re: SEC old timers, any thoughts on Shug Jordan?

You also need to understand that off the football field and off the recruiting trail Coach Bryant and Coach Jordan weren't mortal, "I hate your guts and want to destroy you enemies." Any more than coaches are now (fans who are consumed with hatred and want blood don't understand that these guys of course compete with each other, hard, but they're also practically fraternity brothers given that they all pretty much have the same agent).

I don't know which recent biography of Coach Bryant it was in, but when Coach Jordan found out his leukemia was terminal, he called Coach Bryant and told him personally, and Coach Bryant was very upset about it, and they met each other in Birmingham, back in an out of the way corner of a place that specialized in adult beverages, had one or two or three or four of those, and said their goodbyes man to man and face to face, as it should be with two legends like that.