Before there was Joe Willie or Snake, before the Heisman Trophy winners, before television brought University of Alabama football into every living room in the state, there was still a superstar.
Harry Gilmer.
There were big names in Crimson Tide history before Gilmer, of course, names like Johnny Mack Brown and Dixie Howell and the incomparable Don Hutson. But for a generation coming out of World War II and hungry for athletic heroes, Gilmer was the big name of Alabama history, a Rose Bowl hero, the No. 1 pick of the 1948 NFL Draft and an icon inside the state.