Tennessee-Alabama 1968: A redemption block

Jim Weatherford couldn’t help but think about it.

The Tennessee defensive back only had a moment, but as he watched Alabama kicker Mike Dean line up for a field goal about 10 yards in front of him, his mind conjured up a painful memory from 1966.

Weatherford thought about Gary Wright’s missed field goal—and chance at Vol football immortality—in a one-point loss on the same field against the same team two years earlier.

“I could see it happening,” Weatherford recalled in Al Browning’s book, The Third Saturday in October. “A field goal winning the game for them after we had failed.”

Just before Dean’s boot from the 26-yard line with five seconds left on the clock, Weatherford hurried over to Nick Showalter at the end of the line. 

He told Showalter to switch places with him.

As the ball came off of Dean’s foot, Weatherford came crashing in from the right side, going unblocked and stretching out every inch of both hands.

The Crimson Tide’s best chance of a miraculous triumph in the whirlwind of a final five minutes went ricocheting off of Weatherford’s hands and hung in the air. Mike Jones ran under it and went running into the shadows of the press box on the west side of Neyland Stadium and into the arms of head coach Doug Dickey along the Tennessee sideline.

No bad memories on this day.
Weatherford’s heroics staved off disappointment and instead secured a 10-9 Tennessee victory by the slimmest of margins that Oct. 19, 1968 afternoon in Knoxville.

“No, nobody told me to change places with Nick,” Weatherford told reporters. “We just did it…I thought it was a good idea.”

It was good enough to live on in Third Saturday in October lore.

No Tennessee-Alabama finish in the 100-plus years of their annual scrap was quite like this one. The Vols had to win it twice in the closing minutes.

Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide, which had been responsible for so much Tennessee anguish before, kept coming back to life.

 Weatherford was very likely not the only one inside Neyland Stadium thinking of the heartbreaking climax of that 1966 game when Dean came trotting on to the field for a shot at the winning kick.

Nearly 64,000 spectators, mainly clad in orange, sat on the edge of their seats, some stunned, some silent, some yelling out in a last-ditch attempt to distract Dean. Most of them, though, had to have been asking “how?”

Tennessee had beaten Alabama the year before—a 24-13 decision at Legion Field in Birmingham. It was the Vols’ first in the series in seven tries and the first under Dickey, who was in the middle of leading the program to its first SEC title in more than a decade and an Orange Bowl berth.

Tennessee was unbeaten heading into the 1968 match up. It opened the season with a 17-17 tie against Georgia, then won the next five games, including a blowout of Georgia Tech.

Alabama had won three and lost one against Ole Miss two weeks before playing the Vols.
So big was the pending clash between Tennessee and the Crimson Tide that Richard M. Nixon during a presidential campaign stop in Knoxville earlier that week was asked to pick a winner. He gave a political answer, declining to pick either.

On the front page of the Knoxville News-Sentinel the day of the game, alongside a wire report on the South Vietnamese president refusing talks with the Viet Cong and the pending reentry of Apollo 7, a photograph of Bear Bryant walking into a rain-soaked Neyland Stadium the previous day appeared with the headline: “Vol-Tide winner can dream of title.”

“Today’s loser in the Tennessee-Alabama game can forget it,” the News-Sentinel’s Marvin West wrote. “Dreams of a Southeastern Conference championship will be nightmarish for one side or the other by the time evening shadows engulf Neyland Stadium.

“The game must count double for the Tide. They’ve been talking about it since the Volunteers knocked them loose last year in Birmingham.”

ABC cameras were mounted all around Neyland Stadium, set for a 2:20 p.m. kickoff on the network with Keith Jackson and legendary former Oklahoma head coach Bud Wilkinson on the call.

But for all of the buildup, the fireworks were few in the first 55 minutes. Tennessee’s lone touchdown came at the end of a 63-yard drive when Richmond Flowers leapt across the goal line for a 7-0 lead in the first quarter.

The two teams traded field goals after that, one by Dean and another by Karl Kremser from an SEC-record 54 yards out with room to spare. Tennessee led 10-3 with eight minutes left.

Alabama had a few more punches to give, though. The biggest was a 4-yard touchdown toss from Scott Hunter to Donnie Sutton to finish off an 80-yard scoring march. The Vols lead was 10-9.

Bryant made a gutsy decision, one he later called “stupid.” The Crimson Tide went for two and the win with two minutes to go.

Bryant switched to Joe Kelly at quarterback for the two-point play. He rolled to his left, looking for something to open up before darting a pass into a crowd around the goal line.

Kelly was trying for Sutton again, but the ball was knocked away and fell harmlessly to the turf.

The Vols held. Neyland Stadium erupted.

“Donnie Sutton was the man for whom that pass was intended and listen to that Tennessee career,” Jackson said as the ABC cameras panned around to the mostly elated mass of humanity waving orange shakers.

Tennessee was right back on the doorstep back of its second-straight win over Alabama. All it had left to do was field an onside kick.

Vinnie Schilleci’s kick steered left from the 40 and the ball bounced in between the Vols’ Steve Kiner and Dave Filson at the 50. A scrum of orange and white jerseys pounced. Somewhere underneath the pile a Crimson Tide player was clinging to it.

New life, somehow, someway, for Alabama.

Hunter tried for the knockout punch to Sutton. His pass was too long. He went 17 yards over the middle of the field to Danny Ford, who snagged it between two Tennessee defenders. First down inside of the 30.

Hunter’s third pass towards the sideline sailed high. Forty seconds remained. He went back to the sideline, this time on the other side of the field and Bobby Swafford, seemingly covered up by Weatherford, lost the ball as he crashed out of bounds at the 25.

An official came running in, signaling a catch. Weatherford pounded the turf in protest.
Pete Jilleba inched Alabama closer, plunging through the Vols’ defensive front for five more yards. Dean was now well within range.

Two more plays gained just six yards as the clock ticked down to five seconds. Bryant sent his field goal team out. 

Weatherford’s decision to swap with Showalter was a callback to one week earlier when the two called their own number and traded places before blocking a field goal against Georgia Tech. 

He knew he had gotten his hands on the ball again, but he kept his face down, afraid to get up and look.

It wasn’t until he lifted himself up and saw the Tennessee sideline empty onto the field that he realized he had gotten enough of his hand on it.

“The stage was all set to make it one of football’s all-time classics,” Alf Van Hoose penned for the Birmingham News. “The scene was fitting. Perfect. Storied old Neyland Stadium on golden October Saturday. All it took was a 36-yard field goal by little Mike Dean.

“But in these cruel times, there sometimes is a jagged ending. Old prince and pauper tales may have been replaced. Life is harsh.”

The Vols didn’t win the SEC as it turned out. Neither did Alabama. Georgia ended up with the conference crown. A story-book finish by the Vols to draw even with no time left kept the Bulldogs from being perfect.

Tennessee did win eight games, though—its lone regular season blemish a 28-14 loss to Auburn in Birmingham three weeks later. Texas delivered a bitter finish in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas a few months after that.

The win over Alabama was one of four-straight for the Vols in the series. It gave Weatherford a better Third Saturday in October memory to think back on.