The Last Coach A Life of Paul "Bear" Bryant
by Allen Barra
I actually received this book as a Christmas gift in 2005. Given the latest upheaval in Alabama football, I'm glad I waited until now to read it. It seems more apropos. Last year's 10-2 record by coach Mike Shula's team is a bit of an aberration for an Alabama program searching for an identity. This year's 6-7 record is more indicative of the program that has floundered since Bear Bryant retired. (For the record, not that it matters, I believe Mike Shula should not have been fired). Bear Bryant had 25 years of great football at Alabama. This year marks the 25th anniversary since he retired and an argument can be made that there have been 25 years of despair since then. Maybe 2007 is when it all gets turned back around.
I found this to be a very interesting book, although I didn't get out of it what I was hoping to get out of it. Not that coaching football is like managing a team of computer programmers, I was hoping to glean some information on motivation. I expected there to be a lot of this in the book, but outside of the gruff my way or the highway Bryant was on the practice field, there wasn't much else. There were a couple of instances of players that Bryant could not reach and Barra talks some about those, but I've got plenty of people I can't reach. There are a ton of books written on Bear Bryant and this is the first one I've read. I'm not sure if I will read another one about him unless it actually goes into some depth about his off-field persona or motivational techniques. I'm not sure if there ever will be a book that covers the off-field stuff; at least one that truly delves into the psyche of Coach Bryant. Twenty-five years after his death, he is still placed upon a pedestal and despite the rumors of off field antics, no one has been willing to come forward to tarnish his name. Allen Barra is no exception. While in certain circumstances Barra is willing to interject his own opinions and place a shadow of a doubt on certain parts of Bryant's life, (the Bear wrestling story, why he left Maryland and Kentucky, and the reasons for the late integration of the football program), he certainly glosses over the rumors of drinking and carousing and the shadowy world of recruiting.
This book is mainly a chronological account of Bear Bryant's life which starts in south central Arkansas in the village of Moro Bottom. Bryant winds up playing high school football for the Fordyce Redbugs and becomes a standout. When Alabama coach Frank Thomas comes to Arkansas to recruit future NFL Hall of Famer Don Hutson, he gets word of Bryant's Fordyce career and winds up taking him back to Tuscaloosa. No one seems to remember that Bryant was 'the other end' across from arguably the greatest receiver ever. It didn't hurt Thomas' chances of recruiting Bryant when Bryant's only real exposure to college football was listening to an Alabama/Washington Rose Bowl game on the radio. Alabama won that year.
From that point on, the book weaves through Bryant's coaching career which started as an assistant at Union College, Alabama, and Vanderbilt before World War II. After the war Bryant coached a Navy airmen team before taking the reins at Maryland. The Maryland team consisted mostly of players from his Navy squad. Bryant lasted only one year in College Park when Maryland's president Curly Byrd undermined Bryant's authority. Bryant then left for Kentucky (sight unseen) where he started his next reclamation project. He remained at Kentucky for 8 years, almost winning a National Championship, before taking the reins at Texas A&M. (sight unseen again) Once again he left a university because of political infighting, (he had to play second fiddle to basketball icon Adolph Rupp), and once again he turned the program around at his new school. Bryant's first year is what all refer to as 'The Junction Boys' year. A book and a movie have been made about this time, and while I'm certain the August Texas heat and the grueling practices by Bryant were more than tough, it has been, at least to Barra, been blown out of proportion. The Junction Boys time did separate the wheat from the chaff and based on A&M's years before Bryant, there was a lot of chaff.
Bryant did manage to produce a lot of wheat during his time in College Station though. So much so that the other Southwestern Conference schools set Bryant up with an NCAA infraction. Bryant was made an example of, but in my opinion it was the start of the NCAA having some 'teeth' as a governing body.
In 1958, shortly after A&M went undefeated and should have won the national championship but didn't because of sanctions, Bryant took the job at Alabama. The rest is, of course, history. By the end of the book, Barra is so enamored of his subject that the 'judgment calls' he makes about Bryant in the early chapters are gone. I guess that's what happens when you write about Paul Bryant or any other legend. This is kind of a shame because the early 1970's were the years when Alabama integrated its football team. Barra makes some judgments about Bryant during this period, but tends to come down on the side of Bryant. Bryant was fully aware that he was going to have to integrate Alabama football. He was also aware that George Wallace was an Alabama alumni, governor of the state, and the guy who signed Bryant's paycheck. It can be argued, and Barra does to a certain extent, that Bryant was bigger than Wallace and could have integrated faster. Auburn already was so it wasn't completely out of the ordinary. Bryant instead chose to point it out by scheduling an integrated Southern Cal team at home in Tuscaloosa. The thumping Bama took that day by a guy named Sam 'Bam' Cunningham shamed Alabama football fans and showed them that without integration they couldn't compete anymore. I personally think Barra was too light on Bryant here, however criticism of Bear Bryant is hard to come by from anyone besides an Auburn or Tennessee fan and I shouldn't fault Barra for that.
The end of the book talks about the era that I'm most familiar with ending with a lackluster season and an invite to the 1982 Liberty Bowl. I attended many Liberty Bowl games growing up, but getting tickets to the 1982 Alabama/Illinois contest was impossible. I do remember watching Bryant win his last game on TV despite two late Walter Lewis interceptions. Four weeks later Bryant was dead. Years of road food, stress, unfiltered Chesterfields, and countless glasses of whiskey had taken their toll. While I knew Bryant was a legend, I never really got a sense of that until I saw footage of his funeral procession. Thousands gathered to watch it go by and to read this part in the book still brings chills.
Which leads me to a lot of random comments ...
I really enjoyed learning about coaching and player lineage. I knew Joe Namath played at Alabama for Bryant. What I didn't know was that
- Babe Parilli was Bryant's first quarterback at Kentucky
- Gene Stallings (former Alabama and NFL St. Louis Cardinals coach) was one of Bryant's Junction Boys
- John David Crow was the only Heisman Trophy winner Bryant had which is pretty amazing given the players that he coached ... Joe Namath, Kenny Stabler, Lee Roy Jordon, Babe Parilli, Ozzie Newsome, Ray Perkins
- Former Arkansas St. coach Larry Lacewell was the son of a Fordyce Redbug high school teammate. This only makes sense to you if you knew my high school girlfriend's brother Doug Block played for Lacewell when Arkansas St. went to the I-AA Diamond Bowl championship in 1986. Ray Perkins also coached at Arkansas St. late in his career.
- Sylvester Croom was Alabama's first black coach, not first black player
Other things I didn't know.
- Bryant didn't have the smarts to go to college so he spent his first college year going to Tuscaloosa High School
- Bryant played a game with a broken leg
- Bryant and a former Georgia Tech coach were accused of fixing games by The Saturday Evening Post. This occurred around an inadvertent 'party line' phone call and a series of unfortunate events. Bryant was exonerated and a lot of people look at this as the point of demise for the magazine. I asked my dad who would have been alive and aware of college football at the time, but he says he has no recollection of it
- From Bryant's playing days until the beginning of his Crimson Tide years, substitution rules limited players to playing both offense and defense. Bryant would use these rules to his advantage by using lighter, faster, and better conditioned players. This was a trademark of his teams.
- Players were paid under the table to play college football and until Bryant was busted at A&M it was considered a common practice
I enjoyed reading about Sylvester Croom a great deal even if it wasn't more than a passing blurb in the book. I think that when Barra talked about Croom he did make one point very clear, Bryant looked for players that had the drive to play, not necessarily those that were the best athletes. Not to slight Croom's playing days but Bryant clearly saw that Sylvester was smart beyond the normal football player. I can only hope that this bodes well for Mississippi State football. Players went to Alabama for the tradition, but also to play for Coach Bryant. There is very little football tradition in Starkville, but I hear a lot of players not only say they want to play for Coach Croom, they also don't want to disappoint Coach Croom. That was a recurring theme from former Bryant players interviewed for Barra's book. If Coach Croom doesn't win at Alabama, I'll bet he leaves a fine legacy of players. I'll take that and the occasional bowl game over the Jackie Sherrill cheating method any day.
Also a short topic in the book, but to me one of the most influential for Bryant's success in coaching, was the discussion on the wishbone offense. I was pleased to see that due credit was given to Emory Bellard for employing it first in college football. I attended Mississippi State during the bad Emory years; the years when everyone had a bumper sticker or button that read Make Emory A Memory. By 1984, everyone knew how to defend the wishbone and it become ineffective. I would have like to seen a little more discussion on the topic other than Bryant watched a few Texas Longhorn game films and decided to use it.
Is Bear Bryant The Last Coach? Probably not, but the days of coaching dynasties are fewer and farther between. Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno are still around, but not for much longer. Pete Carroll is building a dynasty at Southern Cal reminiscent of the John McKay years and is young enough to someday join these names. Urban Meyer has an incredible start and is now at a school where he may be the coach for a very long time.
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