EDITOR’S NOTE: Every day until Aug. 29, Creg Stephenson is counting down significant numbers in Alabama football history, both in the lead-up to the 2025 football season and in commemoration of the Crimson Tide’s first national championship 100 years ago. The number could be attached to a year, a uniform number or even a football-specific statistic. We hope you enjoy.
When Paul “Bear” Bryant ended 1980 with 306 career victories, it seemed inevitable he would surpass Amos Alonzo Stagg to become major college football’s all-time winningest coach at some point during the following season.
Alabama had won at least 10 games in nine of the previous 10 years, and despite late-season slip-ups vs. Mississippi State and Notre Dame in 1980, big things were expected of the Crimson Tide again in 1981. Bryant’s team was the preseason favorite to win the SEC again that year, meaning the record 315th victory was likely to come late in the season.
The hype surrounding Bryant’s record chase proved to be almost suffocating. Allen Barra wrote in The Last Coach that the 1981 Alabama football season “seemed like one long distraction from start to finish” while fellow Bryant biographer Keith Dunnavant wrote in Coach that the media coverage that year treated the countdown to 315 “like a Super Bowl and a moon shot rolled into one.”
Alabama certainly played like a distracted team early in the season. A 24-21 loss to hapless Georgia Tech in Week 2 (the Yellow Jackets would finish 1-10 that season) and a 13-13 tie vs. Southern Miss on Oct. 10 (the Crimson Tide had called an unnecessary timeout while the Golden Eagles were rushing their field goal team onto the field in the final seconds) led many to believe the Bryant in fact might not achieve the record in 1981.
“Southern Miss may be bound for Birmingham’s Hall of Fame Bowl,” Clyde Bolton wrote in the Birmingham News the day after the tie with Alabama. “Heavens, so may Alabama.”
But Alabama found another gear after that, reeling off consecutive wins over Tennessee, Rutgers, Mississippi State and Penn State; only a 13-10 victory over the Bulldogs decided by fewer than two touchdowns. That gave Bryant 314 career wins, meaning he could clinch the record by beating Auburn in the Nov. 28 Iron Bowl.
The hype machine reached full tilt again in the two weeks between the Penn State and Auburn games. Alabama issued a record number of credentials for the press box at Legion Field, creating an overflow media section in the south end zone.
ABC was set to carry the game to a nationwide television audience, and a crowd of nearly 80,000 was expected for a stadium that officially seated less than 69,000 at the time. As he approached the record, Bryant seemed a bit conflicted about the idea of surpassing Stagg, a college football pioneer who had coached well into his 80s and had died in 1965 at the age of 102.
“Coach Stagg was the Babe Ruth of college football,” Bryant said in an interview with sports writer Mickey Herskowitz. “To me, he is on a pedestal. You can’t compare what he did years ago with football of today. In those days he didn’t have a large staff. I’ve heard his wife scouted games for him, and both of them mended uniforms. It was a completely different game.”
The 1981 Iron Bowl matched Bryant with one of his proteges, Auburn coach Pat Dye. In his first season with the Tigers, Dye — an Alabama assistant from 1965-73 — had his team at 5-5 heading into the final game.
The game itself was a thriller, with Auburn taking advantage of five Alabama turnovers to lead by three points early in the fourth quarter. Then came a pair of Crimson Tide touchdowns — a 38-yard pass from Walter Lewis to Jesse Bendross and a now-iconic 15-yard run by Linnie Patrick — and Bryant had a 28-17 victory and the title of winningest coach in major-college football history.
Here’s video of Alabama’s game-clinching drive, including Patrick’s run:
As the clock ticked down to victory, Bryant allowed himself a smile on the Alabama sideline. Jimmy Bryan wrote in the following day’s Birmingham News, the 68-year-old coach “looked like a man who had 315 tons lifted from his back.”
“About the record the players set today,” Bryant said, deflecting praise as he often did, “I want to thank the good Lord for being associated with all the people who made it possible. … It’s been a hard year for me. I wasn’t strong enough or bright enough to handle it. Only the last week has it really dawned on me that so many people were involved.
“I’ve had calls from all over letting me know they expected it to be done. I’m the leader of the family, and it was up to me to get it done.”
The win also clinched a tie for the SEC championship for Alabama, which had finished 6-0 in conference play along with Georgia (the two teams did not play each other that season). It was Bryant’s 13th SEC title in Tuscaloosa, and ended up being his last.
Alabama lost to Texas 14-12 in the Cotton Bowl to finish 9-2-1, the first time since 1976 and only the second time since 1970 it had failed to win at least 10 games. The 1982 team got off to a 5-0 start before collapsing in the season’s second half, losing to Tennessee, LSU, Southern Miss and Auburn — the last three in succession — to finish 7-4.
Bryant announced his retirement less than three weeks after the Iron Bowl, meaning the Liberty Bowl vs. Illinois would be his final game. The Crimson Tide won 21-15 on a cold late-December night in Memphis, Bryant’s 323rd and last victory as a college football coach.
Bryant lived only 28 days after his final game, dying Jan. 26, 1983, after suffering two heart attacks in less than 24 hours. He’s no longer college football’s all-time winningest coach, having been surpassed by Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden at the major-college level and Eddie Robinson, John Gagliardi and Larry Kehres in the lower divisions.
But after a victory over his school’s biggest rival on a crisp November day in Birmingham 44 years ago, the “Bear” truly stood alone.
