COACHES HOT SEAT BLOG

With the season long suspension of Oregon QB Jeremiah Masoli in 2010 by his head coach Chip Kelly (and the other trouble that college football players seem to be getting into on a regular basis these days), the Coaches Hot Seat “Quote of the Day” today is an excerpt from Allen Barra’s book on Paul “Bear” Bryant, The Last Coach (which is below).  We rarely quote from books in the CHS “Quote of the Day” but we thought it was appropriate because of how important we believe it is for coaches in collegiate athletics to fully realize how important discipline is to the success  of his/her program.  There are a lot of great lessons to be learned from the suspensions at Oregon, mostly by the players themselves, and if anyone really believes that the motivations, desires and needs of college athletes were a lot different in 1963 than in 2010 then that person does not understand basic human motivation and what it takes to build a championship program.

Excerpt, The Last Coach, Allen Barra

“A few days before the final game in ‘63, Bryant heard a rumor he couldn’t ignore.  Apparently Joe Namath has been involved in an altercation in a parking lot in front of a convenience store.  Bryant, who was preparing to fly to Tennessee on a recruiting trip, went instead to the dorm looking for Joe.  He was seated in the dining room drinking coffee when Namath came in; Bryant asked him to come back to the room he kept at the dorm for private conversations.  Whatever exactly Namath did, according to Bryant he admitted it.  In late years, Bryant would insist that Namath’s offense wasn’t major, but “I believe if you have rules you abide by them.  You can’t make exceptions.”  What he did not know for months, he later admitted, was “that other players were involved.  They let him take the rap alone.”  Namath never mentioned the names of the other players who were with him.

Bryant told Joe he was suspending him.  How many days?  Namath wanted to know.  Until the end of the year, was the answer, “or forever.”  Or until Joe proved something to him.  He would help Namath go to another school if he wanted to, or help him  get into the Canadian Football League, or allow him a chance to get back on the team if he stayed in school and proved that his transgression was just a bad mistake.  The choice was up to Joe.  Bryant then called a meeting of his coaches and told them of his decision.  All of them, except one,  argued for finding a way to keep Joe on the team;  a few of them might have been considering the extra bonuses they would receive – which amounted to about a month’s salary – if Alabama won its Sugar Bowl game, an unlikely prospect without Namath.  The lone dissenter was Gene Stallings.  Bebes was unyielding:  “If it had been me, if I had been the player, you would have fired me, wouldn’t you?”  he asked his boss.  Bryant had to admit that he would have.  “Then let him go,” said Stallings.

Bryant politely dismissed his aides and sat in his office for two hours, ruminating.  Finally, he called Namath and Assistant Coach Sam Bailey into the office.  He told Namath, he would give his right arm not have to do it, but if he didn’t, he would be hurting both Namath and the team.  He told him the university could reverse his decision, but if they did, he would resign.  This was Bryant’s own account, and it sounds like hyperbole to anyone that did not know his history, anyone who did not know that he had done precisely that at Maryland under precisely the same circumstances – or that he would later do it again at Alabama.

Namath teared up and begged his coach not to consider resigning.  He had a favor to ask:  would Coach Bryant call his mother and tell her before the news hit the papers?  Of course he would.  Mrs. Namath cried over the phone and begged Bryant to reconsider, but he told her his decision was final.  That night, unbeknownst to Bryant, Namath had dinner at the Bryants’ home with Paul Jr. and Mary Harmon, who tried to him to comfort him.  Some credit Mary Harmon with saving Namath for Alabama.  “I sent for him,” she revealed some years later.  When he arrived, she hugged him and said, “Joe what happened?  You couldn’t do anything bad.  You’re just too good of a boy to do anything bad.”  What Joe had been doing, according to at least once source was not only drinking but directing traffic in downtown Tuscaloosa – not exactly a low-profile pastime for Alabama’s most easily recognized football player.

As it turned out, the suspension of Joe Namath was to set the stage for one of Alabama’s and Bear Bryant’ most legendary improbable finishes.  At first, the lost of Namath seemed like a devastating blow.  Bryant’s players did not doubt that he had done the right thing, but at that moment no one could see how they would get through the games with Miami and Ole Miss.  The team pulled together in large part because Namath accepted the suspension – at least, he made no public complaint.”

The 1964 season, when Alabama did win a national championship but finished on a sour note, made for an interesting contrast with 1963. 

Namath now officially listed as “Joe Willie” in the Alabama press guide, came out roaring, complete sixteen of twenty-one passes and running for three touchdowns in an easy 31 – 3 season opener win over Georgia.  By the time Alabama was ready to host North Carolina State in the fourth week of the season…..”

The Last Coach, A Life of Paul “Bear” Bryant, Allen Barra

Paul “Bear” Bryant suspended Joe Namath late in the 1963 season for the final game and the Sugar Bowl.  What was Alabama’s record over the next three years you ask?

1964 – 10 – 1 – SEC and National Championship (Led by Joe Namath at QB.  Namath’s record as the starting QB at Alabama was 29-4)

1965 – 9 – 1 – 1 – SEC and National Championship

1966 – 11 – 0 – SEC Championship (Did not win National Championship even though Alabama was the only undefeated and un-tied team at the end of the year.  The story of the 1966 Alabama team is detailed in the great book, The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football’s Most Elusive Prize, by Keith Dunnavant.

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