Coaching, according to Bryant, was a matter of “motivating people, the ingredient that separates winners from losers.” For himself, motivation was no problem:  “I’ve been motivated all my life.” Trying to prove the “city kids” wrong by hitting them on the football field and fighting with them off it, he then localized that competitive impulse solely into football and stayed driven. Bryant saw football as he saw life itself—it was never easy and you couldn’t quit: “I believe that football can teach you to sacrifice, to discipline yourself,” because conditioning and tough play can beat talent. Like life, football takes “hard work and mental toughness.” All his teams learned that lesson day after day, and many of his players have lived by it ever since.

Rodney Clark as Paul "Bear" Bryant

In a way, football functions as a genuine democracy:  on a football field there is no “privilege,” only two teams, and Bryant knew that individual effort and team focus could win. Football was what the player made of himself, what the team made of itself, how it played the fourth quarter, as Bryant liked to call it. His prime example of fourth-quarter play was his Texas A&M team, down 12-0 with two minutes to go when he challenged them, and they won 20-12. Coming from behind showed the caliber of the team, and if such a team lost, Bryant would say, “We just ran out of time.”

How important is football?

It’s ten times more important [now]. Let me ask you this. Have you taught your children to work? To sacrifice? Have you taught them self-discipline? Hell, no. They don’t get it in the home, they don’t get it in the schoolhouse, they don’t even get it in the church the way they used to…. Maybe the football field’s the only place left. We may have already lost it everywhere else.

—Coach Bryant