Reviews for Rising tide : Bear Bryant, Joe Namath, and Dixie's last quarter
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Legendary hard-nosed University of Alabama football coach Bear Bryant and cocky Northern playboy quarterback Joe Namath seemed the oddest of odd couples in the early 1960s, but they forged a permanent personal relationship in Tuscaloosa. Although Bryant and Namath teamed up for some spectacular college football, they were doing so in the heart of the segregated South as disturbing events and villains surrounded them. That civil rights history is depicted here along with the football. Roberts (history, Purdue Univ.; A Team for America) and historian Krzemienski present a fine profile of Bryant and offer the best treatment of the pre-professional Namath yet printed. Although all three elements of this story-coach, player, and civil rights history-are exceedingly well researched and portrayed, the flaw is that the authors make no real connections among them. The revered, God-like Dixie football coach and the nonconformist Yankee big-man-on-campus quarterback formed a forceful bond, but they each stood above, apart from, and seemingly untouched by the ugly racial strife all around them. VERDICT The riveting depictions of Bryant and Namath will be of interest to all football fans, and the segregated South so vividly evoked here should never be forgotten. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Roberts and Krzemienski, each a sports historian in his own fashion, focus here on the hugely successful, sometimes contentious partnership of legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant and quarterback Joe Namath, who led the Crimson Tide to the 1964 national championship. The authors deliver three-dimensional portraits of both men Bryant, a coach so relentlessly demanding of his players that he was universally dreaded, and Namath, laid-back and nonconforming to 'Bama's hidebound ways but also blessed with preternatural skills and a will to win equal to that of his coach while giving accounts of virtually all the games Namath played there. If the segregationist Alabama football program was a stain on the university during that racially turbulent era and the authors pay special attention to the issue neither Bryant nor Namath seemed all that bothered by it. Perhaps a secondary book, since so much has been written about both Bryant and Namath, but one can rarely overestimate the public's demand for all things football.--Moores, Alan Copyright 2010 Booklist
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
The intertwining stories of a Southern football coaching legend, a star quarterback (who would craft his own legend) and the volatile civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Roberts (History/Purdue Univ.; A Team for America: The ArmyNavy Game that Rallied a Nation, 2012, etc.) teams with Krzemienski (History/Ball State Univ.), who has consulted for HBO sports documentaries and who hails from Beaver Falls, Pa., Namath's hometown. The authors begin with Namath's arrival in Tuscaloosa, where he would attend the University of Alabama. The school was not his first choice, but his SAT scores were below the requirements at Maryland, Notre Dame and others. The authors then catch us up to speed on Paul "Bear" Bryant's life and career, the cultural history of football in the South and the steel-manufacturing life along the Beaver River (near where it dumps into the Ohio). Roberts and Krzemienski then proceed in steady chronology, pausing continually to rehearse the history of the civil rights movement. All the major moments are here (unusual in a sports book): the integration of the Southern universities, the Freedom Riders, the murder of James Meredith, the crusaders for segregation (Gov. George Wallace, Bull Connor), the pathetic pace of integration in Southern college sports. When the Crimson Tide ended the 1964 season ranked No. 1 in the nation, they did so without fielding any black players or playing any teams with any black players. Conventional sportswriting is here, too: accounts of games, individual plays, Namath's knee injury, his draft and signing with the New York Jets. The authors sometimes leap over the line separating reporting from celebrating, offering continual paeans to Bryant's character and to Namath's abilities. A generally appealing blend of eager sportswriting and sober cultural history.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
