“The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football’s Most Elusive Prize,” by Keith Dunnavant. St. Martin’s Press. 336 pages. $24.95. Hardcover.



“Suddenly the whole world seemed not to make sense. Suddenly, all those harrowing moments in gym class…all those excruciating days on the practice field…all those rigid rules around the dorm…all those hard-hitting games…seemed like a gigantic waste of time. The whole Alabama football experience suddenly felt like one big tease, one big con, one big lie.”

Athens native Keith Dunnavant sums up the feeling of the undefeated1966 Crimson Tide’s losing out in the press service polls, falling to third place in the voting behind No. 1 Notre Dame and No. 2 Michigan State, in his recently published book, “The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied Football’s Most Elusive Prize.”

The book, Dunnavant’s fourth non-fiction work, was published this month to critical acclaim across the nation.

Paul Finebaum, of Paul Finebaum Radio Network, writes, “His quiet prose goes down as effortlessly as bourbon and branch water. Fans of college football will marvel at his painstaking research.”

Jim Dent, author of “The Junction Boys,” writes, “Keith Dunnavant has written yet another fabulous book about the fabled Alabama football program. You will be amazed at how one of the great injustices in the history of college football cost them their rightful place in history. And you just thought the system was screwed up now.”

Tonight, Dunnavant will be the guest of his brother, Tom Dunnavant, at a book signing at his home at 1018 W. Washington St. A social hour for the public will begin at 7:30 p.m., and the author will be present to sign books and chat with readers at 8:30 after returning from a book signing at Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Huntsville.

It is Dunnavant’s contention that the undefeated 1966 Crimson Tide lost out at the ballot box while “chasing history” to win an unprecedented third national collegiate football championship because the team fell victim to the state’s history of racial segregation.

It is Dunnavant’s thesis that the University of Alabama’s notorious forced integration after Gov. George Wallace’s stand in the schoolhouse door and the slowness at which Bryant integrated his team that cost the famed team its “threepeat.”

What makes Dunnavant’s book so highly readable – even for those of us football-challenged few in the state – is the novel-like style in which it is written. He delves into the past of each of the players to explain why they would sacrifice so much to play for “The Bear.”

Throughout, Dunnavant draws a parallel to the boys of 1966 and the economic fortunes of the state, which only began to improve in the later part of the 20th century. He uses a “broken plate” metaphor for the driving force behind the players to succeed as a Crimson Tide player.

The “broken plate” refers to a story related to Dunnavant by team member David Chatwood, who told the author that when he left home for Alabama his father told him, “Son, I’m breaking your plate.”

“I didn’t need a translation,” Chatwood recalled. “He meant that I had made a commitment to Alabama and Coach Bryant, that I was a man now, and that I better honor my commitment and go out and make a life for myself. I didn’t have a home to come back to if I decided to quit.”

Dunnavant said each of Bryant’s 1966 players had his own broken plate. For many, a football scholarship was the only means they had to a higher education. Dunnavant writes a mini biography of each player, closely examining the relationship each had or didn’t have with his father. That relationship, either good or bad, eventually extends to the paternal quality of Bryant’s interaction with his players.

But Bryant, the archetypal father, deals out more punishment than praise. Each player knows he must work for Coach Bryant’s respect and in return he gives him an almost god-like devotion.

Dunnavant, who divides his writing time between being founder and president of Solovox Publishing in Atlanta and his newly established documentary production company, ShadowVision Productions, has just signed a contract with St. Martin’s Press to write a book about former Tide player and Green Bay Packers luminary Bart Starr, which will be out in fall 2008.

“It wasn’t just the University’s slow response (to integration), but in the case of the ’66 team, there was two competing images: George Wallace and Bear Bryant. And it was impossible to separate the two,” said Dunnavant this week.

“This is not about a 40-year grudge, but it is a snapshot of a state on the brink of change. I wanted to give insight into the sport, but also I wanted the book to have the texture of a novel to make you feel it and smell it.”

Tonight’s reception for Dunnavant comes two weeks after a similar event at the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in Birmingham where about 40 of the 1966 team were on hand, as well as about 500 Alabama fans and sports writers.

Dunnavant will also be guest speaker for an Athens-Limestone Public Library fundraiser Nov. 2.