One Night, Two Teams: Alabama vs. USC and the Game that Changed a Nation | 
 enlarge | Author: Steven Travers
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 785194
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.5
ISBN: 1589793706
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.332630973
EAN: 9781589793705
ASIN: 1589793706
Publication Date: September 25, 2007
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Condition: Ships immediately! Perfect and New! 2007 Hardcover.
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Product Description
In sweltering heat of September of 1970 on Legion Field, the USC Trojans and the University of Alabama's Crimson Tide played a game that defined the emancipation of the South from its sordid history of racial segregation. When USC's black running back Sam The Bam Cunningham ran roughshod all over the all-white Crimson Tide, more than a football game was won. Based on interviews with many of the game's participants and thoroughly researched this book presents sports as a metaphor for one of the most profound social changes in history.
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 Talk about the game already!!! July 5, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Being a USC alum and naturally a huge fan of USC football, I was very excited when I saw this title available in the local bookstore. Had I read the reviews already posted here I would have saved my money. To say I am hugely disappointed by this book would be an understatement like saying Reggie Bush is kinda fast.
The premise of this book is the 1970 game between USC and Alabama, two teams who were powerhouses at the time, but were studies in contrast. USC was in Los Angeles, California, home to sun, surf, movie stars, and a football team composed of an eclectic collection of surfer-dude types, black athletes, Greek rich kids, and the like. They were a thoroughly integrated team which had already produced two black Heisman Trophy winners in Mike Garrett and O.J. Simpson, and had won national championships with those integrated teams.
Alabama, meanwhile, was still a bastion of segregation, the varsity football team in 1970 was still all-white, but they were a competitive power due to the coaching acumen of the legendary coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. The game between the two schools was meant to show the segregationist Alabama boosters that if they wanted to continue having a powerful football team, then integration was the way to go.
Sounds like a great premise for a football book, right? Well - it is, except that the author instead goes on long treatises about slavery, the role of Christianity in shaping modern America, the rightness of Republican ideals, the Civil Rights struggle, and any and all topics EXCEPT seemingly - the game itself! There are numerous interviews with people who were associated with both programs at the time, but they're not paced and edited in such a way that they drive the story forward. Instead, they seem like meandering sidebars at best, and page-long non sequiturs at worst. I'm about 3/4ths done with this book, and finding it a slogging read - it's about as much fun as a biology textbook.
I do not recommend this book. It is not an easy, uplifting, or even particularly informative read. It instead seems to beat you over the head with Christianity and how wonderful and instrumental it was in bringing the races together and helping to integrate that most segregated of teams, the Alabama Crimson Tide, but much of the book even contradicts that notion, given that many of the interviewees in the book basically mentioned that "the time was right" and indeed, Bama had already brought in a few black players by that time, and Christianity had little, if anything to do with it.
Save your money and just watch the youtube clip about the game, as I'm sure you'll find it much more concise, accurate, and to the point than this entire book.
Take it from SC's class of '02, Garbage January 26, 2008
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book is absolutely terrible. There are no redeeming qualities about Mr. Travers attempt to chronicle the social change surrounding the 1970 meeting between USC and Alabama in Birmingham.
First, he has managed to turn a book about the social ramifications of a football game into his own personal crusade for Christianity, the Republican Party, and Platonic Ideals.
The Platonic stuff seems thrown in to make Mr. Travers seem more intelligent than he actually is and he forgets that National Socialism used Plato as a basis for its ideology. SInce he puts so much of this into the mouth of one of his personal favorites, John Papadakis, who was clearly cooperative in gathering information about SC in 1970, it seems that he is also suffering from hero worship. The portrayal of Papadakis as the "saintly go-between" for blacks and whites on the team is disputed in this very book by Trojan legend Anthony Davis.
His conclusion that conservatives and Republicans in particular were the party of racial equality, albeit on their own slow time line, and Democrats are the party of repression of minorities is not only historically inaccurate, but reeks of a revisionism that has permeated the Republican party as it courts minorities. He also mentions the greatness of Newt Gingrich but attacks President Clinton for his "immorality".
Mr. Travers also revises the massacre of Native Americans by the United States as "an inevitable clash of civilizations". But he has no problem declaring that every colonizing country prior to the US was barbarous in the manner in which they murdered, raped, spread disease amongst and stole from native people across the globe. He uses the ever-ethical argument that slavery is somewhat justified because "blacks in America are so much better off than blacks in Africa" defense. So that he doesn't seem like the total racist that he clearly is, Mr. Travers interjects constant reminders that "slavery was wrong".
Mr. Travers claims that Bear Bryant was absolutely not a racist, he didn't integrate his program because of the administration and alumni base. But he tells us that Bear could have been the governor of Alabama he was so popular there. He "walked on water" for these folks, but couldn't have said that he wanted to recruit some African_American players? If he made a fuss about it, wouldn't it have been the university administration that would have been attacked rather than the demi-god Coach Bryant?
Lastly, Mr. Travers has not compunction about comparing these men on a football field to soldiers on a battlefield. When Kellen Winslow does it, he is roundly criticized, a fact Mr. Travers must have been aware of, but when another personal favorite of his, Marv Goux, longtime USC assistant coach does it, it is a great metaphor for a game. To add insult to injury, Mr. Travers wrote this as the Iraq War is still on going and real soldiers are giving their lives for their country. But it is the liberals who are ruining this country by trying to bring them home. Maybe Mr. Travers thinks that the condidtions in Iraq are no worse than a spirited football practice or hard-fought contest. That would explain his hatred of Vietnam War protesters and those who oppose the Iraq War.
As a fellow USC alumnus I think Mr. Travers has taken the USC fight song, "Fight On" too literally.
 RICK SHAQ GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "THIS BOOK IS MORE FOR ANCIENT WORLD HISTORY "BUFF'S" THAN FOOTBALL FANS!" October 2, 2007
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
On September 12, 1970 a powerful integrated USC Football Team came to Alabama to play a segregated University Of Alabama Football Team in a game that would be considered a landmark to many in future generations. USC led by two black, future NFL players Sam Cunningham and Clarence Davis, stunned Alabama with a crushing defeat on it's home field. One of legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant's assistants said, "Bam' Cunningham did more for integration in an hour than has been done in the last one hundred years." Holy cow!
Since I was a loyal USC Football fan growing up in Los Angeles during that time, when I heard about this book, I was excited and looking forward to its release. I'm sad to say that as a football fan I was disappointed when I read it. This book reads more like an ancient world history text book, with much less actual football action than I anticipated. The author not only quotes Socrates and Plato, but discussed Thucydides and the "HISTORY OF PELOPONNESIAN WAR", detailing Athens's losing battle with Sparta from 431 to 404 BC. Rome's loss to the Barbarians, the Spanish Inquisition, books by Fareed Zakaria intertwining Western civilization embodied by the Christian Church, the Greeks, the Roman Senate, the Magna Carta, and Oliver Cromwell's England... and on.. and on.
The periodic interview/statements by sportswriter's, players, etc at the end of chapters, while well intentioned, seemed to ramble and meander away from the main points.
If you're looking for a hard hitting sports oriented book, this may not be the book for you.
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