(01-12-2021 03:54 PM)AllTideUp Wrote: (01-12-2021 09:30 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (01-12-2021 08:48 AM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote: (01-12-2021 08:15 AM)stever20 Wrote: I heard 2 remarkable things just now on the radio-
1- Nick Saban now is the 2nd oldest coach ever to win a title- behind only Bobby Bowden when he was 70 (Saban is 69)
2- Saban is now the same age as Bear Bryant was when he retired/died.
#2 is insane. Saban looks way younger than Bryant did at that age.
That's modern nutrition and exercise. The other night, Tom Brady tied George Blanda as the oldest QB to win a playoff game, and they showed a picture of Brady (now) and one of Blanda in 1970, when he was 43 and won his playoff game. Blanda looked 65.
Bryant was a heavy drinker and smoked like a chimney. Even by the standards of his day, he lived an unhealthy lifestyle. Some have said it was a miracle he lived as long as he did.
But I do agree, he looks like ancient in those old pictures. I'm not terribly old, but I don't know that I've ever seen many people around 70 that looked worse.
Solar radiation accelerates the aging process. I knew many people who looked like Bryant and I know because I was around him on several occasions and knew what he looked like. No doubt that smoking and boozing contributed to his issues, but I knew plenty of teetotaling Baptist farmers who looked every bit as decrepit as Bear. He grew up working as a kid in the fields and even as a coach he spent oodles of time in the sun. Where do you think they get the term "Red Neck" from? They were poor white field workers whose skin was usually burned around the neck and ears on the arms and back of the hands. In those days society women never wanted a tan as it was a sign of a lower classed woman to have a tan.
I sawed logs, stacked lumber, stacked cross ties and shoveled sawdust. I was a Red Neck in its original sense of the word before other connotations were added as pejorative. I played tennis, deep sea fished, and hung out at the beach too. I still garden and work in the yard. I will die a grizzled old "Red Neck".
What hurt Bear was the boozing. I would think his liver was highly stressed. The lifestyle of the Coach and the hours he put into that are what, with the booze which was mostly a downer to get to sleep and unwind from stress, that did him in. But so folks know Bryant was not a fall down drunk and I never knew anyone who had seen him that way. He was a hard social drinker. But that was common through the 50's and 60's in post WWII America. Go back and watch the old TV shows or even Mad Men and you'll see the culture. Everyone of my friends homes had a tea cart with booze on it and most had a small refrigerator in which they kept the mixers for cocktails. Everyone's parents came home from work and drank. The military had entire social games made up around drinking like dead bug and hit my smoke.
So if people think Bryant was a drunk they are wrong. He was what was known at the time as a hard drinker. The distinction being conduct and setting. He was driven, tough as nails, moody, but an avenging angel for his players if they put out, and a hard assed demon if they didn't. By today's standards what he did at the Junction while at A&M would have drummed him out of the coaching profession by virtue of social media outrage.
Screw social media! I still like old bastards. You can trust them. And you know who Bear called the toughest man he ever met? Shug Jordan whose WWII record spoke for itself. I despised Bear for beating Auburn so frequently, but you had to respect him as a man who came from nothing to establish himself as an icon of his times through excellence, imperfect as he was. But isn't that all of us if we are honest and unpretentious. What I despise about life now is how a bunch of hypocrites have set up a world where a man or woman can be crucified by one character flaw, when every damned one of us have them. Smoke that over!
And for the young a point of context: Those who fought WWII didn't have 1 year tours of duty. If you entered the War in '41 and you survived you likely fought until late '44 and into early '45 before they ever considered you eligible for relief. It's one thing to think if you can survive a year you are out. It's quite another to think you are there until you get killed or win. In the wake of that War drinking was a major stress release from the hell and gore and horror they experienced for 1 to 4 years, and longer if you were British, Canadian, Australian, German, Italian, Japanese or Russian. The Cold War years were no thrill either. Everyone lived under the stress of Nuclear Annihilation and all of us had duck and cover drills at school which we knew were a damned joke! The kids made fun of the instructions to Duck and Cover by saying it was really Bend Over and Kiss Your Ass Goodbye! So you need to grasp that ethos to understand the alcohol use and social acceptance of the day. They didn't have valium and opioids to phase out with and Weed wasn't an acceptable outlet socially or legally. There was nothing lower than a pot head in 1960. Grasp all of that and you have a clearer picture of life in the United States from 1946 through 1968 and the world of the emerging Boomers.
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CFP National Championship Game: #1 Alabama vs #3 Ohio State
