(Video above: Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant’s legendary speech to incoming freshmen)
Legendary Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant passed away on this day 33 years ago after suffering a massive heart attack at 1:24 P.M. at Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, only 37 days after he announced his retirement as a coach (he stayed on as athletic director).
He was born in 1913 in Moro Bottom, Arkansas, and earned his nickname as a young man.
“It was outside the Lyric Theater,” he recalled. “There was a poster out front with a picture of a bear, and a guy was offering a dollar a minute to anyone who would wrestle the bear. The guy who was supposed to wrestle the bear didn’t show up, so they egged me on. They let me and my friends into the picture show free, and I wrestled this scrawny bear to the floor. I went around later to get my money, but the guy with the bear had flown the coop. All I got out of the whole thing was a nickname.”
Bryant left the world as the winningest college football coach of all time, but it was the impact he had on the boys who played for him that will live on longer than any records he set.
The New York Times in Bryant’s obituary gave a glimpse into how he molded young men, and how they responded to his leadership:
Although he acknowledged an obsession for winning, he was a forbidding figure when it came to training rules. Not even Namath escaped his discipline. In 1964, he removed Namath as quarterback for breaking training and kept him on the sidelines during the Sugar Bowl game. At other times, he also disciplined Lee Roy Jordan, Scott Hunter, John Hannah, Stabler, Sloan and even Perkins, the man who succeeded him as head coach.
Mr. Bryant was a tireless worker who customarily rose at 5 A.M. and did not stop until late in the evening. He often supervised practice sessions from a tower overlooking two fields, one covered with grass, the other with artificial turf. One of his quarterbacks, Steadman Shealy, once said: “There’s something about him up in that tower that makes you want to run through a wall.”
Byrant’s self-described obsession with winning was only rivaled by his demand that it be done with class. “I always want my players to show class, knock’em down, pat on the back, and run back to the huddle,” he once said.
Here are 10 other quotes that sum up Coach Bryant’s incredible life and career.
1. “If wanting to win is a fault, as some of my critics seem to insist, then I plead guilty. I like to win. I know no other way. It’s in my blood.”
2. “It’s not the will to win that matters – everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.”
3. “If you believe in yourself and have dedication and pride – and never quit – you’ll be a winner. The price of victory is high but so are the rewards.”
4. “The old lessons — work, self-discipline, sacrifice, teamwork, fighting to achieve — aren’t being taught by many people other than football coaches these days. The football coach has a captive audience and can teach these lessons because the communication lines between himself and his players are more wide open than between kids and parents. We better teach these lessons or else the country’s future population will be made up of a majority of crooks, drug addicts, or people on relief.”
5. “Set a goal and don’t quit until you attain it. When you do attain it, set another goal, and don’t quit until you reach it. Never quit.”
6. “Sacrifice. Work. Self-discipline. I teach these things, and my boys don’t forget them when they leave.”
7. “It’s awfully important to win with humility. It’s also important to lose. I hate to lose worse than anyone, but if you never lose you won’t know how to act. If you lose with humility, then you can come back.”
8. “I have always tried to teach my players to be fighters. When I say that, I don’t mean put up your dukes and get in a fistfight over something. I’m talking about facing adversity in your life. There is not a person alive who isn’t going to have some awfully bad days in their lives. I tell my players that what I mean by fighting is when your house burns down, and your wife runs off with the drummer, and you’ve lost your job and all the odds are against you. What are you going to do? Most people just lay down and quit. Well, I want my people to fight back.”
9. “If you want to walk the heavenly streets of gold, you gotta know the password, “Roll, Tide, Roll!”
10. “I’d like for the people to remember me as being a winner. ‘Cause I ain’t never been nothing but a winner.”
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