Not Your Average Bear

By Tom Callahan

After 38 seasons, Paul William Bryant retires from coaching

In Alabama, where Bear Bryant is next to godliness, for once it was left to a football coach to raise an outcry against himself. "I'm going to alert the president of the university and anybody who wants to know," Bryant said a month and a half ago, after Alabama's second loss of the season in nine games, "that we need to make some changes, and we need to start at the top, and I'm at the top."

The Crimson Tide also lost the next week, and the week after that. One measure of Bryant's place in college football is that he is the only coach alive who could lose three straight games without failing anyone but himself. One measure of the man is that last week he fired himself.

Otherwise, measuring a bear is naturally delicate, especially one as huge as this Bear. From his jug ears to his legend, in every way he is more than several sizes larger than standard: 6 ft. 3 1/2 in., 210 lbs., 322 victories (more of those than anyone else); a farmer's son from Arkansas, a wrestler of carnival bears, "the other end" to Don Hutson at Alabama, the other coach to Adolph Rupp at Kentucky, the scourge of Texas A&M, the sage of Alabama, the supreme being of college football. George Blanda, his quarterback at Kentucky 34 years ago, was the first to note the resemblance. "This must be what God looks like," Blanda said. Bryant's face is brown and as rutted as the erosion of a dried-up riverbed. Under his Henry Higgins hat, the fire in his eyes could burn a hole in a vault. The twinkle in them can melt a (recruit's) mother's heart. George Wallace always expressed lavish gratitude that Bryant never ran against him for Governor.

In deciding to step down one year before reaching the state's mandatory retirement age of 70 (if the state could make that stick), Bryant was influenced by the recruits he had been losing in growing numbers, as more and more mothers sought to know exactly how long he would be around to smile on their sons. A year ago, perhaps the three leading prospects in the state of Alabama all chose Auburn, and one of them scored the touchdown that brought the Tigers their first victory over the Tide in ten years.

That 23-22 loss goes down on the ledger as the last regular-season game in Bryant's 38 head-coaching years at Maryland, Kentucky, Texas A&M and Alabama.

After the Liberty Bowl on Dec. 29, when Alabama plays Illinois in Memphis, his 322-85-17 record will be amended accordingly and closed. This year the Liberty Bowl will be a major event.

"Sometimes," says Bryant, "I wish they wouldn't keep records. You count the games because it's too hard to count the kids, the parents, the high school coaches, the preachers, everyone who has touched every kid. Multiply a whole lot of years by a whole lot of people and you've got 300-and-some victories, and all of the bowls couldn't hold all of the people who hold the record."

It is not hard to see why Bryant is a cherished man, but he is not a candidate for sainthood. "All of the other schools were doing it, so we did it too," he openly confesses his Texas A&M recruiting sins, the usual ones involving cash and cars. While the infamous Junction, Texas, training camp of 1954 is a fond piece of his fable to some, Bryant is not proud of running 69 of 96 Aggie football players off the team. The brutal 110DEG F heat was not the only brutality. "It was terrible," he says. "All my life, I've wondered if that was a mistake. I believe if I'd been one of the players, I'd have quit too."

Something else to wonder about: it is a matter of uncomfortable record that the first black player Bryant ever recruited is still playing football, Washington Redskins Running Back Wilbur Jackson (class of '74). Three years ago, Bryant responded feebly to a lingering charge that he had once talked aloud of never wanting any black players on his team: "I don't recall it. I'd bet my life I never said it. Maybe I did. I don't say anything that would come back to haunt me." But it is also a matter of record that his players, black and white, speak of him lovingly. They never seem to outgrow their awe for him.

As a coach he was unapologetically more imitator than innovator. Bryant did not outthink his opponents, he outworked them. "I'm just a plow hand from Arkansas," he would say. "But I've learned over the years how to hold a team together. How to lift some men up, how to calm down others, until finally they've got one heartbeat, together, a team."

Intriguingly, at the same time that he was cranking out regimented teams, he was turning out free-spirited individuals like Joe Namath and Ken Stabler. Both quarterbacks tossed passes to a serious, tough, reedy end named Ray Perkins, now 41, who will be the head coach next year when Bryant will be only the athletic director.

Though Perkins is sure to learn how it was in Green Bay for Phil Bengston, who replaced Vince Lombardi, he is more inclined to consider Penn State's Joe Paterno, and how seldom Paterno is compared to Rip Engle any more. Anyway, Perkins leaped from the New York Giants for the job of his dreams, while the New York opening accommodated the fantasies of Bill Parcells, an assistant coach born a Giant fan in New Jersey. It seemed that everyone's hopes were seen to, except the Bear's.

The question of what he would do after football has stalked him for years, but he has never answered it very well. "Football is a profound infatuation to some men," says another old coach, Sid Gillman, 71. "It means so much to you, your wife is jealous." Bryant's wife of 47 years, Mary Harmon, has generously shared him with his other love. Bryant has no passion for hobbies. He swings a golf stick, but he swings it like a scythe. "I don't know," he says. "What is there to do on Saturday afternoons except be excited?"

Woody Hayes, major college football's fourth winningest coach (238) after Pop Warner (313), Amos Alonzo Stagg (314) and Bryant, always had a set plan. "I intend to die at halftime of an Ohio State-Michigan game," he used to say. Once he was asked, "What if Michigan is leading?" And Hayes began to boil. "Then I won't die," he snapped. Of course, the old general ended up slapping a kid four years ago, just like his hero Patton, and fading away. So there are worse ways to go out. Paul William Bryant just clicked off his projector and shut his playbook with quiet class.

--By Tom Callahan

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.