Dad was only at Ft. Benning two years, but he got three great stories out of it.
1) He became big buddies with Pat Dye and probably got him his first coaching job at UA.
2) Right before he was discharged, he got a new neighbor - Gen. Collin Powell!
3) Another next door neighbor was a colonel named Swargo. I think he already had been shipped to Vietnam as an advisor. One of the Swargo children my mom remembers grew up to be a doctor and an infamous, prolific serial killer!
P.S. Dad hurt his knee again while playing football at Ft. Benning. He remembered being hospitalized for weeks and just playing a lot of gin rummy with his hospital mate. When Dad was discharged from the Army some sergeant asked him if he'd suffered any disabilities while in the Army. Almost as an after thought, Dad said, "Why yes, I hurt my knee playing football." That injury got my Dad a monthly disability check for the rest of his life. I think it started off at $15/month but was $200/month by the time my father died. So that was a profitable injury!
My husband played at Alabama under Coach Bryant in the early 60’s. Two brothers also played there too.
Tuscaloosa is my birthplace & hometown. To say “Roll Tide” in our household is an understatement. Rivalry between Alabama & Auburn is intense. Check out Charles Barkley’s statement prior to March Madness - as only Sir Charles could say it.
Our son graduated from UofA taking advantage of the Bryant Scholarship (set up by Coach for his players’ children to attend UofA). Our family members have multiple degrees from there too.
Fast forward! A granddaughter of ours is finishing her sophomore year at.... Auburn!
Absolutely loves every day of her college experience there. Now her younger sister will join her this fall. Now we are a mixed team family. LOL! I finally can say “War Eagle” & mean it.
Interested story of your dad & Pat Dye.
Friends & family love to hear my husband’s “war stories” of his days under Coach Bryant.
Small world. Your husband was around the younger version of Coach Bryant too. I think every player - and assistant - was terrified of him. But they loved him too and didn't want to let him down. My Dad was right. Coach Dye was a lot like Bryant. Tough as hell, but players wanted to play for him. I've got some more Pat Dye stories, but I better not tell them!
I think most Auburn people appreciate how important Pat Dye was to not just their football program, but the entire university. Auburn's campus enrollment surged after Coach Dye arrived .... just like Alabama's surged ... after Nick Saban arrived. As Coach Bryant once said, "It's hard to rally around a math class." Football is the most important marketing program for the entire university. I got to meet Coach Dye several times. He was very impressive, kind, and seemed to realize that my Dad helped him get started down a path that led to him being a College Football Hall of Fame coach. I also lived in Opelika for five years. That's where I spent my happy "Opie Taylor' days!
Why are small-town American football stories so compelling? I have a young friend who could have played professional football (roundball to you) in Europe but he hurt himself. If he hadn't, he would have been (in his words) "a vaccinated idiot who never found Christ." Thanks for your posts Bill.
I agree, AU. The game of football has a profound (life-long) influence on the lives of so many people. It teaches many great lessons like toughness, teamwork, sacrifice and leadership. I'm starting to think the sport of American football could be dying. By some metrics, it's as popular as ever, but by others it's losing popularity (stadium attendance for example and fewer young people playing the sport. Many are now playing European football).
Football also brings communities (and schools) together. I've always believed the most important person in any small town is the high school football coach. If your town has a good one, there's great interest in the schools, which get all the support they need .... which makes the whole town better. However, if there's a bad program - families leave and go to other schools or the good athletes (who are often school leaders) never enroll.
You can see the difference one coach can make to an entire college - like Paul Bryant did at Alabama (and now Nick Saban). And like Pat Dye did at Auburn. It's not just the sports team that benefits from the right leader - it's the entire college, which, in turn, benefits the entire town where the college is located. That's why Nick Saban's $10 million salary was the best investment Alabama's braintrust ever made.
Actually, the best decision Alabama's leaders ever made was to convince Paul Bryant to return as its head coach in 1958. Without the tradition Bryant re-established, Saban doesn't have the amazing success he's had. Coach Saban, as great a coach as he is, wouldn't have been nearly successful if Bryant hadn't made the Alabama "football brand" so illustrious. All Saban had to do was re-establish that brand - which hadn't died.
Auburn is still benefitting because Dye helped change the Auburn football brand.
As an observer, probably many factors for the decline of American football: woke at the highest level, obvious hatred of white people stoking racial division, concussions, hatred of country and patriotism (remember the beautiful and talented Whitney Houston singing the national anthem?) and roundball offering a more glamourous European lifestyle not populated by felons who kill their wives and girlfriends (not being cute - genuine statement). The general image today at the highest level is not a wholesome and patriotic one. It's corporate and hates people coming together - I suspect those at the top do not enjoy the game. Also, why would they need to fill stadiums? They have cable TV deals that are far more lucrative. I bet high school is still fun though.
They also use football games to promote "patriotism" or support for, say, the latest wars or interventions. I think we are being manipulated especially via the NFL and some colleges.
As a life-long huge fan of college football, I can tell that even my great interest is beginning to wane. Prediction: A lot of schools in the future are going to have to give up big-time football. It's too expensive for them. Not everyone makes the money Alabama and Auburn do. Most programs lose a ton of money by offering the sport. Also, football supports all the other minor supports ... so if football is increasingly abandoned that will hurt the girls who play volleyball or run track, etc.
Colllege athletes will end up having fewer opportunities to play the sports they love. Many more athletes will be harmed. But right now the "narrative" is that this NIL stuff and payments is benefitting the athletes. Yes, it benefits about 0.001 percent of them. The rich schools can afford to do that. The rich will get richer and those athletic programs barely hanging on might just surrender for economic reasons?
And liability expenses from the helmets and concussions might cause more high schools and junior high schools to give up the sport. Big changes everywhere in our society. I'm glad I've got a Substack site to write about some of these topics. I hope there's enough people that will be interested in some of these important trends.
Alabama stole Coach Bryant away from Texas A & M. He would have ended up a legend wherever he coached and he was getting ready to build a dynasty at A&M. My late father was a part of his first recruiting class when he left Texas and came back to Alabama. Coach Bryant loved Texas A&M. His famous quote explaining why he left was, "Mother called."
Coach Stallings, another Texas product, of course followed Coach Bryant to Tuscaloosa. Coach Stalling, one of the finest men who I think has ever lived, was my Dad's position coach at Alabama.
And then Texas A & M later "stole" Dennis Franchione from Alabama. Lots of Texas and Alabama back-and-forth ties.
... Since Saban has been at Alabama, campus enrollment has almost doubled. More than half the student body is now from a state besides Alabama. I'm told that there are a ton of students at Alabama from ... Texas, especially the Dallas area.
And now the University of Texas is joining the SEC. Alabama was darn lucky to beat the Longhorns last year. Re-match this year in T-town. But Alabama won't have Bryce Young. And Texas's coach ... came from Alabama!
Though from Texas, I enjoyed several War Eagle games at Auburn. It is always interesting to note if a butterfly wings can produce a puff of wind into a major wind disturbance with the right conditions.
A friend of mine has a story he likes to tell about Bear Bryant. I don't remember the details, but it was in the 70's, he wanted tickets to a game, and Bryant saw that he got them - he wouldn't have otherwise. He didn't even go to 'Bama, didn't play football, but Bryant made the effort to help out, and did. My friend sure never forgot it - Bryant was already probably the biggest legend in college football history.
Coach Bryant was always doing quiet things to help others. He always helped his former players whenever he could. I know a couple examples of this from my father's life.
That smart, motivated, charismatic leaders who are also benevolent actually exist makes it seem possible there is a way out of where we are. Maybe not likely, but possible.
That's what we would need. Real and brave "leaders." I don't anticipate them coming forward. If such public leaders existed, they would have already come forward. The best we can hope for is some real skeptics and citizen journalists on Substack and a few other alternative media sites. They are trying to do the work the professional corporate journalists won't do. I think we have about 1-in-300 politicians who are interested in the truth or justice ... but we need at least 151-out-of-300.
A few have come forward - Noem, DeSantis, Ron Johnson, and maybe Kemp. There are some well-intentioned leaders who stay mum because it's career suicide to speak freely. That can be weakness, but it can also just be self-preservation and the hope that biding their time will provide an opportunity to do better later. Career suicide now takes them out of the game permanently. Maybe not a ton like that, but it's a significant number. There are many more who follow the path of least resistance and would back the "good" side in an instant if it became clear it was more expedient. So, I'm a bit more optimistic. My son had a print copy of the WSJ and said I'd like this article, and he was right:
It's not for everyone, but it is a sport where most people can find a position on the team if they stick with it. It certainly is popular in the American South.
BTW, I sent Jeffrey Tucker your most recent piece with a recommendation to publish your work in the future. He said your article on Climate Change initiatives in Canada was excellent.
Hi Bill. You are very kind and generous. I am glad Mr. Tucker likes any of my work. I still have BI in mind for future pieces which I could submit for consideration. But, I know they have to be of a certain kind/tone and length. After I finish my series on the Holocaust - Covid-19 comparison, I will work on such pieces. A big one I have on deck is about DEI/Wokeism, its roots and purposes, which could be a good one to submit to BI. Do you happen to know which specific "Climate Change initiatives" piece he was referring to? I have several that touch upon the subject, so am not sure which one he finds good.
For football, it is a great sport. It teaches youth so many valuable lessons. The film Remember the Titans showcases many of these. In today's divisive society - especially in schools - youngsters need a sense of self-worth, strength, belonging, sand unity. Football, when coached by righteous people, provides for all of those. It's funny though, because at the same time I think a solitary sport like tennis also provides youth with good opportunities like self-discipline, goal setting, focus, and the like.
Always great talking with you (even though only through these text messages) my friend! Cheers.
The more I think about my "football is important" column, the more I'm glad I wrote it ... even though I know it doesn't fit the other stories I've written at my newsletter. Still, football is very important to tens of millions of people ... so changes in the sport (if negative) are probably important to a lot of people.
I think I have his email address but will note and add yours to my contact list. Thank you.
I also hesitate to write on other subjects for now. I do have deep knowledge about the occult and esotericism and have written about these; but, I am not sure my current audience would take a liking to it. So, I will hold off for now, maybe posting the odd article once in a blue moon in the future when I am over 1k subs.
I'm also trying to branch out and write some pieces on other topics. I might as well write about topics that interest me and that I follow closely. Maybe others are interested in the same topics. Or you can grow your audience by bringing in readers interested in other topics. Then again, you might lose readers if you do too much that's counter to your niche topics.
How far Alabama has fallen from the virtuous days of Coach Bryant. Alabama’s head basketball coach and administrators allowed basketball player, Brandon Miller, to play in the NCAA tournament after taking the handgun to his buddy that was used to murder a girl. That decision tells me all I need to know about the University of Alabama’s principles and values. Hence I have vowed to always root against Alabama in all sports.
That story disturbed me too. I will say, the more details I learned, it wasn't as "cut and dried" as first reading led me to believe. That is, I'm not sure the basketball star knew he was delivering the gun which would be used in a murder. He might have though. Players are completely different than previous generations. College sports is slitting its throat - a topic I'll probably write about in the future.
Glad you had such a good connection and communication with your father. Football is a peacetime competitive tribal war, without lethal casualties. It keeps up the patriotism and the fitness and discipline of the youth. War also makes similar stories but those are less shared because sane people don't enjoy hearing about massive lethal casualties. Now that evil leftist politics had to expose its presence in professional sports as well as its ruling academia, it has denigrated the manliness you write about so interestingly, which was in college sports. It was healthiest when it had the least satanist influence. Thank you for sharing.
I can add another story that fits the theme of this article (random coincidences have huge future ripple effects). Mal Moore was Alabama's athletic director who helped convince Nick Saban to return to college football ... at Alabama. As Moore recounts in a book he wrote right before he died, the reason he knew Saban might be interested in the Alabama job is that Saban had once met Mal Moore's nephew. This nephew was a contractor in northern Georgia who was doing some work at Saban's lake house in Georgia. The nephew told Saban who his uncle was ... and Saban told the worker to tell his uncle he might be interested in the Alabama job! That's why Nick Saban was Moore's main choice as Alabama's future coach and why he knew he had a chance to maybe get him to leave the NFL.
Question: What if someone else did that work at Saban's lake house or if Saban wasn't there when this man was doing that work?
Take-away: One of the most influential people in the history of Alabama football - the man who changed everything that followed - was a contractor who did some work at Nick Saban's lake house!
P.S. My father and Mal Moore were teammates at Alabama. Dad didn't have a car in college. Mal Moore, from a tiny community just south of Troy, would drive my Dad home during breaks. Mal Moore also hired my late uncle as director of athletic facilities at Alabama. He probably wouldnt have done that if he hadn't been teammates with my uncle's brother. So everything seems to connect and often has to do with who you know, etc.
Dad was only at Ft. Benning two years, but he got three great stories out of it.
1) He became big buddies with Pat Dye and probably got him his first coaching job at UA.
2) Right before he was discharged, he got a new neighbor - Gen. Collin Powell!
3) Another next door neighbor was a colonel named Swargo. I think he already had been shipped to Vietnam as an advisor. One of the Swargo children my mom remembers grew up to be a doctor and an infamous, prolific serial killer!
P.S. Dad hurt his knee again while playing football at Ft. Benning. He remembered being hospitalized for weeks and just playing a lot of gin rummy with his hospital mate. When Dad was discharged from the Army some sergeant asked him if he'd suffered any disabilities while in the Army. Almost as an after thought, Dad said, "Why yes, I hurt my knee playing football." That injury got my Dad a monthly disability check for the rest of his life. I think it started off at $15/month but was $200/month by the time my father died. So that was a profitable injury!
My husband played at Alabama under Coach Bryant in the early 60’s. Two brothers also played there too.
Tuscaloosa is my birthplace & hometown. To say “Roll Tide” in our household is an understatement. Rivalry between Alabama & Auburn is intense. Check out Charles Barkley’s statement prior to March Madness - as only Sir Charles could say it.
Our son graduated from UofA taking advantage of the Bryant Scholarship (set up by Coach for his players’ children to attend UofA). Our family members have multiple degrees from there too.
Fast forward! A granddaughter of ours is finishing her sophomore year at.... Auburn!
Absolutely loves every day of her college experience there. Now her younger sister will join her this fall. Now we are a mixed team family. LOL! I finally can say “War Eagle” & mean it.
Interested story of your dad & Pat Dye.
Friends & family love to hear my husband’s “war stories” of his days under Coach Bryant.
Small world. Your husband was around the younger version of Coach Bryant too. I think every player - and assistant - was terrified of him. But they loved him too and didn't want to let him down. My Dad was right. Coach Dye was a lot like Bryant. Tough as hell, but players wanted to play for him. I've got some more Pat Dye stories, but I better not tell them!
WarEagle!
I think most Auburn people appreciate how important Pat Dye was to not just their football program, but the entire university. Auburn's campus enrollment surged after Coach Dye arrived .... just like Alabama's surged ... after Nick Saban arrived. As Coach Bryant once said, "It's hard to rally around a math class." Football is the most important marketing program for the entire university. I got to meet Coach Dye several times. He was very impressive, kind, and seemed to realize that my Dad helped him get started down a path that led to him being a College Football Hall of Fame coach. I also lived in Opelika for five years. That's where I spent my happy "Opie Taylor' days!
http://media.al.com/living_impact/photo/coach-bryant-and-pat-dye-at-hunting-lodgejpg-d913c79e4225b59f.jpg
One of my favorite photos.
Great photo. I have actually stayed at that house/lodge; It's called "This-'il-do" - owned by the Bryant family.
My late father and Coach Dye loved to hunt and fish together.
Why are small-town American football stories so compelling? I have a young friend who could have played professional football (roundball to you) in Europe but he hurt himself. If he hadn't, he would have been (in his words) "a vaccinated idiot who never found Christ." Thanks for your posts Bill.
I agree, AU. The game of football has a profound (life-long) influence on the lives of so many people. It teaches many great lessons like toughness, teamwork, sacrifice and leadership. I'm starting to think the sport of American football could be dying. By some metrics, it's as popular as ever, but by others it's losing popularity (stadium attendance for example and fewer young people playing the sport. Many are now playing European football).
Football also brings communities (and schools) together. I've always believed the most important person in any small town is the high school football coach. If your town has a good one, there's great interest in the schools, which get all the support they need .... which makes the whole town better. However, if there's a bad program - families leave and go to other schools or the good athletes (who are often school leaders) never enroll.
You can see the difference one coach can make to an entire college - like Paul Bryant did at Alabama (and now Nick Saban). And like Pat Dye did at Auburn. It's not just the sports team that benefits from the right leader - it's the entire college, which, in turn, benefits the entire town where the college is located. That's why Nick Saban's $10 million salary was the best investment Alabama's braintrust ever made.
Actually, the best decision Alabama's leaders ever made was to convince Paul Bryant to return as its head coach in 1958. Without the tradition Bryant re-established, Saban doesn't have the amazing success he's had. Coach Saban, as great a coach as he is, wouldn't have been nearly successful if Bryant hadn't made the Alabama "football brand" so illustrious. All Saban had to do was re-establish that brand - which hadn't died.
Auburn is still benefitting because Dye helped change the Auburn football brand.
As an observer, probably many factors for the decline of American football: woke at the highest level, obvious hatred of white people stoking racial division, concussions, hatred of country and patriotism (remember the beautiful and talented Whitney Houston singing the national anthem?) and roundball offering a more glamourous European lifestyle not populated by felons who kill their wives and girlfriends (not being cute - genuine statement). The general image today at the highest level is not a wholesome and patriotic one. It's corporate and hates people coming together - I suspect those at the top do not enjoy the game. Also, why would they need to fill stadiums? They have cable TV deals that are far more lucrative. I bet high school is still fun though.
They also use football games to promote "patriotism" or support for, say, the latest wars or interventions. I think we are being manipulated especially via the NFL and some colleges.
As a life-long huge fan of college football, I can tell that even my great interest is beginning to wane. Prediction: A lot of schools in the future are going to have to give up big-time football. It's too expensive for them. Not everyone makes the money Alabama and Auburn do. Most programs lose a ton of money by offering the sport. Also, football supports all the other minor supports ... so if football is increasingly abandoned that will hurt the girls who play volleyball or run track, etc.
Colllege athletes will end up having fewer opportunities to play the sports they love. Many more athletes will be harmed. But right now the "narrative" is that this NIL stuff and payments is benefitting the athletes. Yes, it benefits about 0.001 percent of them. The rich schools can afford to do that. The rich will get richer and those athletic programs barely hanging on might just surrender for economic reasons?
And liability expenses from the helmets and concussions might cause more high schools and junior high schools to give up the sport. Big changes everywhere in our society. I'm glad I've got a Substack site to write about some of these topics. I hope there's enough people that will be interested in some of these important trends.
I love a great SEC football story.
Go Gamecocks
Great story. Thanks for sharing. My mom’s family is from Huntsville. Even though we live in Texas, we keep up with Alabama football.
Alabama stole Coach Bryant away from Texas A & M. He would have ended up a legend wherever he coached and he was getting ready to build a dynasty at A&M. My late father was a part of his first recruiting class when he left Texas and came back to Alabama. Coach Bryant loved Texas A&M. His famous quote explaining why he left was, "Mother called."
Coach Stallings, another Texas product, of course followed Coach Bryant to Tuscaloosa. Coach Stalling, one of the finest men who I think has ever lived, was my Dad's position coach at Alabama.
And then Texas A & M later "stole" Dennis Franchione from Alabama. Lots of Texas and Alabama back-and-forth ties.
... Since Saban has been at Alabama, campus enrollment has almost doubled. More than half the student body is now from a state besides Alabama. I'm told that there are a ton of students at Alabama from ... Texas, especially the Dallas area.
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for that history lesson. Coach Stallings was a fine man. Lots of cars in East Texas with Roll Tide stickers on their vehicles.
And now the University of Texas is joining the SEC. Alabama was darn lucky to beat the Longhorns last year. Re-match this year in T-town. But Alabama won't have Bryce Young. And Texas's coach ... came from Alabama!
A great human interest story, Bill. Thanks for writing this.
I am passing this on to a friend of mine who also played for Coach Bryant in the early 70s.
RTR
Great story.
Though from Texas, I enjoyed several War Eagle games at Auburn. It is always interesting to note if a butterfly wings can produce a puff of wind into a major wind disturbance with the right conditions.
Thanks for your article.
Thanks, O! I appreciate your long-time support.
A friend of mine has a story he likes to tell about Bear Bryant. I don't remember the details, but it was in the 70's, he wanted tickets to a game, and Bryant saw that he got them - he wouldn't have otherwise. He didn't even go to 'Bama, didn't play football, but Bryant made the effort to help out, and did. My friend sure never forgot it - Bryant was already probably the biggest legend in college football history.
Coach Bryant was always doing quiet things to help others. He always helped his former players whenever he could. I know a couple examples of this from my father's life.
Gene Stallings is the same way.
That smart, motivated, charismatic leaders who are also benevolent actually exist makes it seem possible there is a way out of where we are. Maybe not likely, but possible.
That's what we would need. Real and brave "leaders." I don't anticipate them coming forward. If such public leaders existed, they would have already come forward. The best we can hope for is some real skeptics and citizen journalists on Substack and a few other alternative media sites. They are trying to do the work the professional corporate journalists won't do. I think we have about 1-in-300 politicians who are interested in the truth or justice ... but we need at least 151-out-of-300.
A few have come forward - Noem, DeSantis, Ron Johnson, and maybe Kemp. There are some well-intentioned leaders who stay mum because it's career suicide to speak freely. That can be weakness, but it can also just be self-preservation and the hope that biding their time will provide an opportunity to do better later. Career suicide now takes them out of the game permanently. Maybe not a ton like that, but it's a significant number. There are many more who follow the path of least resistance and would back the "good" side in an instant if it became clear it was more expedient. So, I'm a bit more optimistic. My son had a print copy of the WSJ and said I'd like this article, and he was right:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/brian-kemp-georgias-affable-culture-warrior-covid-lockdown-hollywood-election-integrity-mlb-desantis-98a19acc
Football is such a great sport. I played a bit myself.
It's not for everyone, but it is a sport where most people can find a position on the team if they stick with it. It certainly is popular in the American South.
BTW, I sent Jeffrey Tucker your most recent piece with a recommendation to publish your work in the future. He said your article on Climate Change initiatives in Canada was excellent.
Hi Bill. You are very kind and generous. I am glad Mr. Tucker likes any of my work. I still have BI in mind for future pieces which I could submit for consideration. But, I know they have to be of a certain kind/tone and length. After I finish my series on the Holocaust - Covid-19 comparison, I will work on such pieces. A big one I have on deck is about DEI/Wokeism, its roots and purposes, which could be a good one to submit to BI. Do you happen to know which specific "Climate Change initiatives" piece he was referring to? I have several that touch upon the subject, so am not sure which one he finds good.
For football, it is a great sport. It teaches youth so many valuable lessons. The film Remember the Titans showcases many of these. In today's divisive society - especially in schools - youngsters need a sense of self-worth, strength, belonging, sand unity. Football, when coached by righteous people, provides for all of those. It's funny though, because at the same time I think a solitary sport like tennis also provides youth with good opportunities like self-discipline, goal setting, focus, and the like.
Always great talking with you (even though only through these text messages) my friend! Cheers.
Dan,
This is your piece I forwarded to Jeffrey Tucker.
https://fournier.substack.com/p/the-wicked-witch-of-the-wef-strikes/comments
I can give you his direct email if you don't have it. You can email me at:
wjricejunior@gmail.com
The more I think about my "football is important" column, the more I'm glad I wrote it ... even though I know it doesn't fit the other stories I've written at my newsletter. Still, football is very important to tens of millions of people ... so changes in the sport (if negative) are probably important to a lot of people.
I think I have his email address but will note and add yours to my contact list. Thank you.
I also hesitate to write on other subjects for now. I do have deep knowledge about the occult and esotericism and have written about these; but, I am not sure my current audience would take a liking to it. So, I will hold off for now, maybe posting the odd article once in a blue moon in the future when I am over 1k subs.
I'm also trying to branch out and write some pieces on other topics. I might as well write about topics that interest me and that I follow closely. Maybe others are interested in the same topics. Or you can grow your audience by bringing in readers interested in other topics. Then again, you might lose readers if you do too much that's counter to your niche topics.
Precisely. It would be cool if Substack had a tool to poll subscribers, for that could tell us a lot more about those who follow us (and why).
How far Alabama has fallen from the virtuous days of Coach Bryant. Alabama’s head basketball coach and administrators allowed basketball player, Brandon Miller, to play in the NCAA tournament after taking the handgun to his buddy that was used to murder a girl. That decision tells me all I need to know about the University of Alabama’s principles and values. Hence I have vowed to always root against Alabama in all sports.
Nice story Bill Rice Jr.
That story disturbed me too. I will say, the more details I learned, it wasn't as "cut and dried" as first reading led me to believe. That is, I'm not sure the basketball star knew he was delivering the gun which would be used in a murder. He might have though. Players are completely different than previous generations. College sports is slitting its throat - a topic I'll probably write about in the future.
Glad you had such a good connection and communication with your father. Football is a peacetime competitive tribal war, without lethal casualties. It keeps up the patriotism and the fitness and discipline of the youth. War also makes similar stories but those are less shared because sane people don't enjoy hearing about massive lethal casualties. Now that evil leftist politics had to expose its presence in professional sports as well as its ruling academia, it has denigrated the manliness you write about so interestingly, which was in college sports. It was healthiest when it had the least satanist influence. Thank you for sharing.
I can add another story that fits the theme of this article (random coincidences have huge future ripple effects). Mal Moore was Alabama's athletic director who helped convince Nick Saban to return to college football ... at Alabama. As Moore recounts in a book he wrote right before he died, the reason he knew Saban might be interested in the Alabama job is that Saban had once met Mal Moore's nephew. This nephew was a contractor in northern Georgia who was doing some work at Saban's lake house in Georgia. The nephew told Saban who his uncle was ... and Saban told the worker to tell his uncle he might be interested in the Alabama job! That's why Nick Saban was Moore's main choice as Alabama's future coach and why he knew he had a chance to maybe get him to leave the NFL.
Question: What if someone else did that work at Saban's lake house or if Saban wasn't there when this man was doing that work?
Take-away: One of the most influential people in the history of Alabama football - the man who changed everything that followed - was a contractor who did some work at Nick Saban's lake house!
P.S. My father and Mal Moore were teammates at Alabama. Dad didn't have a car in college. Mal Moore, from a tiny community just south of Troy, would drive my Dad home during breaks. Mal Moore also hired my late uncle as director of athletic facilities at Alabama. He probably wouldnt have done that if he hadn't been teammates with my uncle's brother. So everything seems to connect and often has to do with who you know, etc.
I love a good Billy Rice story.
I bet you have heard that one! As they say, true story. Coach Dye even talked about it in his book.
😄