October 10, 2007
The Bear Bryant I Knew: An Interview with John Underwood (Part 1) Posted by Allen Barra at 03:15 PM EST Paul W. “Bear” Bryant, who died in January 1983, was by most reckonings the greatest college football coach of all time. To many Americans, though, he was more than that: He defined the ethos of a time long gone when college football existed for the good of coaches, players, and schools and not as an appendage to the professional game. Bryant’s 1974 autobiography, Bear: My Hard Life & Good Times as Alabama’s Head Coach, co-written with Sports Illustrated’s John Underwood (who also co-wrote the autobiography of another great American icon, Ted Williams, My Turn at Bat), is regarded as a modern sports classic of candid observations and gruff good humor. Bear has recently been republished by Triumph Books with a new introduction from Underwood and a CD of an interview with Bryant. Underwood spoke to us from his home in Florida about his relationship with Bryant and their collaboration on Bear. The interview is appearing in two parts. Bear Bryant seems to loom larger in college football today than he did a couple of years after his death in 1983. His image has grown stronger while that of his contemporaries such as Bud Wilkinson and Woody Hayes has faded. What do you think accounts for this? It’s difficult to summarize such an attribute, but I would have to say that what set Bryant apart from all the others (in any field) that I knew, know, or know of, was a presence that fairly demanded not just attention and respect but outright awe. He was tall, imposing, ruggedly handsome, and amazingly erudite in that countrified growl of a voice, and he filled any room that he walked into and any field of play that he graced. The effect was universal. Years after he quarterbacked for Bryant at Kentucky, George Blanda wrote that on seeing him for the first time he thought, “This must be what God looks like.” Blanda said when Bryant walked into a room, you wanted to stand up and applaud. In the new introduction I wrote for the book, I recalled a time when Bryant invited me to live with the Alabama team for a story I was doing for Sports Illustrated. It was before an important road game, and at the pregame breakfast on Saturday I sat next to an Alabama professor and department head who had also been invited along. (Bryant curried faculty support by doing smart things like that.) When he made his talk to the team, he barely spoke above the growl of a whisper that he activated whenever he wanted your utmost attention. The players leaned forward in their seats, eager to hear, and in so doing one accidentally tipped over a glass of water. The spill hitting the floor sounded like Niagara Falls. When Bryant finished, the professor turned to me and said, “If I could reach my students like that, I’d teach for nothing.” Bear Bryant and Vince Lombardi were practically exact contemporaries, with both ruling their respective worlds of college and professional football. But Lombardi left no disciples behind, while Bryant produced more successful coaches and assistant coaches than anyone in football history. Why do you think he was so successful at turning out acolytes? Respect, deeply felt and almost religiously applied on his coaches’ part, and an equal willingness on his to let them spread their wings (within reason, and within the context of staff unity). I write in the introduction of a time Dude Hennessey told of when practice had gone sour and a disgusted Bryant ordered his staff to meet in his office “first thing” the next morning. Not being sure what “first thing” meant, and not daring to ask, Hennessey slept on his office floor that night. Consistent, too, with his coaches was that they always seemed to enjoy going the extra mile, I suspect because Bryant disdained anything less. And despite what has been accurately characterized (even by him) as his own large ego, he appreciated them. I was driving with him across campus late one night after we’d been to dinner in Tuscaloosa, and as we passed the athletic offices he noticed a light on in an upstairs window. Matter-of-factly, without turning in my direction, he muttered, “It’s that damn Howard Schnellenberger up there making me look like a genius.” I heard him say almost the same thing another time about another lighted window of another assistant coach, Ken Donahue. I think they knew he felt that way, and learned from it. I think it made a huge difference.
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