Q: Why would you want to write a book about a 40-year-old football team that didn't win a national championship?

KD: I guess it started with this overriding sense of both injustice and irony: injustice because the 1966 Crimson Tide was bidding for an unprecedented third consecutive national championship and was denied the title despite its perfection; irony because all these years later, at an institution that has claimed 12 national championships and maintained one of the most successful traditions in the sport, the 1966 bunch is still considered one of the greatest teams of all, despite its dubious distinction. In the annals of Alabama football, the 1966 team stands as a monument to both perfection and frustration, and so there was plenty of built-in tension merely from a football standpoint. But I wanted to write something that could be appreciated as more than a football book. I saw it as an opportunity to write about a time and place on the brink, which I saw not only as a source of inherent literary tension, but also social relevance...as a way to examine the collision between football and culture in a world tetering on the edge.

Q: How much did the fact that you grew up in Alabama influence your perspective?

KD: Greatly. I don't remember that season...I turned two that year...but was an Alabama fan from a very early age, and so I grew up hearing the story about that 1966 team. More importantly, however, I saw The Missing Ring as an opportunity to write about the world that shaped me, to examine football through the lense of the larger world, and the larger world through the lens of football, and in that sense, the book's perspective is one of a man who grew up never having attended segregated schools, having no personal memories of George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door, and yet, was deeply marked by the residual effects of all that negativity as well as the positive lessons that were embraced in the context of Alabama football. On one level, The Missing Ring is my attempt, from the vantage point of middle age, to make sense of the world that produced me, and part of that is understanding why we all cared so deeply about Alabama football, and held onto it so tightly.

Q: What was so special about the year 1966?

KD: It's a year right on the edge, a bridge year between two distinct eras. The civil rights movement had reached a climax from a legislative standpoint, and segregation was dying a slow death, but Alabama remained all-white, like all of the other teams in the Southeastern Conference. The Vietnam War was raging, but opposition to it had not yet galvanized. The women's movement was still in its infancy. Illicit drug use was still a fringe element. The tumultuous late '60s were just over the horizon, but most people didn't have a clue what was coming. Also, athletes still arrived at Alabama and other places like it thinking little about the lure of professional football, and that was about to start evolving, influenced as well by the shift to the two-platoon game, which was still new and not fully filtered into the system just yet.

Q: What was the most challenging part of writing this book?

KD: In a word, balance. Trying to make The Missing Ring connect on several different levels. First and foremost, I wanted to write a book that was very much character-driven, because I saw it as an opportunity to take the reader deep inside the world of a big-time college football program of a more innocent time by trying, as much as possible, to give it the texture of a novel. Obviously, because I was not around at the time, I relied heavily on the memories of the players and coaches to help me reconstruct events, and I was limited in various ways. In addition to all the social aspects and the ultimate frustration about the national championship that provide so much tension, I saw The Missing Ring as a book about a bunch of mostly overachieving players who were driven by this intense desire and need to achieve. It's not so much about their ultimate frustration as it is about their sometimes harrowing journey, and how there was a certain nobility in their aspiration, their pride, their sense of perseverance, their faith that anything could be accomplished if they wanted it bad enough.

Q: Why should anyone outside Alabama care about the 1966 Crimson Tide?

KD: I think people all over the country will find inspiration in the stories of people like Ray Perkins, Jerry Duncan, Kenny Stabler and Wayne Trimble. So many of the characters in this book offer lessons that truly transcend football and tap into the very fundamental idea of the American dream. As much as any institution of the time, the Alabama football program reflected the American meritocracy. If you love college football like I do, then you see it as this perfect little universe where it isn't supposed to matter who your daddy is, where you come from, how much money you have, how talented you are...it's supposed to be all about what you do on the field. It's supposed to be about merit, about earning what you get. So, in this sense, The Missing Ring is the story of a bunch of guys who suffered an injustice that was really an assault on the sport of college football and everything it stands for...an attack on all of us who, for better or worse, invest the game with some sort of transcendent meaning.