I think alcohol had a lot to do with Curley's problem. A couple years back, over at TigerDroppings, there were a couple of players from that era talking about Curley and Archer. They said Curley was a terrible coach. His schemes were a decade behind the times, and he coached as if he knew he was on borrowed time and was just trying to borrow more of it. He constantly degraded the players left to him by Archer in the media so that he wouldn't be blamed for the lack of early success. He would make players do a drill he called "down agility", which was basically just wrestling. Players would line up and wrestle each other in whatever order they came up. It could be a kicker against a linebacker or a quarterback against a defensive tackle. They couldn't call it "wrestling" because it was supposed to be during mandatory non-contact time. They could do an agility drill, but not a contact drill, so they just did a contact drill and called it a non-contact drill. It caused turmoil on the team because little players were just getting killed by the bigger players, and the coaches wouldn't allow them to ease up on the drill. They said Archer was a fine coach. He knew football and used systems that were sophisticated and effective. I'm not saying he was a great coach, but he was definitely better than Curley. I wouldn't mind having Archer back, as an assistant coach, but I doubt he'd ever do it. Dark days, indeed.
Oh, and let's not forget the infamous incident where Curley made the team visit the Bear Bryant Museum in Tuscaloosa before a game with Bama. He supposedly wanted them to know what a winner looked like. I'm sure that helped a lot.
I had heard some of that too Potted. They said Curley and Lynn Amadie had players line up against each other and had full contact drills where it could be any player lined up on any other player. Some of that old school Bear stuff ya know? That worked when Bear had 225 players on scholarship......and most of that 225 were 27 years old.
Wonder if any of the players had read Bryant's autobiography and his admission of telling boosters to go buy players at Texas A&M? "Um, coach Hallman, didn't your hero and mentor encourage cheating?"
Archer is apparently a fine assistant coach and coordinator. But he has fallen short as a head coach. He was a poor recruiter and worse, he was a pathetic disciplinarian. Discipline issues were behind his firing. For the first and only time in Tiger history, racial infighting became a problem on the team, and Archer did not get control of it. Curley couldn't coach his way out of a wet paper bag, but he got rid of some troublemakers and maintained discipline.
dont forget though that the big dorm fight was under hallman concerning the wrestling---there was a DL, roman starnes, that said he'd pinned a bear before. evidently all the team believed him after he'd pin anyone on the team. starnes didnt play much so i think some of the better guys thought theyd take him. shawn king was particularly ticked about getting beaten by a redneck.
Going back in the memory here, but wasn't there an incident where the pilot wouldn't fly the plane for an away game because the team was either out of control or fighting?
Man, when I saw the title of th is thread, my first reaction was "man, I really don't want to know where that guy is now; leave him in the past." :hihi:
Ok... Roman Starns DID INDEED pin a bear, it happened at Bandini's night club in Haslam, Texas. I was there. I also graduated with Roman who was an awesome ath... He also wanted nothing more than to be an LSU Tiger... Recruited under one coach and rode the bench under another...
