The One Historians Are Going to Remember (1970)

Pat Dye (1939-2020), Bear Bryant, Integration, and The Test of Leadership

Welcome to Throwbacks, a weekly-ish newsletter by Michael Weinreb about sports history, culture and politics.

I. Number 80

The legend goes like this: One day in 1969, a young assistant coach at the University of Alabama, Pat Dye, was watching film of a high-school quarterback from a town called Ozark. The head coach of the Crimson Tide, Paul “Bear” Bryant, wandered into the room, and Dye asked him what he thought.

“That quarterback looks alright,” Bryant said, according to the legend, “but I like that No. 80 catching all those passes.”

Number 80 was named Wilbur Jackson, and Wilbur Jackson was black, a wide receiver who had recently transferred out of a predominantly black high school in Ozark to the predominantly white Carroll High. In 1969, Alabama had yet to integrate its football team, for reasons that are both patently obvious and incredibly complex. But Bryant was interested in Wilbur Jackson, and so Pat Dye became interested, and he kept showing up at Carroll High and attempting to…