Bear Bryant and the Kentucky Wildcats
Remembering a legend of college football.
On September 11, 1913, Paul William Bryant was born in Munro Bottom, Arkansas, the eleventh of twelve children born to Wilson Monroe and Ida Kilgore Bryant. From a young age, he was undertaking legendary things, like the time when, at age 13, he agreed to wrestle a bear at a carnival. The nickname "Bear" stuck.
Kentucky Coach Bear Bryant with Team Captains Vito Parilli and Doug Mosely, 1953. Image via KDL
By 1930, Bear was a high school football player whose team won the Arkansas state championship, but he didn't quite make it to graduation. In fact, when the Bear was offered a football scholarship to the University of Alabama, he had to finish up his degree at a Tuscaloosa-area high school while undertaking fall practice with the Tide.
January 1, 1951 -- Bear Bryant's Wildcats win the Sugar Bowl
Now, here in Kentucky, we know Bear Bryant as the Coach who toughened up the Wildcat football team for eight seasons and reinvented the way we recruited our players. He took the 'Cats to their first Bowl game in 1947 and on to their first SEC Conference title in 1950.
Sugar Bowl Champion Kentucky Wildcats. Image via Big Blue Fans.
The 1950 Wildcats went on to upset the #1 ranked Oklahoma Sooners in the Sugar Bowl, with a final score of 13-7. That Sugar Bowl game is considered one of the greatest upsets in college football history, as the Wildcats ended Oklahoma's run for an undefeated season.
Now, as we all know, Coach Bryant stayed in Lexington through 1953. The stories are murky about why he left us to coach the A & M Aggies. Some say it's over a fight with Coach Rupp over a Cadillac, a watch, or maybe a cigarette lighter. Others say that the rivalry between the two legendary Kentucky coaches has been over-dramatized. In 1966, Bryant himself told Sports Illustrated: "The trouble was we were too much alike, and he wanted basketball No. 1 and I wanted football No. 1...In an environment like that one or the other has to go."
When you have the two best coaches ever to coach their respective sports, the stakes are high.
I hear that, after his 8 seasons at Kentucky were over, he tried his hand at coaching Down South and took to wearing a snazzy hat. I'll leave the stories of those years to our friends in Alabama who can tell them way better than I ever could.
Here's to Coach Bryant and the 1951 Sugar Bowl. Go Big Blue!
My Friday Night Lights
My "glory days" as a high school cheerleader taught me a lot about football -- and life.
Like any high school girl, I was thrilled when I made the varsity cheerleading squad. Except for one small problem...
I'd have to learn about football.
Now that was, shall we say, a bit of a problem. I'd basically grown up in a gym. My granddaddy and my daddy had been basketball coaches. I cheered at basketball games all through grade school. We were Kentucky Wildcats fans, for heaven's sake. It was the early years of the Pitino era and poor Mr. Curry... Well, he was a nice man, they say. All of that didn't add up to much knowledge of, as my daddy would say, "those balls that don't bounce."
Over three years of cheering for the football team, I didn't learn much more than when to say the "First and Ten" cheer and when our team had scored. But, you know, I did make a lot of friends that I wouldn't have made otherwise. And it sure does build a team when you stand on the sidelines in the pouring rain or the blistering heat.
It would be many years before I learned much at all about football. Once I settled down with a beau for whom the sport was way more than a passing interest, I started to pay attention. Bob likes to say that he was just aiming for me to stop talking during important plays; he had no idea I'd become a devotee of the Nick Saban Process who never misses an episode of the Paul Finebaum Show. But, a couple of years ago, I was home visiting my parents and decided to go for a run on the track that surrounds my high school football field. As I went past the home bleachers, I realized how many special memories that field held.
Recently, my high school alma mater was devastated by the unexpected and tragic passing of a member of the football team. A rising Junior, Trey was the son of one of the football players for whom I cheered so many years ago -- one of those friends whom I got to know as I struggled to learn what a "down" was. I can't imagine what it must be like at the high school today as they prep for their first football game of the season while dealing with such an unimaginable loss.
In small towns all across America, the local high school sports teams are a social hub and a point of pride. That's why the brilliant TV show Friday Night Lights rang so true -- we all knew a die-hard lady like Matt's grandma and a super-fan like old Buddy Garrity, and hopefully even had a coach as inspiring as Coach Taylor. Tonight, even though I'm hours away from my hometown, I'll be thinking of my own Friday Night Lights days, and saying a little prayer for Trey's family and friends. And, of course, I'll still be cheering for my Rebels.