Not sure you know the story; but Bryant was hardly here long enough to pass that kind of judgment.

Bryant was at A&M from 1954-1957, during which time he worked miracles.

The Bear had been hired to bring respectability back to A&M. It was a tough place to recruit players, since the Aggies were the cellar team in the Southwest Conference, there were no girls and it was a military school with compulsory ROTC, including the athletes. It was often referred to as a “poor boys school” and a “cow college” and was the brunt of a lot of Aggie jokes. Also, the campus looked a little bit like a penitentiary.

When he arrived for spring training in ’54 he didn’t like what he saw. In those days there were actually two teams; freshman and varsity, each with their own scheduled games. While he could recruit new players they would not be eligible to play on the varsity squad until their sophomore year, so he was stuck with all the players from his predecessor. The Bear was not impressed and was determined to weed out the losers.

That August, to remove the team from the anxious eyes of “mamas and papas” and the news media, he loaded the team into three buses and took them to an isolated and terribly rugged training camp in Junction, Texas, for what has become legendary as the toughest football camp in football history. Only one bus with 38 players returned to campus “after ten days of hell”. Among the “Junction Boys” were Gene Stallings ’57 and Jack Pardee ‘57. At game time for the first game, they were literally worn out.

His first season went 1 – 9, the only losing season in Bryant’s career and he never again suffered another 30 point loss. Except for the first game they were all fairly close scores and the Aggies showed a lot of grit and determination.

The next year, 1955, the Aggies were the surprise team of the conference with a winning season. In the Rice game they scored three touchdowns in the last 3:28 minutes for one of the most thrilling comebacks in school history. It was the first time many had ever heard of an “on-side” kick...and it worked.

In 1956 A&M reversed the score of Bryant’s first game against Texas Tech, beat Texas for the first time in Memorial Stadium in Austin, went undefeated and won the Southwest Conference Championship for the first time since WWII.

In 1957 A&M beat out Oklahoma for the #1 ranking after remaining undefeated for 18 games. John David Crow won the Heisman Trophy.

That same year Bear announced he was “going home to Mama” to be the head coach at his alma mater, Alabama. The rest is history.

This post was edited on 5/21/21 at 12:22 pm

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Posted by Ag Zwin

Member since Mar 2016

20181 posts

Posted on 5/21/21 at 12:24 pm to EKG

quote:
Bryant was at A&M from 1954-1957, during which time he worked miracles.

Good writeup.

One more thing: In later years, Bryant attended a reunion of the Junction Boys and admitted he thought it was the worst mistake he'd ever made to put them through that. They gave him a ring they had crafted for themselves as a unique team of his.

According to his son, it was the only piece of jewelry he was wearing when he died.

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Posted by Draconian Sanctions