alabama refused to do that, the SEC could boot Alabama from the conference, or the NCAA could sanction the Crimson Tide itself. Bryant was as close as could be to untouchable, but the charges, if proven true, would be tough for even the Bear to outrun.

Bryant pursued back-channel avenues. Months earlier, he had flown to Washington, D.C., to meet with Robert Kennedy, attorney general of the United States. Bryant and Kennedy discussed the allegations — which had not yet been made public. Kennedy indicated that his department had already investigated the rumors and found nothing to incriminate Bryant or Butts.

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“I know that,” Bryant said. “I just wanted to be damned sure you knew it.” Bryant and Kennedy didn’t speak again on the matter, although Bryant was apparently preparing to support — at least quietly — Kennedy’s campaign for president in 1968.

Even so, Kennedy’s assurances to Bryant didn’t stop the rumor mill from churning throughout the summer. The U.S. Senate’s McClellan Committee, tasked with investigating racketeering and improper labor practices, began looking into the gambling aspects of the story.

Butts’ $10 million libel action went to court in Atlanta in August 1963. Burnett testified that the Post paid him $5,000 for his information — more than $50,000 in 2025 dollars — without ever seeing the notes he made.

Griffith, the current Georgia coach, was a surprise witness, and his testimony was devastating to the Post. He indicated that the secrets the magazine described as “significant” were not particularly important, and that Georgia’s “slot right” and “pro set” formations that year had been used in previous seasons. The implication was that Bryant probably already knew about those formations.

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One of the article’s most significant assertions was Georgia end Mickey Babb’s claim that Alabama players taunted Georgia players in the midst of the 35–0 defeat, saying, “You can’t run 88-pop [allegedly, a significant Georgia play] on us.” There was just one problem: Griffith said Georgia had no “88-pop” play.

The trial’s highlight came just after Curtis Publishing’s attorneys rested their case. Bryant himself strode into the courtroom to testify, at once regal, commanding, and slightly terrifying. Dressed in a gray seersucker sport coat, white slacks, and brown alligator shoes, Bryant was forceful, definitive, and clear. He wasn’t aw-shucks’ing his way around the situation; this was no press conference. He was there to clear his name and to strike fear in the hearts of his accusers. He even went to a blackboard to diagram a few plays, a move that clearly thrilled the all-middle-aged-male jury.

Bryant dismissed the idea that he learned anything of value from Butts, saying, “If I didn’t know that, I oughta be bored for a hollow head.”

When Butts’ attorney read the indictment out loud to Bryant, charging him and Butts with being “corrupt,” Bryant could barely contain his seething anger. Asked if the charges were in any way true, he didn’t hesitate.

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“Absolutely not,” he replied. “If we did it, we ought to go to jail. And if we didn’t, anybody who had anything to do with this [article] ought to go to jail. Taking their money is not good enough.”

Butts, on the stand, held firm for a time but eventually broke down in sobs at the accusations. He refuted the allegations in the article, point by point. (For instance, Butts had allegedly told Bryant that one cornerback overcommitted on running plays and was vulnerable to deep passes. In the game film, it was clear that Alabama didn’t throw in his direction one time.)

In the end, there was no smoke and no fire. The Post was at a loss to explain why Alabama would need to fix a game it was favored to win by two touchdowns. The jury found in favor of Butts, awarding him general damages of $60,000 and punitive damages of $3 million, later reduced to $300,000.

When Butts called Bryant, the Bear’s immediate response was, “That’s fine, but what happened to the rest of it?”

Alabama president Frank Rose, at that exact moment, was — as he put it during testimony in the Butts trial — “going through two crises at that time as far as the University was concerned.” At the same time he was dealing with the Butts‒Bryant call, he was in the midst of an ongoing standoff with Wallace that made national news. The governor had put Rose in an untenable position, and for once, college football was not an easy refuge.

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Rose and Bryant’s own lawyers went to visit Bryant at his home. Harry Pritchett, one of Bryant’s attorneys, cut straight to the point: “Paul, what would you settle for?”

Bryant didn’t want to “settle for” a damn thing. He wanted to rip the entire $10 million out of the heart of Curtis Publishing. But he also knew which way the wind was blowing. He understood the toll a long trial would take on him, his family and the University of Alabama. He also may have known that private investigators hired by Curtis were digging into his past at the University of Kentucky, asking questions and looking for anything they could bring to bear.

Bryant agreed to settle for $25,000 over Bisher’s “brutality” story, and for the “fix” story, he settled for $275,000 in damages and $20,000 in expenses. In the end, he netted $196,000 for the entire affair, and no evidence linked him to gambling on the game.

The Saturday Evening Post lawsuit forced Bryant to look in the mirror. He was a fierce leader, perhaps even a cruel one. But he had always perceived himself as a sportsman; now, with the story about fixing the Georgia game and how quickly so many people had believed it, he had to reckon with the fact that perhaps his own self-image and the way he was viewed were starkly different. He didn’t want to be thought of as a coach who was dirty, but there it was.

IRON IN THE BLOOD goes on sale Tuesday, Aug. 26 at all major bookstores. Click here for ordering information.

This news was originally published on this post .

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