The University of Alabama Crimson Tide football program began play in 1892. After understandable hiccups getting the team started, and after loosening Alabama’s onerous travel restrictions on campus teams, ‘Bama finally got its program off the ground with its first spate of success in the first decade of the new century.
The Tide did it the way most growing programs did at the time: by hiring a professional coach. For Alabama, that would J.W.H Pollard.
Pollard led the Tide to a 21-4-5 record. Besides raising the profile of the program, Pollard also introduced the “military shift” to southern college football.