University of Alabama law student William G. Little learned how to play American football while attending prep school in Andover, Massachusetts and began teaching the sport to fellow Alabama students in early 1892.
Alabama’s first game was played in Birmingham on Friday afternoon, Nov. 11, 1892, at the old Lakeview Park. The opposition was furnished by a picked team from high schools in the Birmingham area, with Alabama winning, 56-0.
The Name:
At an Alabama-Auburn game in 1907, the “Thin Red Line” (their name at the time) played a great game in the red mud and held Auburn to a 6-6 tie, in which Hugh Roberts, a former sports editor of the Birmingham Age-Herald, described Alabama’s performance as a “Crimson Tide.”
