John Patrick Hayden and Gregory Jones

In Bear Country, 15 characters are played by four men.  It boasts 89 light cues, 123 sound cues (63 of which happen in the first 5 minutes of the play) and 158 costume pieces with the fastest costume change occurring in 15 seconds.  2,328 pages were written to achieve the final draft of 96 pages.  The set is infused with iconic Bryant era items including the wishbone offense and the 315 game ball used in the show is an exact replica of the actual ball which made Paul Bryant the winningest coach in college history at the time.

During his playing days at Alabama, Bryant lettered from 1933 to 1935 as the team amassed a record of 23 victories, 3 losses, and 2 ties.

Bear Country is the highest grossing show ever to run on Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s Octagon Stage with 12,200 seats sold. Bear Country played to 98% capacity.  This is more than three times the population of Fordyce, Arkansas when the Bryant’s moved there in 1924.

According to some sources, at age 13 Bryant was six feet one and weighed 180 pounds.

Bear Country set a record for the highest sales day on record for the Octagon Theatre, on the Monday following Opening.

Paul Bryant became known in football folklore as the ‘other end’ to Don Hutson as Alabama went 10-0 and beat Stanford 29-13 in the Rose Bowl. The Crimson Tide claimed the national title by a number of polls in the pre-AP era.

The final weekend of Bear Country in Montgomery saw tailgaters and scalpers in ASF parking lot – firsts in the history of the theatre.

When Frank Thomas called Bryant home to Alabama, Bryant was at Union College in Tennessee making $170 a month.  He took the assistant coaching job at Alabama which paid him $1,250 a year.

When the press release was sent to the Associated Press for the Birmingham tour of Bear Country, the story was carried in more than 500 outlets which included

In Bryant’s first year the team went 5-4-1 and started one of the most successful tenures by any college coach. In his 25 years Alabama compiled a 232-46-9 record on its way to six national championships (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, and 1979) and 14 SEC titles. His teams participated in 24 consecutive bowl games, including the Sugar, Orange, Liberty, Cotton, Bluebonnet, and Gator bowls. He was national coach of the year three times and SEC coach of the year 10 times while his players received 67 All-America honors.

The theatre where Bear Country will be playing in Birmingham, the Virginia Samford Theatre, holds 323 which is Bryant’s total number of wins.