Chasing the Bear
How Bear Bryant and Nick Saban Made Alabama the Greatest College Football Program of All Time
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5.0 • 11 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A dual biography of two coaching legends -- Bear Bryant and Nick Saban -- who built the Alabama Crimson Tide into a true football dynasty.
Both Bear Bryant and Nick Saban are undeniable kings of college football, two coaches at Alabama who have each won more national championships -- six apiece -- than anyone else in the history of the game. CHASING THE BEAR examines how they did it, revealing along the way their similarities in style, background, football philosophy, and recruiting methods, while providing readers a rare inside look at two of the greatest leaders in the history of sports.
Bear Bryant and Nick Saban never met, but they have more in common than either of them realize. Both grew up in small towns -- Bryant in Moro Bottom, Arkansas, a dot on the map, and Saban from Monongah, West Virginia, population five hundred. As a child, Saban pumped gas at his father's service station, washing and waxing cars and doing anything he could to help the business. Bryant's father suffered from multiple physical ailments, which forced Bryant to work to keep the family farm going. Both men knew the value of hard work from the time they were young boys, and both understood that there were no shortcuts to success. But both dreamed of escaping their hometowns, and both used football as the means to do so.
Separated by two generations, Bear Bryant and Nick Saban are mythic figures linked by a school, a town, and a barroom debate centering on one question: Which is the greatest college coach of all time?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sportswriter Anderson (The Storm and the Tide) draws on his decades of experience writing about the Alabama Crimson Tide football team in this fascinating dual biography of two legendary college football coaches. Anderson tells the story of how Bear Bryant and Nick Saban created college football's most successful dynasty, but rather than provide a season-by-season account, he illuminates the uncanny similarities in character between the two men who created the titan of Alabama football. In chapters that alternate between Bryant arriving at Alabama in 1958 and Saban in 2007, Anderson shows how the two men both from small-town, working-class families felt drawn to the University Alabama and how their work ethics bore similarities, such as Bryant making football "a year-round activity" with a "torturous off-season" and Saban's legendary emphasis on discipline (Anderson recalls Saban's first comments to his new Alabama team were for them to sit up straight in their chairs). Anderson discusses their similar drive as coaches to uncover "what they were going to do tomorrow to get better." This is a must-read for devotees of college football, Crimson Tide fans or not.
