How my father helped make AUBURN a football power
The ‘rest of the story’ on how Pat Dye became Auburn’s football coach in 1980.
Author’s note: I take Saturday’s off to enjoy college football, but here’s a story with a Troy connection that also should be of interest to college football fans - especially my Auburn friends.
By BILL RICE, JR.
Like one might expect from a boy who grew up loving sports, I’ve always been proud of the fact my late father played football for Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant at Alabama.
Since Dad played for Coach Bryant, I was privy to many first-person accounts of what Bryant was really like.
One of my favorite Coach Bryant/Dad stories illustrates how one seemingly insignificant event can have huge ripple effects in the future. This story actually had positive ramifications for the lives of all my Auburn friends.
It’s a variation of the theme of It’s a Wonderful Life - the events of one life affect the future lives of so many others.
As you will see, it was someone who bled Crimson (my late father) who played a pivotal role in turning the fortunes of Auburn football … decades later.
The knee injury that changed football history in our state …
After playing on Alabama’s 1961 National Championship team in 1961, Dad was a talented enough college player to get drafted by the Houston Oilers.
He also got selected to play in the Senior Bowl All-Star game. In that game Dad blocked a punt and had a good game, but he re-injured his knee in the game.
As it turns out, Dad was cut by the Oilers (on the final cut day).
I used to get Dad to tell old football stories while he was cooking steaks on the patio and enjoying a couple of cold beers. On one of those occasions, I asked him why he didn’t make the team.
Dad told me his knee was never 100 percent in pre-season practices and games with the Oilers. So it was probably that knee injury that kept him from being a pro football player.
Dad also didn’t seem too upset by the termination of this potential career. On other occasions, he’d told me that the game was super violent and someone had to be either a liar or “crazy” to enjoy the contact and 110-degree practices with no water breaks.
He did enjoy the excitement and pageantry of the games, the wins and the stature that being a college football player must have brought. Plus, back then pro players didn’t get paid much.
In other words, I never got the impression Dad was heart-broken when he didn’t make the Oilers’ final roster.
***
As it turns out, Dad had a good fall-back job. He’d earned his commission in the Army via ROTC and he was assigned to Ft. Benning to serve his two years of active duty.
At Ft. Benning, Dad spent a few months serving our country … playing football. Back then, every military base had a football team, which was typically made up of former college, pro and good ex-high school players.
Dad’s best friend on the “Dough Boys” was one Pat Dye, a former All-American at Georgia.
One day Dye let my Dad know he wanted to become a college coach and asked Dad to put in a word with Coach Bryant.
Dad was happy to do this. Dad wrote Coach Bryant a letter recommending Dye as an assistant coach. He even remembered one line from that letter: “Dye,” my father told Coach Bryant, “reminds me of you.”
Coach Bryant received the letter and later called my Dad to talk more about Dye. Long-story short, Coach Bryant hired Dye (probably based on Dad’s recommendation) and Dye became a great assistant coach at Alabama for nine years. Alabama won three national titles with Dye as an assistant and could have won one or two more.
The Tide Turns …
Skip forward to 1980 and Auburn needed a head football coach. The Tigers hired Pat Dye, who had done very well as a head coach at East Carolina and Wyoming.
I have no doubt that Auburn’s braintrust would have never considered Dye as its head coach if he hadn’t been such a successful and well-known assistant for Bryant and Alabama.
When Dye was hired at Auburn, Alabama had defeated Auburn in football nine years in a row. Auburn was mediocre and the “little sister” or “red-headed step child” of football in our state.
Or it was until the university hired Pat Dye as its football coach and athletic director.
In his second year at Auburn, Dye’s Tigers beats Alabama and Coach Bryant. Auburn was soon winning SEC titles every other year and competing for national titles.
Pat Dye, a great recruiter, was also the coach who convinced Bo Jackson to play football for Auburn … not for Coach Bryant.
Arguably, the most significant thing Pat Dye did for Auburn football was to move the Iron Bowl game from Birmingham to Auburn’s campus every other year.
During Dye’s tenure as Auburn coach, Auburn’s stadium was expanded from 54,000 seats to 85,000. Auburn’s stadium was now 15,000 seats larger than Alabama’s!
Partially because of its football success, Auburn’s campus enrollment surged past that of our state’s “capstone” university in Tuscaloosa. (Football matters … as Alabama learned when it lucked out and got Nick Saban as its coach - and saw campus enrollment again surpass Auburn’s).
For decades, the Rice family was always big fans of Pat Dye since my Dad and mother knew him very well and because Coach Dye was so important to the dynasty Coach Bryant built in Tuscaloosa in the 1960s and 1970s.
… And then the son of a gun goes to …. Auburn … and starts routinely beating our team!
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As I’ve written, “leadership matters” and one man flipped the whole state. (The most important person in our state is not the governor - it’s the head coach of the Alabama or Auburn football teams).
Coach Dye didn’t stay at Auburn forever but by the time he left, Auburn knew it could compete with Alabama … because Coach Dye proved this.
Coach Bryant preached that his players and the team’s fans should “always show your class.” Since we of course did what Coach Bryant said, we had to take our defeats with class and give Auburn and Coach Dye their due. But that didn’t mean we had to like it.
My Dad never talked about it, but it must have occurred to him that he was the man who made it possible for Auburn to “turn the tide” in our football-obsessed state.
Anyway, if Dad doesn’t hurt his knee in that 1962 Senior Bowl … Pat Dye probably never becomes the head football coach at Auburn in 1980. Many of those precious, unforgettable victories my Auburn friends savor probably wouldn’t have happened.
Now you know the “rest of the story.” You’ve got Bill Rice, Sr. - the biggest Alabama man of them all - to thank.
It’s true: one life touches so many others.
NOTE: See “Bonus info” with other Coach Bryant, Coach Dye and Troy trivia in today’s Reader Comment thread.
(Citizen Subscribers should receive content from Bill Rice Jr. almost every day in their emails - but on autumn Saturdays I might re-boot some previous columns - like I did with this one).
Charles Bradshaw told me another Coach Bryant story that's always stayed with me. Charles attended the Southern Miss game as a recruit in 1982 when the Eagles upset Alabama. Charles later visited with Coach Bryant and told me how terrible Coach Bryant looked. He was ash white, Charles said. This confirms how very sick or ill Bryant was in his last football season. Somehow, Coach Bryant willed himself to get through that season.
Also, I wonder if Dye hadn't become athletic director at Auburn in 1980 how many more years would the Iron Bowl have been played in Birmingham. I think the games would have eventually been moved to the respective college campuses, but this would have happened years later.
BTW, Dye always said that moving the games to the college campuses would eventually help Alabama - which is exactly what happened. Alabama now has one of the largest and prettiest football stadiums in America (much bigger and prettier than Auburn's stadium). This would not have occurred - at least as early as it id - if Pat Dye hadn't moved the Iron Bowl to Auburn.
The ripple effects made possible by one or a few events - are fascinating to note ... at least to me.