Football's Supercoach

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As football coach and athletic director at Alabama, Bryant earns $54,000 a year, but he is a self-made millionaire, an astute businessman whose real estate purchases and stock market advice are carefully watched by businessmen across the state. Part owner of a meat-packing firm and a lumber company, he has negotiated shrewd deals with the soft-drink and potato-chip companies that sponsor his TV show, and his picture has adorned billboards across the South—for a fee, of course. His Sunday-afternoon television program during the football season has drawn better ratings than professional football broadcasts. The faithful tune in for a play-by-play commentary that is short on inside information but long on the kind of praise that can thrill the home folks. A sample: "Byron Braggs made a good tackle there. I know his mamma and daddy and all the folks in Montgomery are proud of Byron."

With the exception of a few weeks' vacation after the bowl games have been won and the new recruits signed, Bryant works year round at football. He likes to go to a dog-racing track near Tuscaloosa run by his only son, Paul Jr., a successful businessman who likes football but never played the game. The Bryant football tradition is kept alive by Marc, 17, the only son of Bryant's daughter, Mae Martin Tyson. When Marc injured his knee and required surgery last season, the grandfather was openly worried: "I wonder if everybody expects too much of him because of me."

Bryant hunts and goes fishing, plays golf and a little bridge. "But half the time when we go hunting, he never fires a shot," says Jimmy Hinton, a business adviser. "He mostly just likes to ride a horse and watch the dogs work." He plays bridge well enough, but does not care for the game's social aspects. Says Mary Harmon Bryant: "He doesn't like 'visiting' bridge. He wants to bid and win and skip the talk."

Bryant was hospitalized last spring with fluid in his lungs. He has since given up chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes and has begun swimming daily to build his stamina. Says one friend: "He'll never admit it, but he wants those records so bad he can taste it. He's got himself into the best shape he has been in for years because he has to have good health if he is going to win football games."

What fascinates Bryant about winning football games is not diagramming plays or deciding when to kick a field goal or gamble for a first down, but the challenge of melding 95 very young men into a whole, making each man's vision of himself interdependent with those of his teammates. For all its excesses—and football has more than its share of faults—the sport can be, at its best, a social compact of a high order. Creating this bond is what Bear Bryant excels at, and for this he draws on insights and instincts he has developed over 35 years.

The goal is becoming the best at something, even if it is a game. "I'm just a plow-hand from Arkansas," Bryant insists, "but I have learned over the years how to hold a team together. How to lift some men up, how to calm down others, until finally they've got one heartbeat, together, a team."