Football's Supercoach

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This year's defending national champions are a typical Bryant team, a squad short on superstars but stocked with hordes of fine players used so freely that they seemed to be, well, a Crimson Tide. In the season opener against Georgia Tech, three quarterbacks and eleven running backs shuttled in and out of the lineup. The searing heat in Birmingham (105° on the field) was one reason; an offense that had but two starting players return was another. While Bryant waits for his offense to gel, he has come up with a few surprises. Split End James Mallard, a world-class track man until a few weeks ago (in 1979 Mallard ran the world's second fastest 200 meters), played the first football game of his life against Georgia Tech. He caught the first pass ever thrown to him and, naturally, outran Tech's defenders for a touchdown.

Bryant controls the substitutions himself. The rolled-up sheets of paper he clutches on the sidelines, containing notes to himself and lists of alternate squads, are as much a symbol of his stadium persona as his jaunty houndstooth hat. Says he: "I want to have my best offensive and defensive units rested and fresh just before the half. I want them not to be worn down for the first five minutes of the second half, and I want them fresh for the last ten minutes of the game. These are the times that football games are won or lost."

In football, where the top coaches freely trade ideas and theories, a genius is a man who taps the common pool of knowledge and then prepares the best for a game. By that definition, Bryant is a genius. Says Paul Dietzel, athletic director at Louisiana State: "One of his favorite expressions is that 'it's the itty-bitty, teeny-tiny things that beat you.' He'll rehearse problems that might arise in a game over and over again."

They tell the story in the S.E.C. that Bryant has a game plan for a hurricane in the first quarter, a flood in the second, a drought in the third and an eagle swooping down to block a field goal in the fourth. Reminded of the tale, Bryant chuckles, but does not deny it. "Well," the voice rumbles, "we do try to be prepared."

Bryant has worn down his critics—or outcoached and outlived them. He now seems somehow above the fray, a man who has left his past behind. And he has mellowed. His practices are no tougher and his teams tackle no more savagely than those of other top football schools, and the day is long past when he would yank a star quarterback out of a hospital bed and send him out to play. But just as in the old days, his players still regard him with awe that is tinged with fear. There is no physical intimidation, in the style of the deposed Woody Hayes of Ohio State and Frank Kush of Arizona State. "I don't remember ever seeing Bear hit a player," says Dietzel. "But I don't think you have to hit people to intimidate them. I don't think there has ever been a player —or a coach—who wasn't scared to death of him."