Bear Bryant
Bear Bryant
Paul William "Bear" Bryantwas an American college football player and coach. He was best known as the longtime head coach of the University of Alabama football team. During his 25-year tenure as Alabama's head coach, he amassed six national championships and thirteen conference championships. Upon his retirement in 1982, he held the record for most wins as head coach in collegiate football history with 323 wins. The Paul W. Bryant Museum, Paul W. Bryant Hall, Paul W. Bryant Drive, and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth11 September 1913
CityFordyce, AR
CountryUnited States of America
I think the most important thing of all for any team is a winning attitude. The coaches must have it. The players must have it. The student body must have it. If you have dedicated players who believe in themselves, you don't need a lot of talent.
You try to make your team do something they're not capable of and you get murdered.
I ain't won but one. My team won the rest in spite of me.
At Alabama, our players don't win Heisman Trophies. Our teams win National Championships.
One man doesn't make a team. It takes eleven.
I don't care how much talent a team has - if the boys don't think tough, practice tough, and live tough, how they play tough on Saturday.
People who are in it for their own good are individualists. They don't share the same heartbeat that makes a team so great. A great unit, whether it be football or any organization, shares the same heartbeat.
I want to make sure I don't interfere with the success of that team next year. I don't see any way I could go to practice like most of 'em do, and not hurt the team. I'd go nuts if I tried doing that.
In order to have a winner, the team must have a feeling of unity; every player must put the team first ahead of personal glory.
You must learn how to hold a team together. You must lift some men up, calm others down, until finally they've got one heartbeat. Then you've got yourself a team.
Set goals - high goals for you and your organization. When your organization has a goal to shoot for, you create teamwork, people working for a common good.
Baton Rouge happens to be the worst place in the world for a visiting team. It's like being inside a drum.
Never quit. It is the easiest cop-out in the world. Set a goal and don't quit until you attain it. When you do attain it, set another goal, and don't quit until you reach it. Never quit.
The old lessons (work, self-discipline, sacrifice, teamwork, fighting to achieve) aren't being taught by many people other than football coaches these days. The football coach has a captive audience and can teach these lessons because the communication lines between himself and his players are more wide open than between kids and parents. We better teach these lessons or else the country's future population will be made up of a majority of crooks, drug addicts, or people on relief.