Sport: Not Your Average Bear

After 38 seasons, Paul William Bryant retires from coaching

In Alabama, where Bear Bryant is next to godliness, for once it was left to a football coach to raise an outcry against himself. "I'm going to alert the president of the university and anybody who wants to know," Bryant said a month and a half ago, after Alabama's second loss of the season in nine games, "that we need to make some changes, and we need to start at the top, and I'm at the top."

The Crimson Tide also lost the next week, and the week after that. One measure of Bryant's place in college football is that he is the only coach alive who could lose three straight games without failing anyone but himself. One measure of the man is that last week he fired himself.

Otherwise, measuring a bear is naturally delicate, especially one as huge as this Bear. From his jug ears to his legend, in every way he is more than several sizes larger than standard: 6 ft. 3½ in., 210 lbs., 322 victories (more of those than anyone else); a farmer's son from Arkansas, a wrestler of carnival bears, "the other end" to Don Hutson at Alabama, the other coach to Adolph Rupp at Kentucky, the scourge of Texas A&M, the sage of Alabama, the supreme being of college football. George Blanda, his quarterback at Kentucky 34 years ago, was the first to note the resemblance. "This must be what God looks like," Blanda said. Bryant's face is brown and as rutted as the erosion of a dried-up riverbed. Under his Henry Higgins hat, the fire in his eyes could burn a hole in a vault. The twinkle in them can melt a (recruit's) mother's heart. George Wallace always expressed lavish gratitude that Bryant never ran against him for Governor.

In deciding to step down one year before reaching the state's mandatory retirement age of 70 (if the state could make that stick), Bryant was influenced by the recruits he had been losing in growing numbers, as more and more mothers sought to know exactly how long he would be around to smile on their sons. A year ago, perhaps the three leading prospects in the state of Alabama all chose Auburn, and one of them scored the touchdown that brought the Tigers their first victory over the Tide in ten years.

That 23-22 loss goes down on the ledger as the last regular-season game in Bryant's 38 head-coaching years at Maryland, Kentucky, Texas A&M and Alabama.

After the Liberty Bowl on Dec. 29, when Alabama plays Illinois in Memphis, his 322-85-17 record will be amended accordingly and closed. This year the Liberty Bowl will be a major event.

"Sometimes," says Bryant, "I wish they wouldn't keep records. You count the games because it's too hard to count the kids, the parents, the high school coaches, the preachers, everyone who has touched every kid. Multiply a whole lot of years by a whole lot of people and you've got 300-and-some victories, and all of the bowls couldn't hold all of the people who hold the record."