Siran Stacy now lives outside of Nashville, which is perhaps fitting, because in college he made his living off of Tennessee.

Stacy was an All-SEC running back at Alabama in both 1989 and 1991, but he was never better than on The Third Saturday in October. He scored six touchdowns in two career games vs. Tennessee — he missed the 1990 game due to injury — including four in a 47-30 victory over the Volunteers in 1989.

That Oct. 21, 1989, game at Birmingham’s Legion Field was the last time before this year that both the Crimson Tide and Volunteers were undefeated headed into their annual matchup. As Saturday’s showdown approaches between No. 3 Alabama (6-0, 3-0 SEC) and No. 6 Tennessee (5-0, 2-0) at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Stacy can feel his heart pumping a little faster, gets a spring in his step and experiences glorious memories wash over his mind.

“There’s nothing like the Third Saturday in October,” Stacy said in a phone interview this week with AL.com. “That game is always a benchmark for your season. It’s like Coach (Bear) Bryant used to say, ‘you don’t know what type of team you have until you line up against the Big Orange.’ You just knew it was a game that could make or break your season.

“There was just so much excitement throughout the whole week. We’d have ‘Rocky Top’ playing in the football complex, on the practice field, in the locker room and even in the dorm. By the time Saturday rolled around, you had a real disdain for Tennessee.”

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Alabama came into the 1989 Tennessee game ranked 10th in the country, 5-0 overall and 3-0 in the SEC. Coach Bill Curry’s team had been hot and cold, routing Ole Miss 62-27 and Memphis 35-7, but struggling past the likes of Kentucky (15-3), Vanderbilt (20-14) and Southwestern Louisiana (24-17).

Gary Hollingsworth, a lightly recruited junior who had hardly played at all in his first three seasons at Alabama, took over at quarterback for the injured Jeff Dunn during the second game of the season. Stacy, a Geneva native who had joined the Crimson Tide team as a junior-college transfer that year, was splitting time at tailback with senior Murry Hill.

Tennessee was 5-0 overall and 2-0 in the SEC, ranked No. 6 nationally. Johnny Majors’ Volunteers had beaten Colorado State, UCLA, Duke, Auburn and Georgia in succession heading into the Alabama game, and were coming off an open date.

Tennessee had won 10 straight games dating back to 1988. In fact, the Volunteers’ most-recent loss had been 28-20 to the Crimson Tide in Knoxville the previous October.

“Tennessee was talking so much trash in that (1989) game,” said Roger Shultz, Alabama’s All-SEC center in 1989. “Their last loss had been to us in ‘88, and they were talking about how they were going to get us back for that. They were ‘big-timing’ us.”

However outwardly the Volunteers might have appeared confident, it might have been a façade. Alabama had beaten Tennessee three straight times dating back to 1986, and in 14 of the previous 18 years in what was then and remains now a streaky rivalry.

In addition, Tennessee would face Alabama in 1989 without star running back Reggie Cobb, who’d been kicked off the team a week prior for a drug-related offense. Fellow tailback Chuck Webb — the other half of the wonderfully named “Cobb-Webb” backfield — remained, but the Volunteers were a wounded team heading to Birmingham for their Top 10 showdown with the Crimson Tide.

“I remember walking into class and somebody says ‘Hey, Reggie got busted for drugs. He’s not playing this weekend,’” said Ryan McGee, then a freshman at Tennessee and now an award-winning writer and television host with ESPN. “We’re like ‘no, no, no, that can’t be true.’ And then you go to your next class. In the first class, two people were talking about it, and in the next class, 15 people were talking about it.

“By the time I got back to the dorm, my roommate, David Montgomery, was standing and waiting on me and had his hands up in the air like ‘what are we gonna do?’ It had just been reported on the radio. … When Reggie was gone, it was like somebody sucked all of the oxygen out of the classroom buildings.”

The 1989 Alabama-Tennessee game fell on a cold, clear day in Birmingham, on what was also Curry’s 47th birthday. The third-year Crimson Tide coach was still regarded dubiously by fans, who could not only not forgive him for being a graduate of hated old-time rival Georgia Tech, but also were dissatisfied with consecutive losses to Auburn in 1986, 1987 and 1988 (the last two under Curry).

But for whatever reason, Curry’s teams always played well against Tennessee. The Crimson Tide jumped out to a 10-0 lead after one quarter in the 1989 game, behind a 4-yard touchdown pass from Hollingsworth to Kevin Turner and a 22-yard Philip Doyle field goal.

Tennessee responded with a 1-yard touchdown plunge from fullback Greg Amsler to make it 10-7 midway through the second. It was then that Stacy — who had taken over as Alabama’s every-down back when Hill left the game in the first quarter with broken ribs — made the signature play of the day, and perhaps the biggest of his career.

Hollingsworth took the snap from Shultz and dropped back, then delivered a backhanded “shovel” pass to Stacy. The Crimson Tide tailback followed two blockers through the line of scrimmage, cut to midfield and was gone for a 75-yard touchdown and a 16-7 Alabama lead after the extra point was blocked.

“(Alabama offensive coordinator) Homer Smith was the most brilliant offensive-minded coach I was ever around,” Stacy said. “Right there in the most-tense part of the game, he’d call the perfect play. So he put that shovel pass in during that week in practice, and we didn’t know when it was going to come or whether we were going to run it or not.

“But he picked the perfect time to run it. The blocking was great. The sea just opened up for me and I went those 75 yards.”

Here are highlights from the ABC broadcast of the 1989 Alabama-Tennessee game. Stacy’s 75-yard touchdown comes at the 6:38 mark:

After Tennessee added Andy Kelly’s 33-yard TD pass to Anthony Morgan to make it 16-14, Doyle booted a 22-yard field goal on the final play of the half to put the Crimson Tide up by five at the break. Alabama scored on its opening possession of the third quarter when Hollingsworth hit Marco Battle on an 11-yard touchdown, then converted a Tennessee fumble on the ensuing kickoff into Stacy’s 5-yard scoring run and a 33-14 lead.

Tennessee scored 10 straight points — including Webb’s 1-yard touchdown run — to pull within 33-24 after three quarters, but the Crimson Tide owned the fourth. Stacy’s 6-yard run with 8:10 to play made it 40-24.

Tennessee scored a touchdown on Kelly’s 3-yard pass to Carl Pickens with 3:59 left to pull back within 10 at 40-30, but Alabama safety Charles Gardner batted down Kelly’s 2-point pass to keep it a two-score game. Stacy’s 15-yard touchdown run with 28 seconds left provided the exclamation point on a 47-30 Crimson Tide victory, its fourth straight over the Volunteers.

“If you watch the way Tennessee played offensively all year, and then you watch the way they played that game, it’s like two different teams,” said McGee, who went on to join the Tennessee football video staff in the spring of 1990. “They used to get so uptight, the coaching staff did. I remember when I worked for the team the next couple of years, the only week where everybody just looked like their underwear was six sizes too small was Alabama week.”

Alabama rolled up 562 yards and 32 first downs in the game, with Hollingsworth and Stacy setting numerous program records. Hollingsworth’s 32 completions were the most in school history, while his 379 passing yards were second-most at the time.

Stacy scored four times and also set an Alabama single-game record with 317 all-purpose yards — 125 on 33 carries rushing, 158 on nine receptions (many of them on shovel passes), plus 34 on kick returns. On the post-game bus ride from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa, he sat next to Walter Lewis, the former Alabama quarterback who was then the Crimson Tide’s running backs coach.

“I’m not saying anything, but I’m still wired up after the game,” Stacy said. “I felt like I could have gone outside the bus and run five miles right then. Coach Lewis, he taps me on the shoulder, leans over and whispers, ‘they’ll never forget you here.’”

Alabama would continue winning through the month of November, eventually reaching a No. 2 national ranking. The Crimson Tide beat Penn State 17-16 in State College the week after the Tennessee game — with Thomas Rayam blocking a field goal on the final play — and routed LSU 32-16 in Baton Rouge on Nov. 11 behind Stacy’s 211 yards and three touchdowns.

That win over LSU clinched at least a share of the SEC championship for Alabama, though the Crimson Tide’s national-title hopes were all but dashed with a 30-20 loss at Auburn in early December. Alabama lost 33-25 to Miami in the Sugar Bowl to finish 10-2, and Curry shortly thereafter resigned to take the Kentucky job.

“I just think it got to be a mental thing for Curry,” Shultz said. “He couldn’t beat Auburn when he was at Georgia Tech, either. And that was a big rivalry back in the day, people forget that. It was kind of like Alabama and Tennessee. When I was growing up and when I was playing, Alabama-Tennessee was more of a hateful rivalry than even Alabama-Auburn. It’s probably not that way now.”

Tennessee did not lose again the rest of the year, winning its final five regular-season games before edging Arkansas (then a member of the Southwest Conference) 31-27 in the Cotton Bowl. The loss to Alabama had not only cost the Volunteers a shot at a national championship, but had also led to the two teams finishing in a three-way tie with Auburn for the SEC title after the Tigers beat the Crimson Tide in the Iron Bowl.

Stacy returned to Alabama for what he thought would be his senior year in 1990, but suffered a major knee injury in the opener vs. Southern Miss and missed the rest of the season. He came back in 1991 and earned All-SEC honors for an Alabama team that went 11-1, including a 24-19 victory over Tennessee in which Stacy ran for 77 yards and two touchdowns.

“After my senior year, I played in the Japan Bowl (all-star game) in Tokyo and Johnny Majors was our head coach,” Stacy said. “I remember thinking ‘I really need to make a good impression on him so that I can get some carries in the game.’ So I walked up to him when we were getting ready to fly out of (Los Angeles) and I said to him ‘Coach, I just want to say that I’m proud to be on your team and thank for all you’ve done for college football.’

“He looks up at me and says ‘Stacy, let me ask you a question. We had our best team in 1989, and we had everything covered. Then you come off the bench. I’ve just got one question for you: where the hell did you come from?’”

Stacy played a season with the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles and later in NFL Europe and the Canadian Football League, but stayed mostly out of the public eye until 2007. It was on Nov. 19 of that year that his life took a tragic turn.

Stacy, his wife Ellen and their five children were driving west of Dothan when their minivan was struck at an intersection by a speeding pickup truck traveling on the wrong side of the road. Ellen and four of the Stacy children — 18-year-old Lequisa, 10-year-old Bronson, 8-year-old Sidney and 2-year-old Ellie — were killed; only Siran and then 4-year-old daughter Shelly survived.

Stacy later said he wanted to die himself, but instead found peace after “having it out with God.” He has since become a respected motivational speaker, a calling on which he still spends much of his time today.

A little more than a year after the accident, Stacy returned to Tuscaloosa as Alabama’s honorary captain for the 2008 Iron Bowl. After bringing the ceremonial game ball to the field and participating in the pre-game coin toss, Stacy — clad in a three-piece suit — ran down the sideline at Bryant-Denny Stadium, waved his arms several times to pump up the crowd, and then threw the ball into the stands.

Many of those in attendance believe Alabama’s home stadium was never louder than at that moment. Stacy said he still hears about it even now, from both sides of the rivalry.

“People say the reason why it was so loud was because the Auburn fans were cheering just as much as the Alabama fans were,” Stacy said. “I just live by God’s grace. So many people have prayed for me and my daughter. Shelly is now a sophomore at Liberty University. She’s doing awesome.

“I got remarried in 2013, and my wife (Jeannie) and I have four girls. Here I am 54 years old, and I have a 7-year-old, I have a 5-year-old, I have a 3-year-old and my youngest is about to turn two. We are very blessed.”

Creg Stephenson is a sports writer for AL.com. He has covered college football for a variety of publications since 1994. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @CregStephenson.