BRYANT, Paul William ("Bear")

(b. 11 September 1913 in Kingsland, Arkansas; d. 23 January 1983 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama), one of college football's most successful, respected, and beloved coaches.

Born into a farm family living near Fordyce, Arkansas, "Bear" Bryant was one of twelve children of Wilson Monroe Bryant and Ida Kilgore, farmers. Bryant grew up working on the family acreage, a hard job that helped him develop a physique suitable for athletics.

Bryant acquired his nickname in an unusual way. Big for his age, Bryant was thirteen when the Lyric Theater in Fordyce presented a special attraction staged by a traveler who promised a dollar a minute to anyone who would wrestle his bear. Bryant later said he was getting fifty cents a day chopping cotton, and he could not resist the dollar-a-minute prize. He apparently lasted a most limited time before he jumped from the Lyric stage and hid behind a row of seats so the bear could not finish him off. Later Bryant went to collect his money, but the stranger, who had also gambled on the match, had already skipped town with his bear in tow. Of course the stranger also left with all of the attendance money. Bested by both the bear and the felonious promoter, Bryant was forever after known as "Bear."

Bryant attended the Fordyce public schools, where he was an average student. Hardened by strenuous farm work that included brute labor, he became a big, tough boy by the time he entered Fordyce High School, where he played tackle on the football team. Although he later said he was not a good athlete, he made the all-state team as a senior, and after graduating in 1931 Bear was recruited by the University of Alabama. In 1934, while they were both students at the university, Bryant wed Mary Harmon Black. They had two children. In college Bryant played right end, and his team won the Rose Bowl in 1935, defeating Stanford by a score of 29 to 13.

When his college playing career ended with his graduation that year, Bryant decided to become a football coach. He was an assistant coach at Alabama for four years (1936–1940) and at Vanderbilt for two more years (1940–1941). After serving with distinction in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he became head coach at the University of Maryland in 1945. He coached his team to a superior 6–2–1 season before he resigned in protest because the university president reinstated a player Bryant had dismissed for breaking training rules. Bryant then served as head coach at the University of Kentucky (1946–1953). His teams compiled a 60–23–5 record, and he took his players to four bowl games, winning three. Bryant next coached at Texas A&M, where he gained a reputation as a "brutal" disciplinarian. In 1954, his first year, 115 players on scholarships participated in the opening August practice, but by the time the season began only 27 young survivors remained to take the field. Later in his career, Bryant himself wondered if he was too hard a taskmaster, for despite his efforts to harden his players, his first Aggie team lost nine of its ten games. But Bryant and his boys bounced back, losing only five games in the next three years and producing the Heisman Trophy winner John David Crow, a running back, in 1956. Bryant's discipline had built a winning team after all.

In 1958 the University of Alabama called Bryant home after its football team suffered four disastrous losing seasons in a row. He remained at Tuscaloosa for the rest of his coaching career. With the hard work of both his players and himself, Bryant restored the Alabama Crimson Tide's reputation as a consistent winner and was named the Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year in 1961, an honor he subsequently won seven more times. He was also National Coach of the Year three times, and that award was later named the Paul "Bear" Bryant Award.

Bryant so loved the game and his job that he usually put in fourteen-hour workdays during summer practices and only slightly less strenuous days once the seasons began. During all practices he lodged himself on a high tower to supervise players and assistant coaches on two different practice fields. Under Bryant the Tide fielded scores of good players. The list of those who went on to professional football careers includes "Broadway" Joe Namath (also known as "Willy Joe"), Ken Stabler, Lee Roy Jordan, Steve Sloan, Ray Perkins, and forty-two others. Thirty-nine of his assistant coaches became head coaches elsewhere, including Jack Pardee and Bum Phillips. Bryant's Alabama teams won national championship titles in 1961, 1964, 1973, and 1979, while his 1965 and 1978 teams tied for the title. Bryant's coaching career statistics were phenomenal. In 38 seasons his teams won 323 games, lost only 85, and tied 17. His overall postseason bowl record included fifteen wins and twelve losses. His favorite bowl was the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, where his teams won eight games and lost only one.

Bryant also participated in the modern civil rights movement, helping to integrate college football. As early as 1946, when he was at Kentucky, he wanted to recruit black players, but university administrators refused. Bryant faced the same problem at Texas A&M and in his early Alabama years. But in 1971 he was finally allowed to recruit black athletes, the first being Wilbur Jackson, a running back. Of the 128 players on his final team, 54 were African Americans.

By the time he retired after the 1982 season, Bryant was regarded as the nation's premier college football coach. Indeed earlier the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) named him Coach of the Decade for the 1960s. Certainly the people of Alabama loved him. Bryant died of a heart attack at age sixty-nine. The First Methodist Church in Tuscaloosa held a memorial ceremony. He is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham, Alabama.

Bryant's autobiography Bear (1974) provides an in-depth look at the coach. Mickey Herskowitz's biography The Legend of Bear Bryant (1993) is a fascinating look at the legendary coach. Also see Bill Libby, The Coaches (1972). Bryant's "brutal" year at Texas A&M is covered in Jim Dent, The Junction Boys: How Ten Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship Team (1999). Bryant's career also draws notice in Robert Ours, The College Football Encyclopedia: The Authoritative Guide to 124 Years of College Football (1994). Interesting and informative articles include Marty Mule, "Bear on the Bayou," New Orleans Times-Picayune (31 Dec. 1996); and Don Freeman, "The Bear Knew How to Motivate Everybody," San Diego Union-Tribune (2 Feb. 1994). An obituary is in the New York Times (27 Jan. 1983).

James M. Smallwood