Coach Paul (Bear) Bryant with his 1954 Texas A&M Aggies. Photo by: Texas A&M Archives.
A legend in Tuscaloosa, you can’t discuss the history of the Alabama Crimson Tide without discussing Paul (Bear) Bryant. As much as Nick Saban and the current crop of Crimson Tide stars continue to put a stamp of domination on NCAA football, a true history of Alabama football can’t be penned without significant mention of what the team accomplished under Bryant’s tutelage.
During his quarter century as head coach of the Crimson Tide from 1958-82, Bryant collected six national championships. That’s tied for the most in modern college football history. His teams won 13 Southeastern Conference championships. He was recognized as the national college football coach of the year on three occasions.
Bryant left college football with 323 victories, at the time an NCAA record. A trip to Alabama to face his Crimson Tide squad wasn’t simply a gamble. It was almost a guaranteed losing proposition. Alabama was 232-46-9 under Bryant.
It’s easy to overlook the accomplishments Bryant achieved prior to his spectacular tenure at Alabama. He was 60-23-5 at Kentucky, winning an SEC title and three bowl games.
Bryant left the Wildcats following the 1953 season to take over as head football coach and athletic director for the Texas A&M Aggies. In College Station, the Bear would roar.
Not Wild About Kentucky
Bryant actually departed from Kentucky to take less money to fill two roles with the Aggies. His reported annual pay to be football coach and AD was $15,000.
Bryant was unhappy about playing second fiddle to Kentucky’s national powerhouse basketball squad.
“Bryant would be the first to concede that Rupp is a brilliant basketball coach,” Louisville Courier-Journal sports editor Earl Ruby wrote at the time. “But Rupp’s very poor relationship with fellow coaches and with the press definitely was a factor.
“As long as basketball rules the campus and the administration, these relations hardly can be expected to improve. Paul has come to realize that the University of Kentucky is governed by basketball, at the expense of football.
“Paul is leaving for a job that pays him less money and will afford him less chance for outside income.”
Bryant was also reportedly disillusioned by how the scandals surrounding Kentucky basketball were also staining his program, as people were opting to paint all Wildcats sports with the same brush.
In the early 1950s, the Wildcats basketball team was placed on NCAA probation due to a point shaving scheme. The entire 1952-53 Kentucky basketball season was canceled.
“Paul has been extremely unhappy since the basketball scandals rocked the nation and centered unsavory attention on Kentucky,” Ruby wrote.
Ruby predicted that great things were ahead for Bryant on the gridiron.
“Paul is a comparatively young man in the game,” Ruby reported. “He is a genius as a football strategist and as a leader of boys. He has tremendous enthusiasm and ambition.”
The Junction Boys
Bryant was not arriving at College Station to take the helm of a national powerhouse. The Aggies had posted consecutive losing seasons under his predecessor Raymond George. There’d been just two winning campaigns and one bowl appearance in the eight years prior to the Bear’s arrival at Texas A&M.
What Bryant found appalled the coach. He saw among the 111 players on the roster too many who he felt were weak, either physically or psychologically. He saw a team that was ill-prepared and had been poorly trained and coached.
Bryant set out to change that culture via what could only be described as a boot camp on steroids. He took his players to a training facility in the tiny Hill County town of Junction, where Texas A&M had a 411-acre adjunct campus that is today the site of Texas Tech University.
At that particular juncture in time, the town was experiencing record-high temperatures and drought conditions. Most of the 10 days that the team was conducting training, temperatures soared above 100 degrees.
Bryant started practice at the crack of dawn and team functions continued until lights out at 11 p.m. Players were deprived of water while working out. Two wet towels – one for the offense and one for the defense – were shared among the players.
“I don’t want ordinary people,” Bryant was quoted as saying by ESPN. “I want people who are willing to sacrifice and do without a lot of those things ordinary students get to do. That’s what it takes to win.”
By the time the team returned to campus, just 38 players remained with the squad. The group included future NFL player and coach Jack Pardee, guard Marvin Tate, later the AD at Texas A&M and mayor of Bryan, and Gene Stallings, who’d follow in Bryant’s footsteps as head coach of the Aggies and Crimson Tide. Stallings guided Texas A&M to victory over Bryant’s Alabama team in the 1968 Cotton Bowl.
The entire event was captured in the 2002 film The Junction Boys. Actor Tom Berenger portrayed Bryant.
A Texas A&M Turnaround
The surviving Junction Boys were honored with a commemorative plaque in 2014. Photo by: Texas Historical Commission (Twitter.com).
The tough love didn’t immediately turn the Aggies into champions. They went 1-9 in 1954, the only losing campaign of Bryant’s 38-year coaching career.
However, the dye of a turnaround was cast. The Aggies were 7-2-1 in 1955 and in 1956, they went 9-0-1 and won the SWC title, beating Texas 34-21. Future NFL running back John David Crow won the Heisman Trophy during an 8-3 campaign in 1957.
Home called, though. An Alabama grad, Bryan returned to take over the Crimson Tide in 1958. But he never forgot his A&M roots. When Bryant died just a month after retiring as Crimson Tide coach, he was wearing a gold ring. It was simply inscribed “Junction Boys.”