Eddie Franks in 1989 (Alabama football media guide)

Even a football program as successful as Alabama's has had its share of shocking and embarrassing losses over the decades.

One of those for the Crimson Tide came 30 years ago this fall, when lightly regarded Ole Miss stunned Alabama on homecoming at Bryant-Denny Stadium. The Rebels beat Bill Curry's Crimson Tide 22-12, rallying from a 12-0 third-quarter deficit and scoring two touchdowns in the game's final 46 seconds.

It was a loss that achieved instant infamy in the ensuing hours, when someone -- most likely a disgruntled fan -- threw a brick through Curry's office window at the Alabama football complex. It was one of the low points of Curry's tumultuous three-year tenure at Alabama, which included an overall solid record of 26-10 but also included three straight losses to Auburn.

And it didn't help that Curry was a graduate of Georgia Tech, one of Alabama's bitterest rivals before the Yellow Jackets left the SEC in the mid-1960s. Legendary Alabama coach Paul "Bear" Bryant had numerous run-ins with Georgia Tech counterpart Bobby Dodd during a time when the two programs were the dominant ones in the Southeast.

"Nobody in this state nowadays thinks anything about Georgia Tech, but back then, it was a big deal," said Roger Shultz, Alabama's starting center from 1988-90. "There was a long history of bad blood between Alabama and Georgia Tech and Curry was from that mid-60s era. ... To the guys that played in the 60s, there was a hatred. And Curry being a Georgia Tech guy just rubbed people the wrong way. Right from the start, he was kind of behind the eight ball."

Curry's first Alabama team went 7-5 and lost to Michigan in the Hall of Fame Bowl in 1987, then the Crimson Tide began the 1988 season at 3-0. The third victory was a wild comeback victory against Kentucky, when Alabama rallied to win 31-27 after being down 17-0 at halftime and 27-16 in the final six minutes.

However, the good times came to a screeching halt the following week against Ole Miss, a game in which Crimson Tide quarterbacks Vince Sutton and Jeff Dunn -- subbing for the injured David Smith -- combined to go 0-for-11 passing with three interceptions. It was that night or early the next morning that the brick went through Curry's window.

The brick story has taken on a life of its own over the years, with many Alabama fans who are Curry skeptics doubting its veracity. There are still message board threads on the internet dedicated to arguing over whether there ever was a brick thrown through Curry's window.

Curry has told the brick story many times since leaving Alabama after the 1989 season, as he did in a 2010 interview with AL.com following his return to coaching at Georgia State. AL.com's Kevin Scarbinsky asked Curry point blank "Is the brick story true?"

"Yeah ... Why would anybody make up a thing like that?," Curry said. "I just walked in my office, and there were glass shards around and there was a brick lying there. I thought, well, isn't that clever? ... I mean, somebody missed their cool and threw a brick? Yes, it happened."

You might not believe Curry's version of events, for whatever reasons you might have. But would you believe Eddie Franks?

Franks was 30 years old and the Alabama Football Building Manager in 1988, and among his duties were opening Curry's office in the wee hours of Sunday following football games so that a film crew could set up to tape Curry's weekly television show. In those days, film had to be rushed back to Birmingham in order for Curry's show to be broadcast around the state later that day, so Franks arrived at Curry's office at around 4:30 a.m. on Oct. 9, 1988.

He was astonished at what he found.

"It was just a brick," Franks said in an interview this week with AL.com. "Seems like it was three-quarters of a brick. But it came all the way through (the window). It was laying in the floor there."

Franks, an Alabama graduate, had joined the Crimson Tide athletic department in 1981 as an assistant baseball coach before moving over to the administrative side. In his job as football building manager, he reported to both Curry and then Alabama athletic director Steve Sloan, and was typically on-site whenever anyone was in the facility.

Franks said he was in the football building until 8 or 9 p.m. on the Saturday night of the Ole Miss game, which was an early afternoon kickoff and was televised nationally by TBS. When he returned the next morning and entered Curry's office, he found the brick lying beneath "maybe an eight-inch hole" in the window, he said.

The window in question was on the side of the football building that faces Coleman Coliseum (the head coach's office was relocated to the opposite side of the building when it was renovated in the early 2000s). Curry's second-floor office also had windows overlooking the Alabama practice field, but those were behind a locked gate.

"The glass was shatter-proof, but (the brick) went through," Franks said. "The glass was still there but spider-webbed, of course. A lot of the glass was in the floor where the brick had broken through. It didn't break out the whole thing. We broke it out later to put up plywood. It just came through the window."

Whoever threw the brick through Curry's window would likely have been standing on the street below Curry's office, near Curry's private parking space. The coach generally entered the building through a side door and walked upstairs to his office.

After discovering the brick, Franks said he kept the film crew -- a producer and two camera operators -- out of Curry's office until the coach arrived about a half-hour later. He then met Curry at the stairs and told him the news.

"He came in and looked at it and went about his business," Franks said. "We just sort of cleaned it up. ... I don't know what we did with the brick, to tell you the truth. He sat down and filmed his TV show like normal. Obviously, he was surprised but he just went on about his business."

Franks said he and Curry agreed to keep the story about the brick quiet, and were able to get the window replaced by university maintenance by the time most media members showed up to cover practice on Monday. But with dozens of people working in the football building at the time -- many of whom were old Bryant loyalists and no fans of Curry -- the story got out and was reported in statewide newspapers and on television by the middle of the following week.

"I don't remember anything about it until somebody reported it," Shultz said. "Coach didn't come in and say 'hey, you know, somebody threw a brick through my window.' So I don't even remember it being reported until later."

Tommy Bowden was Alabama's wide receivers coach under Curry, and later worked with him at Kentucky. He described Curry's Alabama tenure as "tension for three straight years."

Bowden said the fan reaction to the Ole Miss loss -- the Crimson Tide's first ever to the Rebels in Tuscaloosa -- was particularly bitter, with the message being "you don't do that here." Don Lindsey, Alabama's defensive coordinator, had to be restrained from going into the stands to confront one abusive fan following the game.

Bowden, a close friend and jogging partner of Franks' at the time, also said he can vouch that the brick story is true.

"I remember. I saw the hole," Bowden said. "When I came into work the next day, I saw the hole myself. I didn't know what it was until somebody told me that someone threw a brick through the window. Then you started hearing the jokes."

A popular quip making the rounds at the time was that while no one was sure who threw the brick, at least a few suspects had been eliminated.

"We didn't complete a dadgum pass against Ole Miss," Shultz said. "So you know it wasn't any of our quarterbacks. Because that was a completion."

Though Franks insists Curry initially wanted to keep the brick story quiet, it eventually became part of the narrative regarding the rabid Alabama fans and Bryant loyalists who never accepted Curry as one of their own. It's worth remembering that when Curry got the job at Alabama, Bryant had been dead less than five years.

Tom Roberts attended Alabama in the mid- and late 1960s, and later spent 36 years in a variety of roles on the Crimson Tide radio broadcast crew. In 1988, Curry's call-in show got particularly heated at times.

But, Roberts said, Curry might have brought some of it on himself.

"The whole situation, it seems that he was trying to gain sympathy," Roberts said. "I'm certain that a brick was thrown, I don't think there's any doubt about that. But it was very, very different, for sure.

"I'm convinced that a team plays to the personality of its head coach, and he just never had the whole team behind him I don't think. It just wasn't a pleasant time for anybody, even though he had some success as a coach. It was just very uncomfortable."

Franks said he wasn't sure if a police report regarding the brick incident was ever filed, but likely not given that Curry wanted to keep it from going public. And complicating matters was that the Alabama football building was at the time not the elaborate, impenetrable fortress it has become in the Nick Saban years.

"We didn't have a single security camera at the football facility, not one, back in those days," Franks said. "It's unbelievable. You could walk in the front door of the football facility, and come up the elevator and if (athletic secretary) Peggy Conyers didn't stop you, you could walk into any office you wanted to. And people did all the time. It's a little different now."

Another popular fan conspiracy theory was that the brick was thrown from the inside by Curry or a member of his staff, in order to draw attention away from Alabama's wretched performance the previous day. Shultz said that rumor even began to make the rounds among the players in the days after the incident.

Franks dismisses that idea.

"No, that's crazy," Franks said. "I saw the glass inside. If you think of the mylar (coating) that was on the glass, it was definitely thrown from the outside. It would have had to have been me or Coach Curry, because nobody else had keys to his office except the custodian staff and none of them were there."

So, who did it then? Franks said he has no idea, but is certain that it wasn't an inside job.

"I did not do it, and I'm pretty sure he did not do it because he was surprised when I told him about it," Franks said. "It was not done from inside, though there were people in (the athletic department) that would have done it if they could have gotten into his office."

Added Bowden, "There were some guys in that building who would have liked to have done it."

Bowden said the Crimson Tide offensive staff, led by first-year coordinator Homer Smith, redoubled its efforts during practice after the embarrassment of the Ole Miss loss. Alabama turned things around somewhat the following week, beating Tennessee 28-20 in Knoxville on the way to a 9-3 finish in 1988.

Alabama then started the 1989 season at 10-0, reaching No. 2 in the national rankings. But the Crimson Tide lost 30-20 at Auburn (in the first Iron Bowl played at Jordan-Hare Stadium) to end the regular season, then dropped a 33-25 decision to eventual national champion Miami in the Sugar Bowl.

A few days later, Curry was off to Kentucky. Not everyone was sorry to see him go.

"When he announced he was going to Kentucky, I wasn't exactly heartbroken," Roberts said. "I really shouldn't hold it against him, because I think he did as well as he could. He just was not what I wanted as a head coach at the University of Alabama, and I was not alone in that opinion."

Franks also left Alabama and athletics in 1990, taking a job in the manufacturing industry. Now approaching 60, he lives in Cleveland, Tenn., and is environmental health and safety director for an auto parts company.

The brick-tosser remains at large. Reminded that Ole Miss scored two touchdowns in the final 46 seconds to beat Alabama on that Saturday 30 years ago, Shultz suddenly felt sympathy for the perpetrator.

"Oh, you're kidding me!?!," Shultz exclaimed with a chuckle. "I'd have thrown a brick through a window too."