Neyland, Bryant helped shape rivalry and the SEC

TUSCALOOSA | 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."

The rivalry

Alabama and Tennessee played football against each other on a somewhat regular basis from 1901 through 1914, but the series abruptly ended. It wasn't until later that it became a regular and celebrated event.

Wallace Wade arrived at Alabama in 1923 as head coach and quickly began building a program that won its first national title in 1925 with a Rose Bowl victory over Washington. Neyland, who had played at Army, was promoted to head coach at Tennessee the next season.

"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."

It was a 15-13 upset in that 1928 meeting that put Tennessee on the college football map, and marked Neyland as a coach on the rise.

Neyland went 12-5-2 against UA before retiring after the 1952 season. Bryant returned to Alabama as head coach in 1958 and soon turned the series, going 16-7-2 against the Volunteers.

Bryant first earned a place in the rivalry's legend as a player in 1935, when he played against Tennessee with a fractured leg. Alabama won, 25-0.

"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."

Bryant's players, even in later years, came to understand the Tennessee game meant more to Bryant.

"Tennessee was just huge," said Tommy Wilcox, a defensive back at UA from 1979-82. "He just always talked about the tradition, I guess going back to that Gen. Neyland. He talked about what the game meant to the two programs. There was a lot of respect."

Even long after Neyland quit coaching, Bryant would tell his players about the rival coach.

"He says Gen. Neyland and I'm thinking of the Civil War," Wilcox said. "I didn't realize he was the coach at Tennessee because I'm from Louisiana, but then I kind of figured it out once he got to talking about the battles that the two universities had against one another, bragging rights and recruiting rights."

Head to head

Neyland coached at Tennessee from 1926 through '52, with gaps in 1935 and 1941-45 when he was called back to active military duty. Neyland was Tennessee's athletics director by the time Bryant became coach at UA, but the two did coach against each other for seven consecutive years when Bryant was at Kentucky. Neyland had a commanding edge, going 5-0-2 in those games.

"Coach Bryant would talk about how he wanted to beat Tennessee so badly that it became almost too big a thing when he was at Kentucky," Dunnavant said.

"Everybody thought Neyland had a jinx on us. It was no jinx. He was a better coach, and he had better football players - and I couldn't stand it," Dunnavant quotes Bryant as saying in the biography.

A famous quote attributed to Neyland (although some maintain it was said first by Woody Hayes) played into the differences in styles between Bryant and Neyland: "When you throw the ball, three things can happen - and two of them are bad."

At Kentucky, Bryant had one of the most prolific passers of the day in quarterback Babe Parilli. After Tennessee beat Kentucky 6-0 in 1950, Neyland poked some fun.

"He said Bryant had obviously spent too much practice time on the tackle-eligible pass because it did not produce anything," Gilbert said. "He said Bryant obviously does not understand the percentages."

Bryant finally beat Tennessee in 1953, the year after Neyland retired, when Kentucky won 27-23.

A mutual respect

Bryant developed a lifelong respect for Neyland. His burning desire to beat the Volunteers did not translate into a dislike for the man who had coached them for so long.

"Some people didn't realize he had genuine admiration for Coach Neyland," Dunnavant said. "They were a lot alike. Both had that really military-style discipline in their programs and you're talking about two of the best defensive coaches in the history of the game. On the field you can be a serious competitor and you can want to beat that guy across from you more than you want your next breath, but you can still respect him. That's the way it was with Coach Bryant and Coach Neyland."

Neyland and Wade were contemporaries who traded coaching advice well after Wade left Alabama to go to Duke, and both fielded masterful defenses. Frank Thomas was Wade's successor at Alabama.

"I think some of that (defensive approach) rubbed off on Frank Thomas at Alabama, and Bryant, of course, played for Thomas," Gilbert said.

Bryant was there at Neyland's retirement banquet in Knoxville.

"Thank God the old guy finally quit," Bryant said, according to Gilbert.

When Neyland passed away in New Orleans in 1962 at age 70, Bryant was there at the funeral.

Comparing the legends

Each coach made his mark on the game.

Neyland retired with the best winning percentage among major-college coaches with more than 20 years in the game at 82.9 percent. His teams posted 17 consecutive regular-season shutouts, and more than 100 of his 173 victories came in games where the opponent did not score.

Neyland is also credited with engineering the 6-2-2-1 defense and utilizing it from 1928 forward.

"The thing he brought to Tennessee, and I think to football nationally, was his concept of defense, which was predicated pretty much on, of all things, the Army field manual," Gilbert said. "It was tactical warfare."

Neyland, of course, also distinguished himself outside of football. He served in two world wars and was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit and was admitted to the Order of the British Empire. He took what he learned in the Army and brought it to the football field.

"The principle was to not get outflanked," Gilbert said. "You weren't going to make a living trying to get outside on Neyland's football teams. You've got to remember the offenses in those days were pretty static, and the 6-2-2-1 was almost geometrically designed to get the most people to the ball."

Bryant retired as college football's all-time winningest coach with 323 victories. He won six national titles and 14 SEC championships. He was named SEC Coach of the Year a dozen times.

Bryant, of course, was also a defensive master, but he was more flexible on the other side of the ball. While Neyland stayed with the single wing throughout his career, Bryant went pass-happy with Parilli at Kentucky and again in the 1960s at Alabama. After back-to-back six-win seasons in 1969 and '70, Bryant scrapped that passing offense for the wishbone, and won five straight conference titles and three more national championships before retiring.

"Bryant was innovative throughout his career," Gilbert said. "Neyland looked around the country and cherry-picked things offensively that he saw other coaches do, but Bryant did that way more than Gen. Neyland ever did. He once said he didn't give a damn about offense, but defense was what he prided himself on."

If Neyland impacted the way college defense was played, Bryant helped change the football culture in the SEC.

"He elevated the level of competition," Dunnavant said. "You talk to anyone who was in the SEC in the late 1950s and early '60s, he elevated everything: the intensity of the way the game was played on the field, the year-round conditioning. He took the SEC to another level and created this incredible standard that not only his successors at Alabama have had to shoot at, but every coach in the SEC since then."

Jenkins, the College Football Hall of Fame historian, points out that Bryant sought out games with other national powers like Southern Cal and Notre Dame. Bryant also went 15-12-2 in bowls, compared to Neyland's 2-5 mark.

"Bear has a far greater legacy," Jenkins said. "All those national championships. Winning big games. Neyland was the master of the kicking game, but he lost more big games, in or out of bowls, than any other great coach. Bear's teams were more respected. They hit harder."

Gilbert once asked the late Fred Russell, longtime sports editor of The Nashville Banner, a question. The answer puts Bryant's and Neyland's legacies in perspective.

"I asked him point-blank who were the best coaches in the history of college football," Gilbert said. "He said (Knute) Rockne, Bryant and Neyland in no certain order."

Reach Tommy Deas at tommy.deas@tuscaloosanews.com or at 205-722-0224.