NFL News NFL News, Reports and Updates
Bear Bryant ruled Alabama from atop a steel-and-aluminum tower. Every practice, Bryant would climb the spiral stairs to the tower, stand up there alone, and watch his Crimson Tide teams suffer through the Tuscaloosa heat. Alabama’s players never knew when Bryant had his eye on them alone, and so every player worked himself to the edge, every day.
The tower stood as a powerful symbol of Bryant’s dictatorial rule over Alabama. And when Ray Perkins took over for the Bear in 1983, one of his first acts was to send the tower to a Tuscaloosa scrap yard. There it lay on its side on a flatbed truck, weeds growing up all around. Perkins said he wanted to be down on the field among his players, but the message was still clear: This is a new day in Alabama.
Within four years, Perkins was gone too, a testament to just how difficult it is to follow a legend. New Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer knows this all too well; he’ll be walking past statues of both Bryant and Nick Saban (combined national titles delivered to Tuscaloosa: 12) on his way to work. Both men could sympathize with the other’s challenge.
“The greatest honor of my life is following that man,” Perkins, then 42, told Sports Illustrated back in 1983. “But when I took the job they asked me if I was intimidated by Coach Bryant. I said he wouldn’t have wanted me if I was. I’m not replacing him; I’m following him.”
There’s one significant difference between the working environments of Perkins and DeBoer. Bryant died at 69 of a massive heart attack just weeks after coaching his final game and months before Perkins would start. Saban, on the other hand, is 72, a testament to exercise, a better diet and the fact that a carton of Little Debbie snack cakes isn’t as destructive of a vice as a carton of unfiltered Chesterfields.
Saban sat in the front row during DeBoer’s…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/the-guy-that-follows-the-guy-at-alabama-what-kalen-deboer-could-learn-from-ray-perkins-122502363.html
Author : Yahoo Sports
Publish date : 2024-08-29 12:25:02
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
