<< Previous   Next >>

Sport	Football
Name	Bear Bryant
Subtitle	An Alabama Legend
Number	73-06
Info	Bear Bryant has caught the scent and he intends to follow it, right into the college football coaching record book. With 284 victories in 34 years as a head coach, Bryant stands No. 3 on the alltime victory lists. Ahead are two coaching legends, Pop Warner, whose teams won 313 games in 44 years and Amos Alonzo Stagg, who had 314 in 57 years. Those are Bryant's targets and his average of eight wins per season would put him over the top in just four more years following 1978's fifth national championship at Alabama. Bryant began his head coaching career at Maryland in 1945. A year later, he moved to Kentucky and stayed there until 1954, when he took over at Texas A & M. His first Aggie team went 1-9, the only losing season he's ever experienced. Bryant returned to his alma mater, Alabama, in 1958. Bryant played for three years with the Crimson Tide and was a member of the 1934 team which whipped Stanford, 29-13, in the Rose Bowl. He was an end but didn't attract a lot of attention because Alabama's other end was the legendary Don Hutson. Those Tide teams posted a 23-3-2 record. Bryant played in the first football game he ever saw, getting a local shoemaker to attach cleats to his only pair of high-top black shoes when he was a boy growing up in the map-dot town of Moro Bottom, Ark. If you don't know where Moro Bottom is, Bryant explains that it's about seven miles south of Fordyce, Ark., which certainly should help pinpoint it. Bryant coached Alabama to national championships in 1961, when the Tide posted a perfect 11-0 record; 1964 and the 1965 when the cast included quarterback Joe Namath, whom Bear calls the finest player he ever coached; 1973 and 1978, when the Tide took the title by downing previously-unbeaten Penn State in the Sugar Bowl. Thirty-eight of Bryant's former players or assistant coaches have moved on to head coaching posts either in college or professional football. "I don't do much coaching now," he says crediting his staff. "I'm sort of a Chairman of the Board."
Photo Info	PAUL 'BEAR' BRYANT Born Sept. 11, 1913, at Moro Bottom, Ark. AWARDS AND RECORDS National Coach of the Year, 1961, 1971, 1973 Coach of the Year, 1961, 1964, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1977, 1978 Riding the Crimson Tide
Copyright	© 1979, Edito-Service S.A., Geneva Photo Focus on Sports Printed in Italy 03 005 73-06