Word: bryants
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Bryant was settling down and building an athletic empire at his alma mater. Last year Alabama spent some $5 million on sports, and its athletic budget was still comfortably in the black. A $5 million fieldhouse, a $2 million track stadium and a new $2.4 million swimming and diving center were financed by football profits. Acres of tennis courts and other recreational facilities for students have been constructed from the vast haul of television royalties and bowl-appearance money earned by Bryant's teams...
...Bryant has fed his football machine with generation after generation of blue-chip athletes. "You've got to have chickens," says Bryant, "before you can make chicken salad." He now leaves most of the barnstorming to ten assistants, but in his time he was a courtly and soft-spoken charmer who persuaded parents in order to win over their strong and swift sons.* To sell Alabama, his staff tells prospects, with veracity, that they will have a chance to play on a national championship team if they come with the Bear. Rival coaches try to turn Bryant...
...reveal the details of the infraction, but whatever its cause, the coach benched his star quarterback before the final regular-season game against Miami and extended the banishment to include the Sugar Bowl. "I don't guess anybody would think much of what Joe did nowadays, including myself," Bryant says. "But he was supposed to be a leader, so he had to live by the rules. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, and it was to the greatest athlete I ever coached...
Mary Harmon Bryant was there to soothe the wounds. Says she: "When Joe was kicked off the team, I sent for him. When he got here, I hugged him and we both just cried like babies. I said to Joe, 'What happened? You couldn't do anything bad. You're just too good a boy to do anything bad.' All he would say was, 'No, ma'am, Coach Bryant is right.' I told him to stay with me. He came out to the house and stayed several days in a room downstairs. Paul...
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...