Coach: The Life of Paul Bear Bryant
"Revised & Updated"\ More than two decades after his death, Paul "Bear" Bryant's imposing shadow still towers over the sport of college football.\ For twenty-five years at the University of Alabama, and thirteen years before that at Maryland, Kentucky, and Texas A&M, Bryant pushed his players to excel with a combination of charisma and fear, winning 323 games and six national championships.\ In this definitive portrait of a rough-hewn man with an extraordinary gift for leadership,...
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“Revised & Updated”More than two decades after his death, Paul “Bear” Bryant’s imposing shadow still towers over the sport of college football. For twenty-five years at the University of Alabama, and thirteen years before that at Maryland, Kentucky, and Texas A&M, Bryant pushed his players to excel with a combination of charisma and fear, winning 323 games and six national championships. In this definitive portrait of a rough-hewn man with an extraordinary gift for leadership, Keith Dunnavant shows how Bryant survived headline-grabbing controversies and the vagaries of a changing social landscape to become college football’s greatest coach and the foremost Southern icon of his time. Coach is the epic story of a larger-than-life figure who overcame poverty and insecurity with intense desire and steely will, reflecting the transformational power of the American experience while emerging as a beacon of pride for Alabamians who felt defensive about their place in the world.Praise for Coach“The definitive Bear Bryant biography.... The first serious attempt to portray Bryant as he really was....”---John Pruett, The Huntsville Times“Bryant’s story says volumes about America and that story is very ably told by Dunnavant....”---Geoffrey Norman, American Way Magazine“Balanced and intelligent.”---Kirkus Reviews“A masterful job.”---The Christian Science Monitor“Dunnavant skillfully raised my eyebrows...[in] a robust and revealing biography of college football’s greatest coach.”---Paul Finebaum, Birmingham Post-Herald“A thoroughly captivating read.”---Larry Woody, The (Nashville) Tennessean“Thanks to Dunnavant, the Bear has a biography that does him justice.”---The Sporting News Publishers Weekly Bryant (1913-1983) retired in 1982 as the winningest coach in major college football history, with 323 victories, more than either of the legends Amos Alonzo Stagg or Pop Warner. Starting in 1935 at Union College in Jackson, Tenn., Bryant then served as an assistant coach at Alabama and Vanderbilt, spent four years in the service and then coached at Maryland, Kentucky and Texas A&M before returning to Alabama in 1958, where he stayed until he retired. From a background of grinding rural poverty, he found football a means of escape and, driven himself, always favored players whose drive was their strongest attribute. Freelance journalist Dunnavant demonstrates that Bryant was revered in his adopted state because, at a time when Alabama came in for opprobrium as the home of Bull Connor, George Wallace and Bloody Sunday in Selma, he was respected throughout the country as a rugged, earthy yet disciplined and decent man. And while not in the forefront of the battle for integration, it suited him well, for many of the young African Americans who went to Tuscaloosa came from a background similar to his and he understood them. Though hagiographic, this bio makes for good reading. (Sept.)
\ From the Publisher"...a robust and revealing biography of college football's greatest coach." —Paul Finebaum, Birmingham Post-Herald\ "Balanced and intelligent."— Kirkus Reviews\ \ \ \ \ \ Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly\ Bryant (1913-1983) retired in 1982 as the winningest coach in major college football history, with 323 victories, more than either of the legends Amos Alonzo Stagg or Pop Warner. Starting in 1935 at Union College in Jackson, Tenn., Bryant then served as an assistant coach at Alabama and Vanderbilt, spent four years in the service and then coached at Maryland, Kentucky and Texas A&M before returning to Alabama in 1958, where he stayed until he retired. From a background of grinding rural poverty, he found football a means of escape and, driven himself, always favored players whose drive was their strongest attribute. Freelance journalist Dunnavant demonstrates that Bryant was revered in his adopted state because, at a time when Alabama came in for opprobrium as the home of Bull Connor, George Wallace and Bloody Sunday in Selma, he was respected throughout the country as a rugged, earthy yet disciplined and decent man. And while not in the forefront of the battle for integration, it suited him well, for many of the young African Americans who went to Tuscaloosa came from a background similar to his and he understood them. Though hagiographic, this bio makes for good reading. (Sept.)\ \ \ Library JournalBryant, the legendary football coach for the University of Alabama Crimson Tide, set a major college record of 323 wins during his storied career. In this biography, journalist Dunnavant portrays a poor Arkansas farm boy who became a hard-nosed football player and an equally tough coach. After tours at Kentucky and Texas A&M, "Bear"whose nickname came from a bout with a live animalcame to stay as the feared but admired Crimson Tide mentor. Stressing loyalty and discipline, he did not hesitate to suspend Joe Namath and other transgressors. Updating Bryant's own Bear (Little, Brown, 1974) this account cites the subject's failingsdrinking, smoking, and gamblingalong with accomplishments. Recommended for public and high school libraries.Morey Berger, St. Joseph's Hosp. Lib., Tucson, Ariz.\ \ \ \ \ BooknewsA manual/CD-ROM package explaining how to use an interactive circuit simulation program, designed to introduce the concepts of hardware description languages. Part I covers the general operation of the program, and Part II offers Verilog language support. The companion CD-ROM contains the circuit simulation program. Assumes familiarity with LogicWorks 3 and with the concepts of the Verilog language. Book ISBN 0-201-89585-4, disk ISBN 0-201-49886-3. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsBalanced and intelligent, this is the first biography of the legendary University of Alabama football coach since his death early in 1983, written by a contributor to the Birmingham Post-Herald who interviewed Bryant for his high school paper.\ Bryant really was a larger-than-life figure, almost literally. At 6' 3" and 210 pounds, he wasn't much smaller than John Wayne, to whom many of players compared him. His physical size would help extricate him from a life of poverty and hard labor, making him an asset to his high school football team and leading him to an athletic scholarship at the University of Alabama. Bryant played with an intensity that overrode his occasional awkwardness. He was the kind of athlete who, despite a broken leg, would suit up and play against hated rival Tennessee. As a coach, he would encourage the same kind of dedication in his players. Bryant was the last of a kind: the coach as absolute monarch, ruler of all he surveyed from his famous tower overlooking the 'Bama practice field. Dunnavant retells all the familiar stories from Bryant's career as the winningest major-college head coach: his resignation from Maryland after the university's president ordered the return of a player he had disciplined; his fabled first season at Texas A&M, in which he ran off all but 29 prospective players with a diet of two hard practices a day in the desert heat; his battles with the press in two libel suits; his extraordinary string of successes at his alma mater. Dunnavant labors mightily to keep the book balanced. He talks about Bryant's excessive drinking, his recognition in later years that the super-tough discipline of his early days might not be applicable in the Vietnam War era, the occasional coaching mistake that cost a team a victory.\ But Dunnavant can't find feet of clay in this hero, nor does he look especially hard. It's just as well, because they probably aren't there.\ \ \
