cover image Coach: The Life of Paul ""Bear"" Bryant

Coach: The Life of Paul ""Bear"" Bryant

Keith Dunnavant. Simon & Schuster, $24 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-684-80041-7

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.)