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Before Coach Paul Bryant made the houndstooth fedora an icon of Alabama football, there was Hugh Rowe Thomas' hat. In 1944, the 11-year-old son of Alabama's football coach Frank Thomas wore a red hat that brought the team luck almost the entire season.
Fred Digby, the Sports Editor for the New Orleans Item who promoted the Louisiana game tirelessly in its formative years and bequeathed it the name
"Sugar Bowl," featured the young Thomas in a column prior to the 1945 New Year's Day game that pitted the Crimson Tide against the powerful Duke Blue Devil's squad.
Thomas's decreed the hat to be the team's good luck charm in Alabama's game that season versus Kentucky on Oct. 27, 1944 when he made a wish the Crimson Tide would intercept a Wildcat pass.
"I ran my finger around the rim and made a wish," he told Digby. "On the next play we intercepted a pass and then we won. Every game since I ran my finger around my hat and that's all there is too it."
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