Alabama fans say they’ve never rushed a field. We looked into it. – AL.com

The mayhem began at 10:47 p.m.

Mere seconds after Seth Small’s 28-yard field goal slid inside the left upright, the sea of humanity flowed like a levee broke in a scene not quite common but not without precedent.

Beating Alabama like Texas A&M did Oct. 9 on its home turf often leads to these chaotic on-field celebrations. In fact, the last time a Crimson Tide road loss wasn’t immediately followed by fans rushing the field came 11 years ago against the same LSU program that’ll visit Tuscaloosa this Saturday.

While there’s been some serious emotion in this rivalry between Alabama and LSU, there’s at least one near certainty for the scene in Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday night. Should Alabama avenge the last loss it suffered on that turf, it won’t be covered by students and fans in the moments that followed.

There’s a clear sense of pride — perhaps a touch of hubris — among those who pack the 101,000-seat stadium that Alabama hasn’t rushed the field after a big win.

The only home win over a No. 1 team came in 2014 over Mississippi State as Jay-Z’s “On to the next one” pumped through the speakers in the closing seconds. A visit from Auburn was two weeks away in a highly anticipated rematch a year after the infamous Kick Six and subsequent field storming. But there was no breach of security after Alabama’s 55-44 Iron Bowl win that November.

The win over that top-ranked Mississippi State team seven years ago was one of just four at home over top-five teams in the last 30 years. Each was capped by a round or two of Rammer Jammers but there aren’t archival photos of Bryant-Denny Stadium awash in a sea of celebrants.

But is it true Alabama fans have never hopped the fence to celebrate on the field or is it a boastful revisionist history?

In the modern era, yes.

Alabama is one of four SEC schools that’s never been fined since the league banned field/court-storming celebrations in 2004. Georgia, Mississippi State and Florida are the other three, but the history goes deeper than the last 17 years.

Go back a few decades and the waters muddy but it’s safe to say there haven’t been any of the free-for-all scenes like at Texas A&M in early October.

Any history Alabama has with field incursions goes back to the Legion Field era, and they weren’t exactly successful.

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Tracking the history of fans rushing fields, admittedly, is an inexact science. They just don’t keep those stats, save for the SEC tracking fines since the rule went into effect.

The nature of the act and the ultimate objective evolved over the years where tearing down the goal posts was once the mission, a midfield moshpit is a more contemporary move. In fact, of the five times opposing students rushed the field after beating Alabama in the Nick Saban era, only Ole Miss fans in 2014 took down the goal posts.

Auburn’s been fined three times for Iron Bowl field incursions (2013, 2017, 2019) with the most damage occurring in the hedges rather than the uprights. It can be a dicey scene with often well-hydrated and overjoyed fans entering an area occupied by two fully-padded teams — one of whom isn’t quite happy to welcome visitors.

Then-Alabama defensive back Tony Brown had a physical confrontation with an Auburn fan who rushed the field after a 26-14 loss to the Tigers in 2017. One state trooper guarding Saban choke slammed an Ole Miss student who entered his bubble after the 2014 upset while a Texas A&M student collided with his security detail as they rushed him off the field in October. Saban stumbled but didn’t fall while coming away from the situation with a bruise on his forearm.

Saban said he uses those moments as motivation to avoid them happening in the future.

“I never feel threatened,” Saban said. “People are very respectful, actually. We have very good police protection and they’ve been very helpful. Hey, I’m excited that people are excited and back to watching football and being in games and having the opportunity to demonstrate their passion …”

That thought ended with a reference to Alabama’s response to big moments.

“… though I always try to encourage our fans to try and do everything they do in a first-class way.”

And that’s where the history comes into play with Alabama fans and the field of play.

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Since there’s limited or non-existent footage of the entire history, we turned to news archives to look for evidence of fields stormed.

We’re going back to the days of coach Ears Whitworth here.

Alabama football slipped far from the early success of Wallace Wade and Frank Thomas to the point of a 19-game winless streak from 1954-1956. So while a 13-12 win over Mississippi State might not seem like much to celebrate today, the Denny Stadium homecoming crowd of 25,000 was apparently quite impressed. Photos from the next day’s Tuscaloosa News showed fans on the playing surface celebrating with players after chanting about wanting a new coach in the second quarter.

“Bama fullback Don Kinderknecht gets a pummeling from some happy students …” read a photo caption on Page 5 of the Oct. 28, 1956 paper. The Birmingham News didn’t mention fans on the field, but the coverage took a tone of celebratory relief.

Of course, Whitworth’s time was short in Tuscaloosa and a new coach with a familiar name would soon have the program back to prominence.

And that led to one of the more notable fans-on-the-field moments in Alabama lore. Alabama had lost four straight Iron Bowls to Auburn from 1954-58 entering Bryant’s second year. A 10-0 Crimson Tide win sent the well-dressed fans past the Legion Field fences and toward the goalposts.

And, as the Huntsville Times front-page headline read, the fans weren’t exactly successful.

“Goals Prove Just As Tough As Tide Team: Fans Effort To Rip Goals Futile…,” the headline read above a story that led with “The Walls of Jericho came tumbling down, but not the goal posts at Legion Field.”

The story went on to explain the two legs of the H-shaped posts were encased in a 10-foot slab of concrete.

“From all directions they poured onto the field, milling with coaches and players, screaming and waving banners,” read the Nov. 29 story in The Birmingham News where a front-page photo showed fans sitting and straddling the crossbar. “Then a few of them rushed the north end zone goal posts and strained to rock them to earth. A few were quickly joined by a throng. And when they couldn’t remove the cemented posts, they scampered up the crossbar, cheering, swimming and going mad with sheer delight.”

It would be more than two decades before they tried again.

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Alabama had been on the losing end of a few goal-post demolitions in the Bryant era. Missouri students even broke into their empty stadium after a 1975 upset win over No. 2 Alabama in Birmingham to do the deed.

Twice in his final season rivals ended losing streaks against Alabama with Tennessee vandalizing its goalposts on Oct. 16 before Auburn did the same at Legion Field on Nov. 27. Perhaps the Iron Bowl episode set the stage for what happened in 1990 when Alabama ended a four-year skid against the Tigers.

News accounts estimated the damage from the 1982 Auburn win over Alabama at $15,000 ($42,600 adjusted for inflation) when the Tigers ended a nine-year losing streak against the Tide. The public reaction to this emotional release was notable.

“Electrify the posts so that they will heat in the same way as a stove eye, not wired to shock anyone,” Jim Stephenson of Jasper wrote in a letter published by Birmingham News sports editor Alf Van Hoose. “As the game winds down, the stadium crew can energize both goalposts. The heat will certainly discourage any gathering of overly exuberant fans.”

Birmingham police chief Arthur Deutsch suggested greasing the goal posts, according to the Birmingham News while the city’s parks and recreations director suggested a more forceful deterrent. Frank Wagner was quoted in the Dec. 21, 1982 edition of The Birmingham News, less than a month after the Iron Bowl, using the police response to a game between LSU and Tulane.

“Frankly,” Wagner said, “they marched out there and beat the hell out of some of ‘em.”

Skip ahead to 1990 and Alabama was the program suffering through four straight Iron Bowl losses before Gene Stallings took his first swing as head coach.

So a 16-7 Crimson Tide win lit a powder keg in the Alabama student section, and eventually, the Legion Field artificial turf. News accounts differed on numbers and video of the postgame wasn’t clear but Alabama students tried to rush the field as the game ended and Birmingham police officers were there to greet them.

“I saw several of them swinging billy clubs,” Alabama student Harold Lambert, then 24, told The Birmingham News. “One cop was swinging back and forth as hard as he could at anybody he could. They were swinging wildly. One of the officers pulled his gun out. He pulled it out and was waving it. They were out of control.”

Approximately 20 people were arrested on the field but a few got away because the 50-60 police officers on-site for crowd control ran out of handcuffs.

“One of the kids with us ran and two police officers went after him and grabbed him as he climbed the fence,” student Brian Shafer told The Birmingham News. “The crowd was hitting the police officers and they were hitting back. The crowd helped him get over the fence. He ran off and got away.”

Police brutality accusations followed but then-Alabama athletics director Hootie Ingram defended the response to the fans by noting repeated PA announcements warning against entering the playing field. Ingram said the police action might have prevented serious injury, according to an Associated Press story.

All charges against the fans were eventually dropped, according to a Dec. 18 Birmingham News story, as long as they agreed not to sue the city.

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From there, the trail runs cold. Alabama played its last game in Legion Field in 2003. Times were tough through parts of the 1990s and 2000s though there were a few goal posts destroyed in the name of wins over Alabama.

Mississippi State had lost 15 straight to Alabama before a 1996 win in Starkville brought them down.

“We just didn’t play the way we are used to playing at Alabama,” defensive back Deshea Townsend said, according to an AP story from the game. “We don’t tear down goalposts. It is just a game and there is always another year.”

A year later, Kentucky’s goal posts came crashing down after beating Alabama for the first time since 1922.

“That’s one thing about Alabama,” Alabama receiver Freddie Milons said in 1999 as quoted by The Huntsville Times. “They’re so used to winning. There’s not much you could do to make these fans tear down the goal posts. They have basically seen and done everything.”

By 2001, then-coach Dennis Franchione was asked about the potential of fans taking down goal posts before playing Tennessee riding a seven-game losing streak to the Vols.

“I’d be down there hanging with them,” he said in jest before giving a more serious answer.

“I don’t anticipate that happening at Alabama because our expectation level is such that I’m sure we’d tear the goal post down if we won the national championship.”

The SEC responded in 2004 with the rule “designed to try to change the culture about rushing the field,” commissioner Mike Slive said at the time.

The five upset wins over Alabama since 2013 brought in $655,000 in fines for the league’s post-graduate scholarship fund after penalties were increased in 2015. Auburn’s three celebrations after Iron Bowls in 2013, 2017 and 2019 produced $505,000 of that total.

Saban — though he’d rather not have to dodge rowdy fans after a disappointing loss — gets it.

“We’re in the entertainment business,” he said Oct. 18. “There’s a lot of people that come to the games. They have a lot of passion and excitement for what they do. Hopefully, as institutions and fans, we’ll always do that in a positive way.”

And should Alabama’s unwritten tradition continue, that’ll avoid direct contributions to the SEC scholarships long after leaving Legion Field and its brief and dodgy history of field storming to the yellowed pages of archived newspapers.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.