BEAR BRYANT

Photo: Bear Bryant, 1977 — Malcolm W. Emmons / Heritage Auctions, via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

THE TIME I TRIED TO POKE THE BEAR

I hadn’t thought about it until the other day when I came to the final page of the 2026 Lindy’s College Football Preview. There it recalls significant events of past college football seasons at intervals of 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 years ago.

For the 50-year mark this year’s edition highlighted the success of Heisman winner Tony Dorsett and his 1976 national champion Pittsburgh team.

My recall of the 1976 campaign is slightly different. That was the year I was introduced to Southeastern Conference football and attended my first press conference with Bear Bryant.

I had just taken over the University of Kentucky football and basketball beat for the Courier-Journal in Louisville and one of my first assignments was a trip on the SEC Skywriters tour.

Today SEC football writers all rather in Birmingham and coaches and selected players from the various teams come to them, but back in the 1970s (and earlier) writers and broadcasters traveled in a charter plane around the South to visit the various schools themselves. The name “Skywriters” came from the practice of many to write their stories while flying to the next destination.

The second stop on the 1976 tour was in Tuscaloosa and I had one specific question I planned to ask Bear. 

A little background is necessary here. Bear had already established his legendary status by then after winning the first four of his eventual six national championships in previous years. The 1975 team came close but had ended the season No. 3 with an 11-1 record.

Bama’s season had ended with a Sugar Bowl victory over Penn State but how that matchup came to be was not without controversy. Bama entered the game ranked No. 4 and Bear felt he was going to be denied a shot at No. 1 because the Orange Bowl had matched up his preferred opponent for No. 3 Oklahoma with No. 5 Michigan. No. 8 Nebraska, which had lost the Big 8 conference championship to Oklahoma, was the highest ranked available opponent for Alabama.

Butwhen it came time to pick an opponent for the Crimson Tide in the Sugar Bowl Bear, told the bowl he wanted to play No. 9 Penn State ad the Sugar Bowl obliged. 

Big 8 coaches in particular were upset that the Cornhuskers had been passed over and many in the media suggested it was because Bear wanted to play a team he could beat, which it turned out he did but only by a 13-6 score. 

Oklahoma got the national title when it beat Michigan in the Orange Bowl to jump Ohio State and Texas A&M, which had lost their bowl games.

Back to the Skywriter tour and my question for Bear.

Being new to the SEC and in a room full of what was mostly strangers I was a bit apprehensive. But finally as the session wore down, it came to it being now or never and in a lull I blurted out

“Who do you want to play in the Sugar Bowl?”

I waited for the barrage of belligerence I was sure would come. But no.

“I don’t know if we can get there,” Bear said in his low rumbling growl. “But if we do, I’ll decide though.”

I felt relief. I had not been chewed up and spit out like I expected. Laughter, not scorn, filled the room.

It turned out Bear was right about his team not making the Sugar Bowl in 1976. It was Georgia that represented the SEC and the Bulldogs lost to Pitt. Alabama finished 9-3 to finish 11th in the final polls after a 36-6 rout of UCLA in the Liberty Bowl.

Later after I had moved from Louisville to Jackson, Mississippi, I had other opportunities to see Bear at other press conferences, including his 1981 Iron Bowl win over Auburn that made him the winningest coach in college football at the time with 315 wins.

The only thing I remember about that press conference was that when Bear was asked (not by me) how he was going to celebrate the milestone win, he said he was going home to have some bread and milk, which not being a native Southerner puzzled me.

Bread and milk? A friend had to explain to me Bear meant  cornbread. Better but with Bear’s reputation as a hard smoker and drinker, I had my doubts about the milk.

Another time I approached him (nervously) in the locker room after a game and found him sitting in a chair by himself. (Back then post-game press conferences weren’t formalized. You simply gathered around coaches and players one-on-one by their locker or a chair.)

I don’t remember exactly what my question to him was, something like why he had done something like punting on third down, and he simply growled again: “Cuz I was trying to win.”

Boy what a great quote, I thought as I scurried back to the press box. Later, I found out that was Bear’s stock answer when he wanted you to quit bothering him, like swatting away a fly.

After replacing Amos Alonzo Stagg as college football’s winningest coach (a distinction now held by Penn State’s Joe Paterno at the top level of college football) Bear spent one more season as Alabama’s coach. Bama lost four of its last six regular-season games to finish with an 8-4 record in 1982.

Four weeks after the Tide closed out the season with a 21-15 win over Illinois in the Liberty Bowl, Bear died of a heart attack after being admitted to the hospital because of chest pains.

Alabama tried several coaches after the Bear, and with a couple of exceptions, they struggled. Those exceptions were Gene Stallings, who won a national championship by beating Miami in 1992, and Nick Saban, who topped Bear’s record with seven national titles before retiring a couple of years ago.

I don’t know about Stallings, but I’m pretty sure I would have gotten a different reaction from Saban on my question to Bear.