With Alabama’s Rose Bowl victory, The Atlanta Journal proudly proclaimed that “The Crimson Tide no longer belonged exclusively to Tuscaloosa and the State of Alabama. It belongs to the whole South, just like the Stone Mountain Memorial.”
Among all Southerners, including middle-class and upper-class, the extravagant recognition they draped over the Crimson Tide was, in so many ways, filled with references to the South’s chivalric past.
Southerners began considering Alabama’s Rose Bowl victory as the renewal of the positive traditions of the “Old South.”
University of Georgia President Sanford stated that Alabama “upheld the tradition and fighting spirit of the Old South.” The Old South was being reborn, with Southerners beginning to develop football, along with activities that evoked the old Southern aristocracy.
But for the majority of Southerners, the core of t...
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