EDITOR’S NOTE: Every day until Aug. 29, Creg Stephenson is counting down significant numbers in Alabama football history, both in the lead-up to the 2025 football season and in commemoration of the Crimson Tide’s first national championship 100 years ago. The number could be attached to a year, a uniform number or even a football-specific statistic. We hope you enjoy.

Alabama’s 1969 season wasn’t an especially memorable one, with one major exception.

The Crimson Tide scuffled to a 6-5 record that season, its worst finish in 11 years. Included in the ledger were losses to Tennessee, LSU, Auburn, Colorado in the Liberty Bowl and (gasp) Vanderbilt.

However, one magical October night at Birmingham’s Legion Field has lived on in Alabama football lore. It was on Oct. 4 that quarterback Scott Hunter outlasted a record-setting performance by Ole Miss’ Archie Manning in a 33-32 Crimson Tide victory.

Manning set an SEC record that night with 540 yards of total offense — 436 passing, 104 rushing — and accounted for five touchdowns. But it was Hunter who came out on top, setting an Alabama single-game passing record with 300 yards and throwing the game-winning, 15-yard touchdown to George Ranager with 3:42 left.

“We were fortunate enough to have the ball last,” Hunter told AL.com in 2019. “I once spoke to the Jackson (Miss.) Quarterback Club. I took a video of the game and put up a projector. it had Archie running for a touchdown and Archie passing for a touchdown, Archie selling popcorn and Archie doing this. It got down to the last play, and the catch George Ranager made after a great block by (Johnny) Musso picking up a lineman for the touchdown. I said ‘the reason I showed that video is to let you people in Mississippi know that 500 yards doesn’t beat 33 points.’”

(Hunter would later shatter his own record with 484 passing yards in a loss to Auburn in the regular-season finale. That mark stood for more than 52 years, finally broken by Bryce Young’s 559-yard performance against Arkansas late in the 2021 season.)

The Alabama-Ole Miss game in 1969 was broadcast coast-to-coast on ABC, a rarity for a night game in that era. But because bandleader Lawrence Welk refused to move up the start time of his wildly popular Saturday night variety show, the Alabama-Ole Miss game didn’t kick off until nearly 9 p.m. Central.

The city of Birmingham paid $70,000 for new lights at Legion Field in order to help enhance the TV broadcast, which was shown on more than 200 stations nationwide. Better than 62,000 attended in-person at Legion Field, though Manning joked in 2019 that he’s heard from many times that number who claim to have been there.

“Living in the South, I go to Birmingham a good bit, and I think back in those days, Legion Field didn’t hold but about 60,000 people,” Manning said. “I think I’ve had about 400,000 or 500,000 tell me they were there that night.”

In addition to his yardage total, Manning also set the SEC records for passing attempts (52), completions (33) and passing yardage (436). He passed for two touchdowns and ran for three more, the last a 1-yard dive to give the Rebels a 32-27 lead with seven minutes remaining.

After Alabama took the lead for good on Hunter’s fourth-down pass to Ranager, Ole Miss had one less shot. But Manning came up less than a yard short on fourth down near midfield with two minutes left and Alabama was able to run out the clock for the win.

“What else can really be said?” Alf Van Hoose wrote in the following day’s Birmingham News. “Both sides threw defense over the fence. They just slugged it out, free-for-all until men in red finally bowed their necks, charged and put the manacles on sensational Archie Manning.”

Before that, Hunter made a clutch throw to Ranager on fourth-and-10 to give Alabama its final lead. Ole Miss rushed seven on the play, but Hunter’s throw found its target and Ranager scrambled into the end zone from the 4.

“I told Scott to throw it to me,” Ranager, a Mississippi native, told reporters afterward. “The Ole Miss defensive back hit me and we both fell to the ground. I kind of caught myself, looked up and there it was. I caught it.”

Despite the loss, Manning’s legend only grew after his big game against Alabama. A junior in 1969, he was a top Heisman Trophy candidate the following year before suffering a broken arm midway through the season vs. Houston.

Manning later played more than a decade in the NFL with the New Orleans Saints, Houston Oilers and Minnesota Vikings, but he is perhaps best known nowadays as the father of NFL quarterback greats Peyton and Eli Manning. He’s also the grandfather of Arch Manning, expected to be a top Heisman candidate himself this season at Texas.

Still, he carries with him rueful memories of that night in 1969 at Legion Field.

“We lost,” he said 50 years later. “I’m kind of proud of the way we moved the ball that night, but we lost.”

Though privately disgusted at all the yards his defense gave up, Bryant wasn’t letting on after the game.

“When we come out on top,” he said, “I don’t care how it happens.”

Coming Monday: Our countdown to kickoff continues with No. 68, the tragic death of an iconic Alabama quarterback.