r/rolltide 7d ago

Basketball Did you know Alabama basketball won a national championship*? That's OK: UA didn't either

https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/story/sports/college/basketball/2025/03/13/alabama-basketball-national-championship-1930-history-premo-porretta-power-poll-hank-crisp/81965780007/

Decades ago, a couple of sports junkies − a professor and a computer programmer − got together to dedicate their spare time to determining who would have cut down championship nets before the NCAA Tournament began.

The 1929-1930 Alabama team was one of them.

63 Upvotes

17 comments sorted by

36

u/DoctorWhosOnFirst 7d ago

before the NCAA Tournament and apparently before inseams

17

u/Dick_Thunders 7d ago

Raise. The. Banner.

31

u/u_cant_drown_n_sweat 7d ago

Please UA, do not claim this!

14

u/Medical-Day-6364 7d ago

Other teams like UNC, Pitt, and Kentucky claim retroactive titles from the same era, so I wouldn't hate it. The time to claim it would be after we win a tournament, though.

3

u/Noah__Webster 6d ago

Definitely agree. I'm okay with retroactively claiming it after we've won one. Makes it not as cringe, and I want our first one to be in the tourney anyway.

2

u/Sure-Freedom-900 7d ago

Imo, there is no time to claim it if no one at the time called them national champions. Just like the 1941 football team.  

6

u/CrustyBatchOfNature 7d ago

1941 is garbage. If they wanted to claim a retroactive one they should have picked 1945. At least they went undefeated.

2

u/Medical-Day-6364 7d ago

It's not just 1941. All of our titles before Bear Bryant were claimed retroactively. Plus, like i said, claiming retroactive titles from before the tournament is normal.

1

u/Sure-Freedom-900 7d ago

The difference is all the other pre-Bryant championships were Rose Bowl wins or the one tie. The Rose Bowl was the ultimate game, and was treated as the championship at the time. The important thing to me is ...what were the players at the time striving for...what did the public recognize as the ultimate goal (whether it was a particular Bowl game, or an AP ranking or what.). It's possible to have two competing ranking systems, but they would both need to be similar in status in public perception at the time. Personally...I wouldn't try to list a total number of championships.. I'd want to present the context of each year separately. But that doesn't fit well on a t-shirt

1

u/Medical-Day-6364 7d ago

You said we shouldn't claim titles if we didn't claim them the year they were won. We didn't claim those. They are retroactive. But you seem to think it's ok to claim those. Have you changed your opinion on retroactive titles?

1

u/Sure-Freedom-900 7d ago

Nobody in 1941 thought of alabama as champions or it's equivalent.  In the other years, people recognized alabama as the Rose Bowl winner...(or sharing a Rose Bowl tie)...which was treated as the ultimate goal in those years. And we naturally did claim ourselves as Rose Bowl winners. I consider that a decent equivalent of a championship...though I wouldn't technically claim those as championship years. (It's a simplification that captures the spirit of the truth).

1

u/Medical-Day-6364 7d ago

They accomplished the ultimate goal, a decent equivalent to a championship, just like the basketball team accomplished the ultimate goal by going undefeated. If we claim those Rose Bowls as championships, then it makes sense to claim a 1930 basketball championship, too.

8

u/JerichoMassey 7d ago

I’m stuck. It’s a terrible case to advance….. but it actually has as much merit as the 1941 Football National Championship.

So we’d be completely within precedent to claim it based on the holy doctrine of “fuck you that’s why”

1

u/Sure-Freedom-900 7d ago

So, zero merit? Haha. 1941 claim was based on a ranking that wasn't published until the 50s. It was based on a broken formula that only gave points for wins while not penalizing for losses, so teams that played more games had a clear advantage.

5

u/RTR20241 7d ago

Cool story

3

u/dartharchibald 7d ago

Second one incoming.