With a legendarily dominant defensive performance, the Alabama Crimson Tide defeated, demoralized and decimated the LSU Tigers in last night’s BCS Championship Game, earning the school its 14th football national title since 1925.
The Tide’s stirring game-long stand limited the Tigers to just 92 total yards and hearkened back to the houndstooth glory days of Paul “Bear†Bryant and his transcendent Tide teams of the 1960s and 1970s. Clearly, Alabama’s 21-0 victory was a slicing and dicing of epic proportions. And we wanted to*honor last night’s historic deconstruction by revisiting one of our own.
Early last year, Panini America turned one Bryant-worn houndstooth hat into 100 cherished collectibles for its 2011 Panini Century Collection product.
The finished product resulted in one of the most unique trading cards of the year, a Souvenir Stamps gem that included a piece of the hat once worn by Bryant, a piece of fur coat worn by fellow college coaching legend*Knute Rockne*and*Paul “Bear†Bryant*and U.S. postage stamps honoring both men.
We flipped our lids at the opportunity*to painstakingly follow Bryant’s*hallowed headwear*through the production process, as one precious collectible became 100.*For every sports fan and collector who ever wanted to know how a memorabilia trading card is made, clear your schedules for the next four minutes and watch this time-lapsed video — a houndstooth hat trick, if you will — that’s as truly unique as the trading card it chronicles.