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Channeling Bear Bryant
by Brooks Clark
Hearts are warmed all over the football nation by Sylvester Croom’s hiring at Mississippi State as the SEC’s first black football coach. The story is extra wonderful because Croom grew up in Tuscaloosa in the Day, when he couldn’t dream of wearing Crimson, but when times changed became one of Bear Bryant’s first black players at Alabama, an All-America at center no less (including three SEC titles and one national title), became an assistant under Bryant for 10 years (including two national titles), then, as an assistant coach in the NFL for 17 years (one Super Bowl)—all the while generally embodying a host of old-fashioned virtues, notably discipline, integrity, a Bryant-like eye for details, and absolutely impeccable football credentials.
So the less heart-warming part of the story is the part about why Croom wasn’t hired as the SEC’s first black coach a year earlier, by his own alma mater, over a candidate who, objectively speaking, had much less experience and nowhere near Croom’s coaching credentials. Jesse Jackson and others weighed in on the issue. A common sentiment from disappointed members of Bama’s minority community was that the Tide squandered an opportunity to make a statement. Croom has made it clear that he was less interested in making a statement than getting and doing a job.
Mike Shula is a great guy and was a good quarterback at Bama. His father Don is a great guy and a legend in coaching. His brother Dave is a great guy. By any measure, Shula did a great job in taking over this Enron of a football program at the last minute (after swinger Mike Price won a one-night National Title in partying down), and achieved a 4-9 record. But why Shula over Croom?
The underlying reason, as explained by Crimson Tide aficionado Micki Parris, “Not this program—not now.” In other words, the Crimson Tide being in such a bad state of affairs after the roller-coaster of probation and bad actors that the Bama family did not want to put Croom, whom they love and respect, in a position where failure was such a likelihood. In effect, the Tide saying “We love you too much to put you on this hotseat, especially as the first black SEC coach, because we know how mean we can be.” Mike Shula, on the other hand, is a sacrificial lamb they won’t mind serving up if things go wrong. In short, it was benevolent paternalism.
What can you say about paternalism? It’s quaint, to be sure. One might argue that they might have left the choice up to Croom. But there’s no denying that Bama fans are downright hateful to coaches who deviate from Bearness, or winning, or several other unwritten laws of what Alabama coaches are supposed to be.
The post-Bear lineup has been Perkins, Curry, Stallings, DuBose, Franchione, Price and Shula. (Try “People Can Sure Deepsix Football Programs Stupidly” as a mnemonic device.)
In order, Ray Perkins, a Bear favorite, wasn’t the Bear, so he eventually took an offer in the NFL. Bill Curry, an egg-headed Georgia Tech alum, wore preppie sweaters on the sidelines, kept talking about his years playing for Lombardi, and “just wasn’t Bama.” Gene Stallings was a success—one of the Junction Boys and a Bear favorite who lasted seven years and won a National Title. Mike DuBose slept with his secretary, then lied about it, then admitted it and won an SEC title (1999), then started losing games and was gone. Dennis Franchione was not a Bear person, won for while, promised to stay for the long-haul, then heard about upcoming NCAA sanctions left over from the DuBose era and headed for Texas A&M, leaving the players high and dry. Mike Price celebrated his hiring by hitting a strip club, partying all night in a motel room, leaving a stripper with a credit card—not quite good enough for $1,400 in takeout breakfasts—after which Price headed out the door to a golf tournament.
And of course Croom should be grateful for such consideration. So it’s ironic that the program he did take over, 50 miles away from Tuscaloosa, is one that’s every bit as hopeless. Before last season, coach Jackie Sherrill compared it to a runaway train that had to reach the bottom of the mountain before it could start climbing up again. The 2-10 season more brought to mind a rotting catfish on a hot dock.
But Croom is immediately bringing hope, and showing himself to be the closest thing to the re-embodied spirit of Bear Bryant. His first meeting Croom called a player out for writing while he was talking. He announced, “There will be no missed classes. There will be no being late for classes.” A player was late to class. He was shocked when he heard Croom asking the professor. Croom dismissed tailback Nick Turner, last year’s team leader in rushing and punt returns, for not following team rules.
On the surface, it could be considered ironic that a totemic Bryant is black. But on a deeper level, it’s altogether fitting. Bryant grew up in Moro Bottom, Arkansas, in his own words “so far back in the woods they had to pipe in daylight.” He picked cotton and knew what it was to go without. In his later years he admitted he sometimes related better to the old-fashioned “hungry” players and not as well to the players who lacked that raw desperation, and so it’s no surprise that at times he found himself more in tune with the less advantaged black players than middle class white ones. There’ll be plenty of irony to go around in the coming years, as Alabama plays Mississippi State—and faces the spiritual inheritor of the Bryant legacy looking at them from the other sideline.
September 2, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 36
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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