1972 – Cotton Bowl- Alabama and Texas

COTTON BOWL FLASHBACK:

Alan Lowry And The Thin White Line

by Larry Carlson  ( lc13@txstate.edu )

Written on December 15, 2022

Fifty years ago, college football officiating crews did not spend thirty minutes during each game, reviewing plays and deciding whether or not to uphold or reverse calls made in real time, the whiz-bang way they went down.  And for fifty years, Alabama fans with elephant-like memories still believe Texas QB Alan Lowry was out of bounds on the winning touchdown run on New Year’s Day.

It was football weather, 48 degrees, in Dallas for the Cotton Bowl game to cap the 1972 season.

Southern-fried football at its wishbone best was on the menu, with fourth-ranked Alabama and seventh-ranked Texas ready to rumble.  Each team was 9-1, having won the SEC and SWC titles, respectively. UT’s lone loss had come in this same stadium, against Oklahoma in October.  The Tide had been a prime national championship contender just one month earlier.  But Auburn turned not one but two blocked punts into instant touchdowns in the nightmarish fourth quarter to stun Bama, 17-16, in the Iron Bowl rivalry matchup.

With teams led by college football’s two biggest marquee coaches — Bear Bryant and Darrell Royal — the Cotton Bowl would have another sellout crowd and a huge TV audience.  The Tide had learned the wishbone extremely well, courtesy of DKR and his staff tutoring the Bear.  He had visited Royal and Emory Bellard following the 1970 season and Bryant later hosted the UT duo in Tuscaloosa for higher education that led to Alabama’s super-successful switch to the triple option in ’71.

Royal’s team had just won its fifth-straight Southwest Conference title, its fifth consecutive ticket to the Cotton Bowl Classic.  Texas sophomore fullback Roosevelt Leaks followed All-America tackle Jerry Sisemore in much the same manner that the Tide’s great Wilbur Jackson leaned on big John Hannah for running room.

Alabama quickly built a 10-0 first quarter lead, converting two interceptions.  Alan Lowry, UT’s All-SWC quarterback, just a year removed from all-conference status as a defensive back, had seldom thrown the ball all season.  The Horns relied on the one-two ground game punch of Leaks and Lowry.  

While millions of football fans were feeling a tad queasy on the day following New Year’s Eve revelry, Texas was fortunate to have Lowry even suited up.  He had spent the previous day and night with a high fever.

“They had to keep changing the sheets because I was sweating ’em up so much,” Alan told me by phone from his home in Tennessee last year.

Texas got a Billy “Sure” Schott field goal in the second quarter after stalling at the Bama three but the Tide answered with their second FG and took a 13-3 lead to the locker room at halftime.

The second half would belong to the Burnt Orange.  The magnificent Texas “D,” led by linebackers Randy Braband (19 total tackles) and Glen Gaspard along with rover Bruce Cannon, shut down Bama’s passing and successfully stymied Jackson on the ground.  Port Arthur soph Terry Melancon picked off two passes and ripped a would-be TD away from a Bama receiver in the end zone.

The Leaks-and-Lowry show produced 120 yards by the former and 117 by the latter.  After a three-yard Lowry TD in the third period, Texas still trailed, 13-10, with under five minutes to go.  That’s when the play that still haunts Bama fans unfolded.  On third-and-two from the Tide 34, Lowry faked to Leaks, then to RB Tommy Landry and took off on a wide arc down the left sideline, tip-toeing his way along the boundary, it seemed, and dashed in for UT’s first lead of the day.  Television replays, then impotent as a force for reversal, hinted that the senior QB might have stepped out of bounds near the ten-yardline.  

The Crimson Tide, suddenly trailing 17-13 and needing a touchdown to win, drove to the Longhorn 43 before Braband stonewalled Jackson on a do-or-die fourth and short.

Defensive end Jay Arnold fondly recalled Braband’s heroics just last week.  “Randy was a steady, tough, durable linebacker who was at his finest when it was fourth down and one yard to go,” Arnold said.

“I always hoped they would run right at Randy in those situations because I knew the opposing team wouldn’t make it.  Just like when he stuffed Wilbur Jackson.”

Texas had won its third Cotton Bowl in five years, Royal’s final victory there.  Lowry, a most resilient patient, was named the game’s Offensive MVP and Braband took Defensive MVP honors.  The Horns’ triumph lifted them to a number three final ranking, bested since by only the 1981, 2005 and 2009 squads. They trailed only national champ USC and arch-rival OU.

Grousing by Bama fans who had watched on TV didn’t resonate with “the Bear,” who finished 0-3-1 against his good friend, DKR, despite his teams being favored in all four contests.  “Texas deserved to win the game, they have a great team,” Bryant said.  

He had displayed similar, characteristic class in the wake of a loss to Texas in the Orange Bowl following the ’64 season.  Quarterback Joe Namath and Bama teammates thought Joe Willie had crossed the goal on fourth down before Tommy Nobis slammed the door on the team already crowned as national champs.  “If you can’t score on four downs from the six…you don’t deserve to win,” shrugged the Tide’s immortal coach.

Lowry’s “wuzze in or wuzze out?” run quickly became the stuff of legends, even in its grainy film/pre-video era.  One short production set the 34-yard run to Johnny Cash”s “I Walk The Line.”  

But Lowry’s penchant for the big play had only begun.

  In a coaching career that included five years (’77-’81) for Fred Akers at Texas and nine years as an assistant with the Dallas Cowboys, it was in the Oklahoma native’s (he was born in Miami, OK and grew up in Irving, TX) seventeen seasons with the Tennessee Titans that he earned immortality.  Lowry is known as the Dr. Frankenstein who created “the Music City Miracle” that paved the way for the Titans to play in Super Bowl XXXIV.  

January 2000 saw the Buffalo Bills take a 16-15 lead over Tennessee in Nashville, with just sixteen seconds to go.  But the Titans made a successful handoff on the kickoff, then threw a long lateral pass and got a 75-yard streak to a, well, miraculous victory.  Alan Lowry had done it again.

Fifty years later, some folks in the Yellowhammer State won’t budge on the contention that Alabama was robbed on Lowry’s tightrope act that chilly afternoon in Big D.  But fifty years later, the Cotton Bowl score of 1-1-73 still reads:  

Texas 17, Alabama 13.

Now 72, retired and enjoying grandkids in Franklin, TN, Alan Lowry continues to live large in Longhorn lore.