Football coaches, like television cowboys, fit neatly into two categories: the good guys and the bad guys. Alabama's Paul W. ("Bear") Bryant, 48, is by choice one of the bad 'uns. He is a shrewd recruiter, an admitted plagiarizer of football tactics, a chronic weeper, and a flagrant headline chaser. He drinks Salty Dogs (lime juice and gin), runs up scores, browbeats sportswriters, cusses his players, and believes in corporal punishment—usually, a size 12-D shoe applied to the seat of the pants. He also collects slogans: "A moral victory is like kissing your sister." "It requires little effort to be a loser; anyone who tries can be successful." "Winning isn't everything, but it beats anything that comes in second." An arrogant professional who guarantees results and brooks no meddling by faculty or students, Bryant is college football's most controversial coach. He may also be its best. Says former Georgia Coach Wally Butts: "In Alabama, an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in Bear Bryant."
There are few nonbelievers. Since he chucked a $105,000 contract at Texas A. & M. in 1957 to sign on at floundering Alabama ("Mother called," he explained), Old Grad Bryant has compiled a won-lost record of 27-6. In 1959, the still-building Crimson Tide went to the Liberty Bowl and lost to Penn State 7-0; last year, once-beaten Alabama was ranked ninth in the nation, played Texas to a 3-3 standoff in the Bluebonnet Bowl. Last week, on the strength of its crushing 66-0 victory over Richmond, Bryant's unbeaten, T-formation squad topped the Southeastern Conference and was pressing No. 1-ranked Texas for the national championship.
Carte Blanche. Seldom have a school's football fortunes improved so abruptly: in the three seasons before Bryant took over, once-proud Alabama had won only four games. Armed with a ten-year contract (at $17,500 a year) and carte blanche from indulgent university officials, Bryant moved quickly. "First we held a lot of contact practices for the holdover players," says Assistant Coach Gene Stallings. "We wanted to find out who could run and who could hit—who wanted to play football. It was plenty rough." When one battered youngster quit the team in disgust, Bryant raided his locker and threw his clothes out into the street. "I wanted the others to learn," says he, "that it doesn't pay to be a quitter."