University of Alabama - The last coach: a life of Paul Bear Bryant

More praise for The Last Coach

The Last Coach is a remarkable piece of digging into, and reporting of, a magnificent life story written at a length more commonly reserved for a Founding Father.... Barras book devotes a lot more time to inspecting the nature of the man than to the secret of his success, but after a while it becomes obvious that the nature of the man was the secret of his success.

Michael Lewis, The New Republic

A thorough and well-written biography of Paul Bear Bryant along with a compelling discussion of Coach Bryants standing among the most successful college football coaches ever. Sport fans and historians will devour this outstanding book.

Bart Starr, former quarterback, Green Bay Packers

If you were a college football junkie like me, you will welcome this book about Bear Bryant. Happily, after all these pages, he still winds up as the greatest college coach who ever thanked the good mamas and papas.

Dan Jenkins, author of Semi-Tough and Saturdays America

In The Last Coach, Allen Barra paints a rich portrait of the man in the houndstooth hat.

Sports Illustrated

Barra gets it right he was born to write this story.

Don Keith, Birmingham Weekly

A wonderful read. Barra has written a thoughtful, inquiring and evocative look at the life and times of the legendary coach.

Paul Finebaum, Mobile Register

Admirably ambitious.... Barra is one of the countrys most thoughtful writers on the subject.... [Barra] does all the things you would expect from a biography of a sports figure.

Buzz Bissinger, New York Times Book Review

Barra captures the man and the legend, in what, by all odds, should be the last word on the life and times of Paul Bear Bryant.

Victor Gold, Weekly Standard

A biography with a bite a work of solid fact, airtight and accurate.

Bill Briggs, Denver Post

An epic the story of the most American of lives: ignorant, up-from-nothing country boy becomes national icon.... When Barra calls him The Last Coach, he means, in one sense, that Bryant was the last great coach to span two markedly different eras.... Barra tells the stories of the great games well. A fan could love this book solely for that.

Lee Cearnal, Houston Chronicle

A worthy work that does much to separate myth from fact and restore the sense of Bryant himself.

Michael MacCambridge, Wall Street Journal

Separates the contradictory man from the celebrity myth [gives] the reader the private Bear, the one with faults, with contradictions, with nuance.... The reporting is prodigious and caring, worthy of one of the major figures in American sports.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Bear has been gone nearly three decades, but he still towers like a colossus over the game of football. This is the best-researched and best chronicle of his life.

Keith Jackson, ABC Sports

Barra gives a meticulous history of college football and how Alabama became one of the early powers. He is equally meticulous in describing Bryants life from his first days as a high school athlete.

USA Today

Barra conducts an in-depth investigation into Bryants carefully constructed mythic persona to show the man behind the curtain, but often the authors analysis raises rather than diminishes Bryant in our estimation.

Brad Vice, San Francisco Chronicle

Finally a biography worthy of the man. Allen Barra has sifted the truth from the myth. The Last Coach tells why Bryant mattered so much to so many.

Mark Kreigel, author of Namath: A Biography

Barras prose is poignant.... The Last Coach is riveting in its portrayal of Bryant football at its very best, a must for every football aficionados reading list.

Elizabeth A. Doehring, St. Petersburg Times

[Barra] has simply penned as definitive an account of Bryants life as is possible 500-plus pages of intensely researched details, insights and imagination-stirring game accounts. Along the way, Barra manages to make a persuasive argument as to why Bear Bryant was the greatest coach who ever stood on a gridiron sideline.

Gilbert Cruze, Tuscaloosa News

Barra writes winningly.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Allen Barra attempts to separate the man and the icon in The Last Coach. [This] moving biography is a comprehensive account emboldened by nuance and extensive research.

Erik Spamberg, Christian Science Monitor

Allen Barra researches a book the way Coach Bryant prepared for a game; this is a perfect fit.

Mickey Herskowitz, author of The Legend of Bear Bryant

The most complete look at Bryant yet.

Al Burleson, Huntsville Times

Skillfully details the Coachs personality traits and the circumstances of his professional life that converged to elevate the man from Moro Bottom, Ark., into a football legend.

Greg Connors, Buffalo News

Allen Barra, one of our two or three best sportswriters, surpasses Jim Dents efforts in The Junction Boys and those of just about anybody else whos written about Bryant by several touchdowns with this sweeping biography.... It is a work that paints Bryant as a man who overcame his hardscrabble, redneck rearing in Arkansas and helped backward Alabamians accept African-American football players and integration.... He is revealed as he ever will be in Barras excellent account.

Blue Ridge Business Journal

Barra has done his research thoroughly and somehow managed to catch both the legendary and the human dimensions of this complex American hero . Finding fault with Barras book is hard to do.

Larry Mcgehee, Southern Scene

Recent Books of Interest, Editors Choice, New York Times Book Review

A Washington Post Best Sports Book

Previous Books by Allen Barra

A WHOLE DIFFERENT BALL GAME:
THE STORY OF BASEBALLS NEW DEAL
(coauthored with Marvin Miller)

THATS NOT THE WAY IT WAS:
(ALMOST) EVERYTHING THEY TOLD YOU ABOUT SPORTS IS WRONG

INVENTING WYATT EARP:
HIS LIFE AND MANY LEGENDS

CLEARING THE BASES:
THE GREATEST BASEBALL DEBATES OF THE LAST CENTURY

BRUSHBACKS AND KNOCKDOWNS:
THE GREATEST BASEBALL DEBATES OF TWO CENTURIES

BIG PLAY: BARRA ON FOOTBALL

Some images in this e-book are not displayed owing to permissions issues.

To my daughter Maggie,

my nieces, Jennifer and Jamie Rogers, Heather Lokey, and Lauren Blake,

my nephews, Josh White and Zac and Kris Bonta,

and my grandnephew Tyler Blake.

So theyll know what it was like.

Copyright 2005 by Allen Barra

All rights reserved
First published as a Norton paperback 2006

Frontispiece: Courtesy of The Paul W. Bryant Museum, University of Alabama

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

Book design by Lovedog Studio
Production manager: Amanda Morrison

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Barra, Allen.
The last coach : a life of Paul Bear Bryant / Allen Barra.1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-393-05982-0 (hardcover)
1. Bryant, Paul W. 2. Football coachesUnited StatesBiography.
3. University of AlabamaFootballHistory. I. Title.