Between 1961 and 1965, some of the bloodiest years of the civil rights movement, Bear Bryant and Joe Namath joined forces at the University of Alabama and dramatically changed the game of college football. Their final contest together, the 1965 Orange Bowl, was the first nationally broadcast, prime time college football bowl game, and it signaled a new era for the sport. Based on exclusive interviews with Namath and more than a hundred teammates, coaches, players, politicians, and others, RISING TIDE is a gripping account of how these two very different men-Bryant a legendary coach in the South who was facing humiliation over a pair of ethics scandals that threatened everything he had built, and Namath, a cocky Northerner from a hardscrabble steel mill town in Pennsylvania-led the Crimson Tide to a national championship during a time of bitter unrest, securing their places in sports history and revolutionizing the culture and economics of football forever.