NCWN

Wallace Wade: Championship Years at Alabama and Duke
by Lewis Bowling
2006, Carolina Academic Press
354 pp, $25.00 
ISBN-10: 1-59460-231-X
ISBN: 978-1-59460-231-3
LCCN 2006028235

Wallace Wade is without question one of the greatest college football coaches in the history of the game. He won three national championships at Alabama and took Duke to two Rose Bowls. His Alabama team won what is considered to be the most important victory in the history of southern football, when they defeated Washington in the 1926 Rose Bowl. He is the man who established the tradition of outstanding football at Alabama, and also is credited with bringing big-time college football to the state of North Carolina with his powerhouse Duke teams of the 1930s and 1940s. This biography chronicles the life of Wallace Wade's life in football, and also his participation in two world wars and his time as commissioner of the Southern Conference.

Author Lewis Bowling teaches in the Physical Education Departments at North Carolina Central University and Duke University. He has authored eight books, and writes columns for the Durham Herald Sun and the Oxford Public Ledger. Lewis is also a staff writer for Go Duke Magazine and contributes articles to Bama Magazine. He has had articles published in various magazines and journals. Lewis recently taught a sport coaching class in Bangkok, Thailand. Lewis is an avid reader of biographies and histories, with his favorite subjects being Theodore Roosevelt, Walt Whitman, college football, and the history of exercise and fitness.

“Wallace Wade, Alabama's first 'Bear' three decades before Bear Bryant, is one of the most important and least known figures in the history of college football.  Lewis Bowling's biography brings him out of the shadows for the first time and puts clothes on a ghost.  This book should have enormous appeal to the fans of Duke, Alabama, and every  other school where college football is a tradition.” Allen Barra, author of The Last Coach: A Life of Paul “Bear” Bryant

“The narrative is enlivened with numerous quotes from Wade and contemporary sources.  Wade's decision to leave a championship program at Alabama for the challenge of building the football program at Duke is particularly well documented and fascinating.... Summing up: Recommended.” CHOICE Magazine