FanShot

This is a letter from Alabama head coach Paul Bryant to sportswriter Murray Olderman in 1962. It...

20

This is a letter from Alabama head coach Paul Bryant to sportswriter Murray Olderman in 1962. It references a series of ghostwritten columns Olderman produced for the Newspaper Enterprise Association in the wake of Bryant leading the Crimson Tide to the 1961 National Championship. These "as told to" pieces were relatively common at the time and Bryant's autobiography resulted from a similar collaboration with Sports Illustrated's John Underwood. I went back into the GoogleNews Archive and was actually able to dig up this series of articles (although it's unclear how much the paper cut them down from the original versions). One of them, Alabama's Call Postpones Bryant's Retirement, appeared on Oct. 20, about seven weeks after the letter above was dated. It's interesting for the revelation in the title -- Bryant claimed that until he was contacted by Alabama he was actually aiming to step down as a Texas A&M's head coach when his contract expired in '61 to "go into something less ulcerous." That piece was preceded by Bama Not Competing With Pros Who Don't Graduate Every Year and followed with Bear Bryant Gets Most Out of Ordinary Players. A fourth item, Bear Remembers Auburn Game, was published the first week of November.