It was a long time ago, but I sat in a chair in front of the great Paul “Bear” Bryant just a few months before his death. It was in his office at Memorial Coliseum on the University of Alabama campus, and the walls were filled with his accomplishments and the air was filled with a scent of greatness.
At the time, I was working as the sports editor of the student newspaper and would later go on and write about my experiences playing football there. But this interview would be one of the last with the Bear, as he passed away only three months later.
We talked for almost an hour and we had an attachment, as for years the coach and my uncle lived right next door to each other, and I had been with the Bear on several occasions before.
But of everything he told me, the quote I will always remember and the one he had used frequently over his long season was, “The idea of molding men means a lot to me.”
I would like to take that quote, put it in huge type and make every college basketball and football coach read it five times every night before they go to sleep.
“THE IDEA OF MOLDING MEN MEANS A LOT TO ME.”
It doesn’t seem like that is the case anymore. Now, I am not about to point fingers at every coach but it seems like every year the amounts of salaries get larger, and there are more coaches blatantly lying to their players and recruits about whether they are going to leave or not.
What happened to the Bear Bryants, Dean Smiths and Joe Paternos of the college sports world?
Sure, they were well paid but they were loyal, and most importantly, they put their players first.
Look, I am thrilled about the fact that Alabama won a national championship. It will do wonders for the school overall, adding endowment funds and making the school more appealing to students. But Nick Saban is one of those coaches that, while I respect his work ethic and zest for winning, has moved around these last few years like a ping pong ball and I have to wonder just how long he will be around or if he will eventually move on to the next best thing.
Bryant, while he certainly was human and, boy, did he like a good drink, he was most loved for what he taught his players, and more importantly, what they turned into after they left the game of football.
I know so many that played for the Bear, when he was young at Texas A&M and Kentucky and during his great seasons at Alabama, and they all echo a common theme: that he was a molder of men. There are also dozens of stories of him helping former players, whether that is with loans or jobs or just a short phone call.
The problem today is that a lot of that has been lost with all the exposure and money that is involved in college sports. It is all about winning and at most places if you don’t win big, you get the hook. In other words, more emphasis is placed on winning quickly and less on building up these student-athletes and making them successful off the field.
For me, the biggest problem is the NCAA, which has done nothing but ignore the problem.
Answer this question: The NCAA will jump all over a school for providing a student-athlete transportation home during the holidays, even if they can’t afford it. But how many times have we seen head football coaches stand in front of their team and claim they weren’t leaving, only to end up in a different college town two days later?
Meanwhile, the damage they have left takes a long time to repair and the NCAA does nothing.
It seems like it would be easy for the NCAA to come in and stop these types of situations from happening. They seem to have good control over their players and, for that matter, their institutions, but fail miserably with their coaches.
I am not going to spend time writing about these coaches by name, as we know most of them, but I will say that one of the few that does seem to still have those Bryant-like principles is Georgia coach Mark Richt. And perhaps this is why Richt has yet to win as big as Georgia fans would like. He seems to deeply care about his players in an age where the cutthroat coach appears to be winning most of the championships.
When I was in coach Bryant’s office some 27 years ago, he pulled out a huge box from under his desk filled with letters, many of them aged. He told me that of everything he treasured the most, this was his favorite, and he pulled one letter out and started reading it. I don’t remember it word for word but there was one line in it that read something like this …
“Coach, at first I blamed you for suspending me for that (Sugar Bowl) but now I realize why you did it and it changed my life. I’ve had many ups and downs in my life but I owe you for teaching me how to be a man, how to be loyal, disciplined and how to work hard. I love you so much for being my coach, for helping me through my good times and my bad ones. You were like my dad.”
It was signed Joe Namath.
Rosenberg can be reached at ijrosenberg@scoreatl.com and 404-256-1572. Make sure to check out Score’s new all-high school sports website at GaPrepNews.com.
Loading ...
