More than two decades after his death, Paul “Bear” Bryant’s imposing shadow still towers over the sport of college football.

For twenty-five years at the University of Alabama, and thirteen years before that at Maryland, Kentucky, and Texas A&M, Bryant pushed his players to excel with a combination of charisma and fear, winning 323 games and six national championships.

In this definitive portrait of a rough-hewn man with an extraordinary gift for leadership, Keith Dunnavant shows how Bryant survived headline-grabbing controversies and the vagaries of a changing social landscape to become college football’s greatest coach and the foremost Southern icon of his time.

Coach is the epic story of a larger-than-life figure who overcame poverty and insecurity with intense desire and steely will, reflecting the transformational power of the American experience while emerging as a beacon of pride for Alabamians who felt defensive about their place in the world.