Editor’s note: No. 1 Alabama faces No. 4 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl on Dec. 29 in Miami, with the winner advancing the College Football Playoff Championship Game. The following story re-visits the Crimson Tide’s lone victory against the Sooners, which came more than 55 years ago, also in the Orange Bowl.

Packed in among the more than 72,000 spectators at Miami’s Orange Bowl on a sunny New Year’s Day in 1963 were the President of the United States and one very interested NFL executive.

Then not yet 30 years old, Gil Brandt was heading into his fourth year as the Dallas Cowboys’ chief talent scout. A month earlier, Dallas had spent its first-round pick (No. 6 overall) on Alabama middle linebacker Lee Roy Jordan.

Paul “Bear” Bryant’s fifth-ranked Crimson Tide shut out Bud Wilkinson’s No. 7 Sooners 17-0 that day, and Brandt could hardly believe what he was seeing from his prized draftee. Brandt called Jordan’s performance in the Orange Bowl “the best game I’ve ever seen anybody play.”

“It seemed like every time that the pile unpiled, Lee Roy was at the bottom of the pile,” Brandt said in a telephone interview with AL.com. “Yeah, we felt very good about having drafted him.”

Official statistics from the game credited Jordan with 31 tackles — 15 solo stops and 16 assists — plus a forced fumble. Oklahoma ran just 60 offensive plays in the Orange Bowl, which means Jordan was credited with a tackle or an assist on more than half of them.

Though he was already a first-team All-American, Jordan’s astronomical tackles total against Oklahoma — still an Alabama bowl game record — helped cement his status as one of the Crimson Tide’s and college football’s all-time great defensive players. Now 77 years old and semi-retired after a 14-year career with the Cowboys and several decades as the owner of a successful lumber company, Jordan told AL.com that Orange Bowl game comes up quite often when he’s speaking with fans and members of the media.

“I probably got credit for more tackles than I made, but I didn’t turn them down when the game was over,” Jordan said. “I had a lot of teammates that surely helped me with those tackles and took up a lot of blockers. That gave me a chance to fill those holes and make a lot of stops.”

Jordan began the 1962 season playing both ways, starting at center and middle linebacker as was typical in the college football of that era. But heading into the Oct. 20 game against Tennessee, Bryant made a lineup change.

Sophomore Gaylon McCollough was installed as the Crimson Tide’s regular center, a position he would hold for the next three seasons. Jordan, who played at 6-foot-1 and about 210 pounds at Alabama — was thus freed up to concentrate mostly on playing linebacker.

“We had substitution rules in those days, where you could not substitute freely,” McCollough remembered. “It was very strange. You could substitute two players on first down and two players on fourth down. There were times he would stay in on offense for a play or two before I could get in to relieve him. I played most of the offense for the rest of the season. He went over so he could predominantly focus on defense.”

The 1963 Orange Bowl was the first-ever meeting between Alabama and Oklahoma, then as now two of the college football’s elite programs. Once-beaten Alabama was the reigning national champion, while Oklahoma — which had won three national titles in the 1950s — was 8-2 after early-season losses to Notre Dame and Texas.

Alabama’s only loss that season had come 7-6 to Georgia Tech, a game in which dynamic sophomore quarterback Joe Namath was knocked out in the second half with bruised ribs. The Crimson Tide bounced back from that defeat with a 38-0 rout of Auburn, and entered the Orange Bowl as a three-point favorite to beat the Sooners.

“Bud Wilkinson, I had grown up watching him on television,” McCollough said. “He had a television program that was nationally telecast. It was actually a coaching clinic, where he went over the fundamentals of the game — blocking, tackling, the three-on-three drill and those types of things. As a kid I remember watching his show. So playing against Coach Wilkinson was a big deal.”

Oklahoma was led by three All-Americans, senior guard Leon Cross and senior center Wayne Lee, plus junior halfback Joe Don Looney. Junior fullback Jim Grisham and sophomore tackle Ralph Neely would go on to earn All-America honors the following year.

Looney and Grisham had combined to rush for 1,562 yards and 17 touchdowns that season. In the days leading up to the Orange Bowl, Bryant appeared unconcerned (and not a little bit prescient) when he told reporters, “as long as they stay in bounds, Lee Roy will get a piece of them.”

Jordan’s memorable day began well before the Orange Bowl even started. President John F. Kennedy arrived via helicopter shortly prior to kickoff, and took a seat in the stands while surrounded by Secret Service agents.

As Alabama’s team captain, Jordan joined Kennedy and Oklahoma co-captains Lee and Cross for the ceremonial pre-game coin toss — which took place in the stands rather than at midfield for security reasons. Jordan called tails, and as the “winner” of the coin toss, got to keep the silver dollar.

“I have it right here looking at me right now, I have pictures of the coin and everything,” Jordan said. “I kept that coin for forever. That’s the last thing I’ll discard before I go meet the maker.”

Kennedy and Wilkinson were close friends, as Wilkinson served as chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness from 1961-64. He would later leave coaching to make an unsuccessful U.S. Senate run before going into television full-time.

Prior to the Orange Bowl, Kennedy took his seat on the Oklahoma side of the stadium. Bryant took note, and didn’t miss a chance to use that as pre-game motivation, Alabama halfback Benny Nelson recalled.

“(Kennedy) came in by helicopter, and we didn’t know who it was at the time,” Nelson said. “He came in about the time we were going back in (the locker room) from warmups. Coach Bryant got in there and said ‘let me tell y’all something, President Kennedy is going to be at the game today. And he’s sitting over there on the Oklahoma side. He’s going to go home with a whipped rear end.’ That’s the way it worked out.”

Now a prime-time television staple, the 1963 Orange Bowl was played during the day and broadcast by ABC. (The first night Orange Bowl would take place two years later, when Alabama — already crowned national champions — lost 21-17 to Texas).

Namath was intercepted on Alabama’s first possession, but got the Crimson Tide into the end zone after a defensive stop. The brilliant sophomore flung a 25-yard touchdown pass to senior Richard Williamson to put Alabama up 7-0 with 7:34 left in the first.

Having taken over for departed All-American Pat Trammell that season, Namath was still largely unknown on the national scene in 1962. The narrator of the Orange Bowl highlight film repeatedly pronounces his name “Namm-ith” and Bryant famously told a Miami Herald photographer during game week “you’ll learn how to spell his name in the next couple of years.”

“Joe was exceptional,” McCollough said. “He was as good an athlete as I had ever seen before he injured his knees. And he was healthy all year long as a sophomore. … He played very much like an experienced, veteran player from the first time he got on the field taking snaps. And he was a great field general as well.”

Oklahoma then went on the offensive, with halfback Ronnie Fletcher hitting end Allen Bumgarner for a 46-yard gain deep into Alabama territory. Luckily for the Crimson Tide, Jordan forced a fumble with a vicious hit on Grisham on the next play.

“They had one play where they did a quick snap, it was the longest play of the day,” Nelson said. “And it was right over my head. You’re trying to get the defensive signals and then you look up and the guy is 10 yards behind you. I finally ran him down inside the 10. The next play, Lee Roy caused a fumble and Mike Hopper recovered it. They bailed me out, because I was going to be in hot water.”

Oklahoma again fumbled in the red zone in the first quarter (this one forced by end Bill Battle), and Alabama took what proved to be a commanding lead with 6:43 left in the first half. After a 20-yard pass from Namath to Williamson, halfback Cotton Clark took an option pitch 15 yards into the end zone for a 14-0 Alabama lead.

It was the capper of an outstanding season for Clark, who led the SEC with 16 touchdowns in 1962. Nelson said his teammate simply had a “nose for the end zone.”

“Cotton had a great year,” Nelson said. “He could find a way to get across the goal line better than anybody we ever had. When you got down inside the 20, he was on top of his game at that time. He just smelled the goal line.”

The second half was a defensive slog, with the only points coming on Tim Davis’ 19-yard field goal with 2:10 left in the third quarter. Clark also made a fine defensive play in the fourth quarter when he ran down Oklahoma’s Paul Lea after a 36-yard gain.

Jordan continued to pile up tackles in the second half, though it’s debatable if he should have gotten credit for all of them. Nelson said the late Ed Versprille — Alabama’s starting fullback who also played linebacker next to Jordan — often joked that he might have been slighted in the final statistics.

“Lee Roy made a lot of tackles that day, that’s for sure,” Nelson said. “But Ed Versprille, the other linebacker, he always said he’d make the tackle and then they’d listen and (the public address announcer would) say ‘Lee Roy Jordan made the tackle.’ Lee Roy and Versprille both had very good games that day.

“They never did adjust to our defensive line, people like Jimmy Sharpe and Jimmy Wilson and Charley Pell, Richard O’Dell. Richard Williamson was the rover. I think our speed kind of offset their size.”

Interestingly enough despite the shutout, Alabama and Oklahoma both totaled 260 yards that day. Namath completed 9 of 17 passes for 86 yards with the one touchdown and one interception, while also rushing for 24 yards.

Versprille and Clark combined for 100 yards on 23 carries. For Oklahoma, Grisham ran for 107 yards on 28 carries, but also had the two fumbles.

Immediately after the game, Jordan, Battle and Alabama halfback Butch Wilson headed to Mobile for the Senior Bowl. Brandt continued to worry about whether or not Jordan would be traveling on to Dallas after the annual all-star game, which the South won 42-7.

Jordan had also been drafted by the AFL’s Boston Patriots that year, and the two leagues were then engaged in a vicious war for player talent (which would culminate two years later when Namath spurned the older league’s St. Louis Cardinals to sign with the AFL’s New York Jets). The Patriots had an ace in the hole in tackle Billy Neighbors, their first-round pick the previous season and Jordan’s linemate on the 1961 Alabama national championship team.

Brandt had decided before the Orange Bowl he wasn’t going to take any chances. Before heading to Florida he stopped by tiny Excel, Alabama, Jordan’s hometown.

“Excel, Alabama’s got a filling station and a mule barn,” Brandt said. “I’m not sure they even had a stop light. … I flew into Mobile and went to a grocery store. I bought a washtub and filled it up with goodies, a ham and so forth and took it up to Excel to take care of Lee Roy’s mom and dad and sister. I brought this big basket up there and said ‘I want to take you to the Orange Bowl game. You can fly out of Mobile.’ His father said, ‘Nah, nah, I don’t want to fly, I’ve never flown in my life.’ So we had to get on a train from Mobile to Florida.”

The Cowboys’ Tom Landry coached the North team in the Senior Bowl, and whatever sales job he and Brandt were able to do apparently worked. Jordan signed with the Cowboys the day before the Senior Bowl, with the team kicking in a $1,500 angus heifer as a bonus.

As it turned out, the bovine inducement did little to influence Jordan’s choice of teams. He had already decided he wasn’t interested in playing for Boston.

“It was in a lot warmer territory than Boston,” Jordan said. “Being a south Alabama boy, I made the determination that it was the NFL instead of the AFL. Those are two reasons that I made up my mind for Dallas.”

Jordan went on to play 14 years with the Cowboys, winning a Super Bowl following the 1971 season and earning five Pro Bowl bids. He finished his career with 1,236 tackles (743 solo), 18 forced fumbles and 32 interceptions.

Jordan was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Cowboys’ Ring of Honor in 1989 (he has been a Pro Football Hall of Fame candidate on several occasions, but has not yet been selected). Not only has he gone down as one of the all-time legends at Alabama, he’s one of Brandt’s favorites, too.

“He’s one of 100 million is what he is,” Brandt said. “Pound-for-pound, ounce-for-ounce, all those things that they say … I don’t think there’s ever been anybody that’s been a better linebacker. He could run, he could back-pedal. He had a great sense of finding the ball. I can’t talk highly enough of the guy.”

That Orange Bowl victory on the first day of 1963 remains the only one for Alabama over Oklahoma. The teams have met four times since, resulting in three victories for the Sooners and one tie.

The Crimson Tide and Sooners played to a 24-24 deadlock in the 1970 Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston, while Oklahoma swept regular-season meetings with Alabama in 2002 (37-27 in Norman) and 2003 (20-13 in Tuscaloosa). The Sooners also beat the Crimson Tide 45-31 in the January 2014 Sugar Bowl.

Alabama is a 14-point favorite to win this year’s Orange Bowl against Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray and Oklahoma. However the game turns out, another shutout remains unlikely.

“They were a really good football team and we beat them 17-0,” McCollough said. “We held them scoreless, which was pretty amazing. I don’t expect that to happen when we square off again. I suspect they’re going to score some points.”