In my first professional journalism job I was sportswriter at the Arkansas Democrat in Little Rock. I was assigned to follow the University of Alabama Crimson Tide in the lead up to the 1980 Sugar Bowl against the University of Arkansas Razorbacks. I flew to Tuscaloosa on the day after Christmas 1979 to conduct interviews with players and, most importantly, the Tide’s legendary coach, Paul “Bear” Bryant. The Bear had been born and raised as a sharecropper’s son near Fordyce, in southeast Arkansas, in a place called Moro Bottom. So, the interest in this living legend back in Arkansas was high.
Though only 67 at the time, Bear was much older than his years, and not well, thanks to decades of heavy smoking and drinking. We met in his office just after practice on a warm winter day, yet he was bundled up like an arctic explorer, and remained so for our full hour together. He spoke in his famous low growl. He obviously was bored by the interview and had only agreed to do it for, as he said, “the folks back home in Arkansas.”
Me? I was four days short of my 22nd birthday.
I didn’t really interview the Bear so much as he interviewed me. He asked where I had grown up in Arkansas, so I told him “Hot Springs.” From that he launched into 20 minutes of stories about sneaking off from the farm as a teenager to go bet on the thoroughbreds at Oaklawn Park, a couple of miles from my home. He regaled me with stories for the full hour, until it was time to go. As I got to my rental car outside I realized that I had nothing, absolutely nothing of real interest to hardcore sports fans to write about. All I had was a collection of hokey stories from Bryant’s youth; stories he’d told, and other reporters had dutifully written, hundreds of times before.
Yet the old, hulking, gruff-yet-charming legend behind the desk had done me a favor by teaching me how easy it is for a charismatic, important or powerful subject to manipulate a reporter. So, there, sitting in a car on an empty parking lot at the all-but-deserted University of Alabama campus, I vowed never again to lose control and direction of an interview. It was a lesson that paid off many, many times over the rest of my career in interviews with famous, glamorous, powerful and charming subjects ranging from sports heroes to business chieftains, mega-wealthy investors, movie stars, politicians and even U.S. presidents. That’s how I learned that Bear Bryant really was a great coach, even to this once-young journalist.
