Free Republic

"A driver can usually follow crimson lines along the cemetery's road directly to Bryant's grave in Block 30. Today, however, the line stopped at a newly-paved road so a visitor had to guess at the correct turn to go the final couple hundred feet.....It was 10 a.m. Bryant's headstone was already littered with crimson and white flowers, Alabama shakers, a Coke bottle, an Alabama alumni magazine with the number 100 attached to it, and an American flag inside a megaphone with words commemorating his 100th birthday. "We miss you, Bear," Cathryn said aloud "You were a wonderful person."

Alabama's New $9 Million Football Facility Is Like Something Out Of MTV Cribs Tony Manfred Jul. 22, 2013, 11:24 AMTide TV The University of Alabama recently spent $9 million renovating its football facility. Last week, they unveiled it in a video tour on the school athletic department website. It's spectacularly over the top. There are arcade games, pool tables, 30-foot-long hot tubs, and much more. In big-time college football, having shiny new facilities is a huge recruiting tool. And it's clear that Alabama included every bell and whistle they could find in order to woo the best high school players...

At a Touchdown Club meeting many years ago, Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant told the following story: I had just been named the new head coach at Alabama and was off in my old car down in South Alabama recruiting a prospect who was supposed to have been a pretty good player, and I was having trouble finding the place. Getting hungry, I spied an old cinderblock building with a small sign out front that simply said "Restaurant." I pull up, go in, and every head in the place turns to stare at me. Seems I'm the only white fella in...

Aren't southern gentlemen supposedly chivalrous? Yet Joe Scarborough, son of the Florida Panhandle, today exploited Mika Brzezinski's less-than-encyclopedic knowledge of sports to lure his Morning Joe colleague into agreeing that the famous former coach of the University of Indiana basketball team was none other than . . . Bear Bryant. The jumping-off point was Joe's wearing of a red sweater today, which as a running gag he claimed was in solidarity with the workers of the world on this, May Day. But when Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, a Hillary supporter, came on toward the end of the show, Scarborough pressed...

WASHINGTON, April 17 — Frustrated with the performance of the American Red Cross, Alabama's governor has asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for the federal aid necessary to let the state assume primary responsibility for operating its own emergency shelters in disasters. The move comes after months of criticism of the Red Cross, inspired by what even the organization's own leaders acknowledge was its inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina last year.

Fred Glasgow, the pastor of Marble City Baptist Church in Sylacauga, Ala., had not expected to meet the great man when he wrote him a letter. He was hoping perhaps to obtain an autographed picture for his son, Fred Jr., who was about to celebrate his 16th birthday. But miracles can happen, and so it was that the Glasgows found themselves in the University of Alabama football office on Jan. 22, 1983, shaking hands with the Crimson Tide's recently retired football coach, Paul "Bear" Bryant. And the preacher chided the coach for working at 10:30 on a Saturday morning instead...