Much of the Archie 'mystique' stems ...
Yeah, passing QBs were unheard of back then. That is a really high success rate for the time.
from this game. In '68 few games were televised and this one was one of the first to be shown in prime time. I was in high school but remember it well.
http://espn.go.com/college-football...ootball-first-major-primetime-game-stands-out
Ole Miss-Alabama game still legendary
When No. 2 Alabama (6-0) plays Ole Miss (2-3) on Saturday evening, the nation will not lift its head unless there's an upset. It will be one of 26 college football games that ESPN will televise Saturday, one of 11 it will show under the lights. We take that for granted these days. It is news when a game is not televised.
Once upon a time, in 1968, 11 years before ESPN was born, a regular-season college football game had never been televised in network prime time. ABC experimented with a late-season game between Alabama and Miami. A year later, it remained a novelty. If you want to know when the modern history of the sport began, go back 42 seasons to an early October night. A genius named Roone Arledge had the idea to show Alabama play Mississippi, and the game turned out to be one of the greatest in the history of the Southeastern Conference.
The game may have had that impact because it was televised.
But it definitely had that impact because of a skinny junior quarterback who became a folk hero in the manner that Southerners have mastered throughout this nation's history -- in a losing cause.
On Oct. 4, 1969, at Legion Field in Birmingham, Ole Miss quarterback Archie Manning completed 33-of-52 passes for 436 yards and two touchdowns. He ran 15 times for 104 yards and three touchdowns. He gave the first indication that the program that coach Paul (Bear) Bryant had built at Alabama had begun to slide (the Tide would finish the season 6-5).
To put Manning's performance in perspective,
no player had ever thrown for as many as 300 yards and rushed for 100 in a major-college game. Manning did all of that, and yet the No. 20 Rebels lost to the No. 15 Crimson Tide, 33-32.
"We couldn't rush Archie. We couldn't contain him, either," said Alabama athletic director Mal Moore. He was a defensive assistant that night.
