The Last Coach: A Life of Paul "Bear" Bryant | 
 enlarge | Author: Allen Barra
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  37 reviews
Sales Rank: 454684
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 039332897X
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.332092
EAN: 9780393328974
ASIN: 039332897X
Publication Date: September 12, 2006
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Product Description
The explosive biography of the greatest college football coach in history.
When Paul William "Bear" Bryant died on January 26, 1983, it was the lead story on the all three networks' evening news. New York City newspapers reported his death on their front pages. ("Crimson Tears," read the headline in the New York Post, "Nation weeps over death of legendary Bear Bryant, 69.") Three days later, America watched in awe as an estimated quarter of a million mourners lined the fifty-five mile stretch from Tuscaloosa to a Birmingham cemetery to pay their respects as his three-mile long funeral cortege drove by.
President Reagan and the three former American presidents sent flowers, as did people as diverse as Bob Hope, ABC's Roone Arledge, advice columnist Ann Landers and the Reverend Billy Graham. Scores of Bryant's former players, including Joe Namath, Lee Roy Jordan, Ken Stabler and Ozzie Newsome, were in attendance. So were Bryant's most distinguished colleagues, the greatest living football coaches, including Southern Cal's John McKay, who said, "It was like a presidential funeral procession. No coach in America could have gotten that. No coach but him. But then, he wasn't just a coach. He was the coach."
Bryant's passing was noted with the kind of reverence our country reserved for statesmen or military leaders, though Paul "Bear" Bryant had insisted for much of his life that he was "just a football coach." For millions he was much more, he was the greatest coach the game ever saw, the heir to the tradition established by Knute Rockne. He took his Alabama Crimson Tide teams to an unmatched six national championships. But to the players, journalists and fans whose lives he touched in his more than half a century as a player and coach, he was the last symbol of values that transcended football—courage, discipline, loyalty, and hard work.
To his critics, Bryant represented the dark side of big-time college football—brutality, fanaticism and blind adherence to authority. The real Bear Bryant was far more complex than either his admirers or detractors knew. While maintaining a public friendship with Alabama governor George Wallace, he continually sought ways to undermine the governor's segregationist policies, finally forcing a legendary football game in Birmingham with the University of Southern California that opened the floodgates to the integration of football at the University of Alabama, including its coaching staff. Old fashioned in his politics, he was nonetheless an admirer of Robert Kennedy, whom he planning to vote for in 1968.
Allen Barra's The Last Coach traces Paul Bryant's rise from a family of truck farmers to recognition as the most successful and influential coach in the game's history. The eleventh of thirteen children, Bryant was born in tiny Moro Bottom, Arkansas in 1913 and grew up in nearby Fordyce—where his legend was born when he wrestled a live bear on the stage of a local theater. Paul was raised by his mother, who barely managed to keep him out of trouble and on the Fordyce High School Redbugs long enough to get a football scholarship at Alabama, where he would meet and marry the love of his life, campus beauty queen Mary Harmon Black.
At the height of the Depression, football took Bryant to the Rose Bowl with Alabama's 1934 national champions and on to a career as an assistant and, finally, a head football coach, where he matched wit and grit with the greatest coaches of two generations, men like Tennessee's General Robert Neyland, Oklahoma's Bud Wilkinson, Notre Dame's Ara Parseghian, Ohio State's Woody Hayes, and Penn State's Joe Paterno. Along the way, he stirred controversy with his infamous "Junction Boys" training camp in 1954, during which almost two-thirds of the Texas A&M football team quit; his legal battle with The Saturday Evening Post over the accusation that he had conspired to fix a college football game, a trial which rocked the sports world; and his pursuit of Amos Alonzo Stagg's all-time record for college coaching victories.
Through it all, Bryant's influence has not only endured but prevailed as his former players and assistants continue to define the best in not only college but professional football. A USA Today and Washington Post Best Sports Book. 32 pages of photographs.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 32 more reviews...
 Good Biography of One of the Winningest College Football Coaches January 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"The Last Coach" is a newer and perhaps more comprehensive biography of the man simply known as "Bear". The book covers several aspects of Coach Bryant's life:
1. Early life in Moro Bottom and Fordyce, Arkansas.
2. Early interest in football as a way for him to escape the dirt-poor life he was raised in.
3. College years at the Univesity of Alabama.
4. Coaching jobs at Maryland, Kentucky, Alabama, and other places.
5. Relationship with several players (Joe Namath, Ozzie Newsome, Pat Trammel, and others).
6. Relationship with politicians, college presidents, Hollywood figures, and others.
7. Later family life.
8. Details of the long funeral procession and thousands of people who turned out to pay respect for Bryant.
9. Different versions of how Bryant got the nickname "Bear".
While Bryant's personal life did have some questions (drinking, supposed womanizing, etc.) there is no doubt that he was also one of college football's greatest coaches.
Whatever you think of Bryant or the University of Alabama football, "The Last Coach" is an informative read. Recommended.
 The BEST Bryant Book December 25, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've read many of the Bryant books and simply put, this is the best.
If you are a fan of college football then you'd do well to read this book from a historical standpoint. For those who think they know college football, this book is illuminating with regards to the "national" game in the early days vs. now (2007) and how championships were determined largely by geographics and not by talent or strength of schedule.
Excellent.
The Last Coach November 22, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have read quite a few books on Paul "Bear" Bryant (including his audobiography) so I wasn't sure if the information in this book would be facts I already knew or information I was not aware of. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. Yes, there was all the well-known facts about his life, but to my surprise there was quite a bit of information that I was reading for the first time.
The author has done an outstanding job of detailed research and brings a clear steady style to the book. It is without question the most comprehensive book on Coach Bryant's life that I have ever read.
If you're an Alabama football fan, this is a must read.
Never be one like him August 27, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Bear was the last coach. Now it is a business. Anyone that loves college football, especially SEC football, should read this book. Barra has done a good job capturing the times of Paul "Bear" Bryant.
Roll Tide Roll! May 31, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
From the Junction boy days and even earlier. This book has it all. One of my favorites! Excellent reading!
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