It’s a good thing (for tough coaches) that there were no time restrictions on how long a college football team could practice in a week when Paul “Bear” Bryant was coaching, particularly at Kentucky.

I was in school at UK when Bryant was the Wildcats’ coach and I had a lot of friends who played football and basketball.

The basketball players told me many times that, after enduring long, arduous practices under Adolph Rupp, they would walk from Memorial Coliseum to the Student Union Building for dinner.

Long, hard practices
“When we would go back to the dorm,” said a basketball player, “we would go past the football practice field. The lights would be on and you could hear the football pads popping. No telling how long Coach Bryant made them practice.”

I know that one day I was walking to class when I met Dick Mitchell, a tough fullback I had seen play against my Irvine High team for first Hazard and then Somerset. Mitchell looked like his eyeball had been knocked out of the socket. He didn’t miss a minute of the rest of that day’s practice or any of the next day and he played on Saturday.

Bryant was also infamous for secret summer practices on a friend’s horse farm and at Millersburg Military Institute, where tryouts came and went after a day or two of what they considered brutal practices. Don Zimmer, the baseball player and manager, was one who tried out as a back. He, and a lot of others, would hit the road with their thumbs in the air.

Michigan’s problem
You’ve read about alleged illegal extra-long practices at Michigan, which is being investigated by the NCAA. Those Wildcats who played for Bryant must be thinking “sissies.”

Bryant also conducted the same long, tough, hot practices when he went to Texas A&M.

But let me tell you another side of the man who was voted the greatest college football coach of the last century.

When his UK line coach and close friend, Carney Laslie, took a job with Col. Red Blaik at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, I was working the sports desk by myself at the old Lexington Herald. When I saw a short Associated Press story about Laslie, I called Bryant’s home to get a comment.

His wife answered the phone and told me, “It’s true, but Paul can’t talk because he’s crying like a baby because he’s losing Carney.”

Crying over Shive
When Bernie Shively, who had been the UK director of athletics and Bryant’s bridge partner, died I called the Bear’s home in Alabama to get his comment.

Once more his wife, Mary Harmon, answered and said, “Billy Thompson (of the Lexington paper) just called and Paul is in the bathroom crying his eyes out and won’t come out.”

Johnny Meihaus, the late coach at St. Xavier High School in Louisville, was one of Bryant’s favorite players and he tried to hire the running back as a member of his coaching staff at Texas A&M. Meihaus told Bryant he was honored, but he just couldn’t move from Louisville. The man Bryant hired for the job was Bum Phillips (later a successful NFL head coach).

Meihaus also told a story of how Bryant could change into a softie.

Once when the government allotment checks didn’t show up for the many members of the team who were in the service during World War II, their families were about to go hungry. Finally Meihaus and a couple of other Wildcats got up the nerve to approach Bryant to see if he could help.

Not only did the Bear see to it that the players got money for groceries, but he gave them you-know-what  for not coming to him sooner.

The Cats rebelled!
Bryant flat-out cost the Wildcats a victory in the 1950 Orange Bowl by working them so hard in the Florida heat and humidity that they had very little left and lost to Santa Clara of California 21-13.

Tom Diskin, sports editor of the UK student newspaper, The Kernel, wrote the story after the bowl game and Bryant went berserk. But later the coach admitted what Diskin wrote was true. Many years later, when Diskin worked in public relations for one of the big Las Vegas casinos, he told me the whole story.

But what very few people know is that the following season when  UK was invited to play Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl, Bryant had an uprising on his hands.

The late John Griggs, one of the best Wildcats and later a team captain under Bryant, told me that the players voted to tell Bryant that they would not play unless the Bear assured them that there would be no repeat of the brutal practices that cost them the Orange Bowl.
Bryant assured them that there would not be and the Southeastern Conference-champion Cats played one of the best games any UK team has ever played and ended Oklahoma’s long winning streak 13-7.

Wildcats dwindling
Tackle Bob Gain, the only Outland Trophy winner ever for any Kentucky school, and halfback Wilbur “Shorty” Jamerson, were the captains of the team that later was declared the national champion by the Sagarin Ratings.

To this day, Bryant’s players hold reunions in Lexington. They are dwindling, especially the World War II veterans like Jack Farris, who was my boyhood hero. He was from the same high school I was. Jack (or Bo Bo as he was called at UK) is gone, too.

Bear was  ladies man
Bryant was a handsome devil. He was young when he started coaching at UK – even younger than some of his players who had been in World War II.

The story is told that when he was mowing his grass in Lexington, a woman driving a Cadillac stopped and said, “You really do a good job. How much would you charge me to do my lawn?”

“Well, the lady who lives here lets me sleep with her.”

And one of his Alabama teammates said of Bryant’s coaching abilities:

“He can take his’n and beat your’n, or he can take your’n and beat his’n,”

The story is told of a fishing trip the Bear took with Shug Jordan, the coach of rival Auburn, which was dominated by Bryant.

Bryant fell out the boat and Jordan had to rescue him.

Bryant said, “Shug, the Alabama people think I can walk on water and I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell them that you had to save me.”

Said Jordan: “I won’t if you don’t tell my people that I DID save you.”

There are big statues outside the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame of Bear and Shug standing with a football player on his knee between them.

I asked a Birmingham sports columnist if the player was neutral.

Answered the writer: “You’d better believe it!"