Paul William Bryant is best known as the longtime coach of the University of Alabama football team. During his 25-year tenure as the Alabama head coach, he amassed six national championships (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, and 1979) and 13 Southeastern Conference championships. Upon his retirement in 1982, Bryant held the record for the most wins as head coach in collegiate football history with 323. He is widely regarded as the greatest college football coach in history. At the University of Alabama, the Paul W. Bryant Museum, Paul W. Bryant Hall, Paul W. Bryant Drive, and Bryant–Denny Stadium are all named in his honor. He was also known for his trademark black and white "houndstooth" hat, deep voice, casually leaning up against the goal post during pre-game warmups, and frequently holding his rolled-up game plan while on the sidelines smoking a cigarette. Before arriving at Alabama, Bryant was head football coach at the University of Maryland, the University of Kentucky, and Texas A&M University.
Bryant was the 11th of 12 children born to Wilson Monroe and Ida Kilgore Bryant of Moro Bottom, Arkansas. His nickname stemmed from his having agreed to wrestle a captive bear during a carnival promotion when he was 13 years old. He attended Fordyce High School, where 6 ft 1 in tall Bryant, who as an adult would eventually stand 6 ft 4 in, began playing on the school's football team as an eighth grader. During his senior season, the team, with Bryant playing offensive line and defensive end, won the 1930 Arkansas state football championship.
Bryant accepted a scholarship to play for the University of Alabama in 1931. Since he elected to leave high school before completing his diploma, Bryant had to enroll in a Tuscaloosa high school to finish his education during the fall semester while he practiced with the college team. Bryant played end for the Crimson Tide and was a participant on the school's 1934 national championship team. Bryant was the self-described "other end" during his playing years with the team, playing opposite the big star, Don Hutson, who later became a star in the National Football League and a Pro Football Hall of Famer. Bryant himself was second team All-Southeastern Conference in 1934, and was third team all conference in both 1933 and 1935. Bryant played with a partially broken leg in a 1935 game against Tennessee. Bryant pledged the Sigma Nu social fraternity, and as a senior, he married Mary Harmon, something he kept secret since Alabama did not allow active players to be married.
Bryant later served as an assistant coach at Alabama and Vanderbilt before joining the U.S. Navy following Pearl Harbor. Bryant served off North Africa, seeing no combat action, but he did continue to coach football in the Navy. Lieutenant Commander Bryant was honorably discharged and took the head coaching job at the University of Maryland in 1945, coaching the Terrapins to a 6-2-1 record in his only season. Bryant then left to take the head coaching job at the University of Kentucky.
Bryant coached at Kentucky for eight seasons. Under Bryant, Kentucky made its first bowl appearance (1947) and won its first Southeastern Conference title (1950). The 1950 Kentucky team concluded its season with a victory over Bud Wilkinson's #1 ranked Oklahoma Sooners in the Sugar Bowl. Bryant also led Kentucky to appearances in the Great Lakes Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Cotton Bowl Classic. Kentucky's final AP poll rankings under Bryant included #11 in 1949, #7 in 1950, #15 in 1951, #20 in 1952, and #16 in 1953. The 1950 season was Kentucky's highest rank until it finished #6 in the final 1977 AP poll.
In 1954, Bryant accepted the head coaching job at Texas A&M University. He also served as athletic director while at A&M. The Aggies suffered through a grueling 1-9 initial season which began with the infamous training camp in Junction, Texas. The "survivors" were given the name "Junction Boys". Two years later, Bryant led the team to the Southwest Conference championship with a 34–21 victory over the University of Texas at Austin. The following year, 1957, Bryant's star back John David Crow won the Heisman Trophy (the only Bryant player to ever earn that award), and the Aggies were in title contention until they lost to the #20 Rice Owls in Houston, amid rumors that Alabama would be going after Bryant.
Again, as at Kentucky, Bryant attempted to integrate the Texas A&M squad. "We'll be the last football team in the Southwest Conference to integrate," he was told by a Texas A&M official. "Well," Bryant replied, "then that's where we're going to finish in football."
After four seasons, having compiled an overall 25–14–2 record at Texas A&M, Bryant returned to Tuscaloosa to take the head coaching position, succeeding J.B. "Ears" Whitworth, as well as the athletic director job at Alabama.
Bryant took over the Alabama football team in 1958. When asked why he came to Alabama, he replied "Momma called. And when Momma calls, you just have to come runnin'." After winning a combined four games in the three years prior to Bryant's arrival, the Tide went 5–4–1 in Bryant's first season. The next year, in 1959, Alabama beat Auburn and appeared in a bowl game, the first time either had happened in six years. In 1961, under his leadership, with quarterback Pat Trammell and football greats Lee Roy Jordan and Billy Neighbors, Alabama went 11–0 and defeated Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl to claim the national championship.
The next three years (1962–64) featured Joe Namath at quarterback and were among Bryant's finest. The 1962 season ended with a victory in the Orange Bowl over Bud Wilkinson's University of Oklahoma Sooners. The following year ended with a victory in the 1964 Sugar Bowl over Ole Miss, the first game between the two Southeastern Conference neighbors in almost twenty years, and only the second time in thirty years. In 1964, the Tide won another national championship, but lost to the University of Texas in the 1965 Orange Bowl, in the first nationally televised college game in color. The Crimson Tide would repeat as champions in 1965 after defeating Nebraska in the Orange Bowl. Coming off back-to-back national championship seasons, Bryant's Alabama team went undefeated in 1966, and defeated a strong Nebraska team 34–7 in the Sugar Bowl. However, Alabama finished third in the nation behindonal champions Michigan State and Notre Dame, who had previously played to a 10–10 tie in a late regular season game. co-nati
The 1967 team was billed as another national championship contender with star quarterback Kenny Stabler returning, but the team stumbled out of the gate and tied Florida State 37–37 at Legion Field. The season never took off from there, with the Bryant-led Alabama team finishing 8–2–1, losing in the Cotton Bowl Classic to Texas A&M, coached by former Bryant player and assistant coach Gene Stallings. In 1968, Bryant again could not match his previous successes, as the team went 8–3, losing to the University of Missouri 35–10 in the Gator Bowl. The 1969 and 1970 teams finished 6–5 and 6–5–1 respectively. After these disappointing efforts, many began to wonder if the 57-year-old Bryant was washed up. He himself began feeling the same way and considered either retiring from coaching or leaving college football for the NFL.
Unlike at Kentucky or Texas A&M, Bryant did not attempt to integrate the Alabama football team for many years, stating that the prevailing social climate would not permit him to do this. He finally was able to convince the administration to allow him to do so after scheduling the Tide's 1970 season opener against a strong University of Southern California team led by black fullback Sam Cunningham. Cunningham rushed for 150 yards and three touchdowns in a 42–21 victory against the overmatched Tide. After that season, Bryant was able to recruit Wilbur Jackson as Alabama's first black scholarship player, and junior-college transfer John Mitchell became the first black man to play for Alabama. By 1973, one-third of the team's starters were black.
Along with the decision to integrate the team Bryant also decided that his coaching philosophy needed to change with the times. In 1971, Bryant abandoned Alabama's old power offense for the newly fashionable wishbone formation. (Darrell Royal, the University of Texas at Austin football coach who invented the wishbone, taught Bryant its basics, but Bryant developed successful variations of the wishbone that even Royal had never used.) The change helped make the remainder of the decade a successful one for the Crimson Tide. That season, Alabama went undefeated and earned a #2 ranking, but lost to #1 Nebraska, 38–6 in the Orange Bowl. The team would go on to split national championships in 1973 (Notre Dame defeated Alabama in the 1973 Sugar Bowl, which led the UPI to stop giving national championships until after all the games for the season had been played - including bowl games) and 1978 (despite losing a regular season matchup against co-national champion USC) and win it outright in 1979. Between 1971 and 1979, Bryant's Alabama teams amassed a record of 97-10, a nearly 91% winning percentage.
Bryant coached at Alabama for 25 years, winning six national titles (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, and 1979) and thirteen SEC championships. His Alabama teams never lost a homecoming game. Bryant's win over in-state rival Auburn University, coached by former Bryant assistant Pat Dye on November 28, 1981 was Bryant's 315th as a head coach, which was the most of any head coach at that time. His all-time record as a coach was 323-85-17.
After a 6th-place finish in the 1982 season, Bryant, who had turned 69 that September, decided to retire, stating, "This is my school, my alma mater. I love it and I love my players. But in my opinion, they deserved better coaching than they have been getting from me this year." His last regular season game was a 23–22 loss to Auburn and his last postseason game was a 21–15 victory in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee, over the University of Illinois. After the game, Bryant was asked what he planned to do now that he was retired. He replied "Probably croak in a week." His reply proved prophetic.
Four weeks after making that comment, and just one day after passing a routine medical checkup, on January 25, 1983, Bryant checked into Druid City Hospital in Tuscaloosa after experiencing chest pain. A day later, when being prepared for an electrocardiogram, he died after suffering a massive heart attack. His personal physician, Dr. William Hill, said that he was amazed that Bryant had been able to coach Alabama to two national championships in the last five years of his life with the state of his health. First news of Bryant's death came from Bert Bank (WTBC Radio Tuscaloosa) and on the NBC Radio Network (anchored by Stan Martyn and reported by Stewart Stogel).
On his hand at the time of his death was the only piece of jewelry he ever wore, a gold ring inscribed "Junction Boys". It is estimated that as many as one million people lined the interstate route from Bryant's funeral in Tuscaloosa to his burial here at Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham to show their appreciation for The Bear. A month after his death, Bryant was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, by President Ronald Reagan.
To locate the final, gather information from the grave marker for Paul W. Bryant and from the information above:
N33 29.ABC W086 50.DEF
A = The number of homecoming games that Bryant's Alabama teams lost
B = The final digit in the year that Coach Bryant returned to Alabama as head coach
C = The final digit in Coach Bryant's year of birth
D = The final digit in the year of Coach Bryant's last season as head coach at Alabama
E = The final digit in the number of wins that broke Amos Alonzo Stagg's record as all-time winningest college football head coach
F = The number of times the letter "A" appears on the marker