re: *ClusterF*** of the Day* Moment of silence please. 33 years ago.

I met him many times and can honestly say he is one of about three people I've been with that made me want to stand at attention. The others? General Omar Bradley, and General William Westmoreland who commanded the forces in Vietnam when I served there.

Coach Bryant had a quality of unreserved honesty.. and if he was wrong he admitted it. He never carried a grudge, for instance he actually told Georgia Tech (those consummate azzholes) that he would support them if they reapplied for entry into the SEC. This after the incredible dishonest calumny they created about him.

He knew more about football and people-quality than any of his contemporaries, and he would get down in the trenches and show how it was done well into his 50s. He was every bit as detailed as Nick Saban but with a magnetic personality.

Part of that was due to his moral stature. He was a completely devoted husband and no one ever questioned his personal honesty or morality, unlike ... say ... Barry Switzer et. al.

He never once blamed a player for anything, always took it on himself. But he would sit anyone who violated the rules ... including Joe Namath and Ken Stabler. Imagine a coach today sitting the nation's top QB for the Sugar Bowl game that defined the National Champion. He did it with Namath and proceeded to beat Nebraska with backup Steve Sloan at QB.

And he was gracious and outgoing to his coaching peers which is one reason the coach polls always favored him. Keep in mind that he coached and recruited long before there was an internet and recruiting services. You had to find players the hard way ... but his network with high school coaches was the best organized of anyone during this era because he nurtured those relationships.

Recruiting did not tell the whole story because of the uncertainties of the time. He was able to take those recruits and uniformly turn them into a highly performing team. And his football flexibility was in part due to his personal honesty. He was not stubborn.. he would completely change his approach to the game unlike many coaches if the times demanded it.

He knew more about the passing game than anyone, yet moved to the wishbone in the 70s and was almost unbeatable. And his role in integrating the teams of the SEC is widely known. But what isn't known is that when USC ran Slam Bam Cunningham at Alabama (I was in the stadium that day), he had already moved to integrate the Alabama team. Indeed he had black players on the team as early as 1968 and in 1961 had dressed out a black player and had him stand right next to him on national TV gamr against Tennessee at a time that there was only one game a week shown.

Of course the reason was that the Rose Bowl agreement between the Big-10 and PAC-8 had expired that year and he hoped Alabama would be invited so he wanted to project a certain imagine. Regardless... he took criticism for it but it didn't budge him at all.

I know this is the internet-era and the children on here these days seem to delight in being irreverent and downright lying stinking little punks like cardboardboxer. Ok, fine... be like that...(I can understand Tennessee and Auburn people hating... but LSU people?) But this generation could learn a lot from the Greatest Generation if they tried, and one of the greatest was Coach Bryant.

Unfortunately punks like cardboardboxer won't learn though, because they cannot imagine people like that. I'm lucky... I don't have to imagine.

He looks thirsty

(no message)

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Dumbass, there was already a black person on the team at that point.

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no "dumbass" there wasn't. that player was signed the week after the USC game

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was signed the week after the USC game.

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Wilbur Jackson watched the myth unfold from his seat in Legion Field in Birmingham on a hot September night in 1970. He was an Alabama freshman, his presence virtually unknown. He was the university's first black football recruit, but freshmen were ineligible to play.

It was such a colorful tale that even those who lived through the era often forget the key detail: Bryant had already recruited Jackson.

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Coach Paul Bryant asked Doughty to be Jackson's roommate. This was in the summer of 1970, when there was still some racial tension throughout the Southern states. Jackson was from Ozark, Doughty was from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota.

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Why? Does smoking pole have cardiovascular benefits?

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Nope, but pole dancing does.

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that player was signed the week after the USC game

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No, he wasn't

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no "dumbass" there wasn't. that player was signed the week after the USC game

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Google, how does it work?

That whole post is a goldmine.

Looks like a used car salesman