Twenty Five Years Ago Today...

As I'm sure you all know, today marks the 25th Anniversary of Coach Bryant's death. I wasn't really sure how to approach it, though, since, like a growing number of you, I'm not old enough to have any memories of the man. I was only three years old at the time of his death, and I'm sure there are plenty of you readers who weren't even alive at the time. Since all of my knowledge of him comes from books and the stories my older relatives would tell, he's more legend and myth than actual flesh and blood man for me, so I didn't want to post a fawning "the world of college football was a better place with Paul Bryant in it" speech when I feel like, to do so, would be completely inappropriate and even disrespectful to a man that I never consciously knew existed until well after his death. But at the same time it would be highly inappropriate and downright disrespectful for us not to acknowledge the passing of the Crimson Tide's greatest coach, the man that took a floundering program and made it one of the elite institutions in college football history and, let's be perfectly frank here, one of the biggest reasons we all still worship Alabama Football since without his considerable efforts over four decades there likely wouldn't be a cult of Crimson Tide athletics. So we'll leave this post open over the weekend to let any of you that have fond memories of Coach Bryant's time at Alabama share them with us all in the comments section.