Alabama Football: Bear Bryant, Pat Dye and Being the Better Man

There is an old photograph that the more seasoned fans of both Crimson Tide and Auburn Tiger football gaze upon with wistful remembrance. The image can be found framed in rickety barbecue joints and wood-paneled country-cooking restaurants across the state of Alabama. It is an icon of a time when college football was not a multi-million dollar shoe commercial; when life and sport were simpler and more innocent, at least in the minds of the adoring fans.

The photograph, taken in the latter days of the life and career of Alabama head coach Paul Bryant, depicts Bryant sitting at a dining table with Pat Dye, a player for the Georgia Bulldogs and an assistant under Bryant who would later coach against Bryant on the plains of Auburn.

Bryant is shown gazing into what looks like a wine goblet, his pose relaxed and contemplative. He is wearing not his trademark houndstooth fedora but a ball cap and a hunting jacket.

Dye, in trousers with suspenders, leans toward Bryant, his lips pursed in speech as if demonstrating his mastery of some principle learned under Bryant’s watchful eye.

The photograph is a symbolic passing of the torch among Alabama football greats. Dye was on the rise in the coaching ranks while Bryant was a lion in winter, a legend reaching the end of his road. Some accounts say that Bryant wanted Dye to succeed him at Alabama, but it was on the Plains that Dye emerged from his mentor’s shadow, and it is there that Dye is celebrated as their greatest coach.

His career as a coach ended with an NCAA investigation into Auburn’s recruiting practices, but he has remained a player within the program, and it is held by many that he is the power behind the throne, a sort of shadow athletics director whose approval is vital in any coaching search.

Dye’s comments on Tuesday to the Montgomery Quarterback Club demonstrate how personal the rivalry between Auburn and Alabama have become in the years since he and Bryant shared a table and conversation.

“I wouldn’t swap [Auburn head coach Gene Chizik] for ten Sabans,“ Dye said. “Saban is the best coach in the country — I’ll grant him that. But he ain’t a better man than Gene Chizik.”

Such comments are beneath the type of southern gentleman pictured in that photograph with Bryant. But that image was taken long ago, in another kind of world than the one in which we now live. It was a time where you beat a man on the field, then picked him up, slapped him on the back and got ready to go at it again.

While older fans may not like Dye for having coached for the Tigers, they could at times offer a grudging respect for his successful application of Bryant’s style of football.

Dye has clearly emerged from the shadow of Bryant, who was certainly no angel. But unlike his mentor, Dye has stayed too long in the arena, and has helped turn a sporting rivalry into a blood feud where gentlemen have no place at the table.

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Homepage photo: Birmingham News