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First came the General, later came the Bear.

From the mid-1920s through the early 1980s, Tennessee’s Gen. Robert Neyland and the University of Alabama’s Paul W. “Bear” Bryant put their respective stamps on college football in the Deep South, shaping the game with discipline and defense. They won a combined 21 conference championships and 10 national titles.

Long before Steve Spurrier’s decade of dominance at Florida or Nick Saban’s current reign as king of the Southeastern Conference, Bryant and Neyland carved their reputations and the league’s by building championship teams and contenders. Trace the roots of the Alabama-Tennessee rivalry, which resumes today, and you will find them planted in soil tilled by the two coaching legends.

“I suppose you could say that Neyland helped shape the old SEC, ‘Bear’ the new SEC,” said Dan Jenkins, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. “They both became larger than life. I can’t think who else you’d rank with them.”

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“Wallace Wade and Neyland were responsible for the series between Tennessee and Alabama,” said Bob Gilbert, author of the book “Neyland: The Gridiron General” and a retired Associated Press reporter. “Neyland was obviously aware of the success Wade had at Alabama in the 1920s. Neyland respected him and they had become friends and decided to play.

“They started playing in 1928 and it has survived every year since, except the one year in World War II (1943) that neither school fielded a team.”

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“It’s hard to find a moment that is more telling of the intensity of the Alabama-Tennessee rivalry than a young Paul Bryant wanting to beat Tennessee so badly that he would play despite having a broken leg,” said Keith Dunnavant, author of “Coach: The Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant” and editor in chief of Crimsonreplay.com, a website devoted to UA football history. “It became part of the legend of both Coach Bryant and the Alabama-Tennessee rivalry, a guy who both hated Tennessee and respected them that much.”