Alabama SI Cover Tournament: Bear Bryant vs. Nick Saban

Help BamaCentral determine which Alabama Sports Illustrated cover is the best, and a Top 25 list

It was bound to happen sooner or later. 

Paul W. "Bear" Bryant and Nick Saban are arguably the two most iconic college football coaches in history, and both have been prominently featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. 

Each is represented twice in the 48-field Alabama SI Cover Tournament, but this was the only matchup that could have occurred prior to the Final Four. 

It's the ultimate coaching showdown in the Sweet 16: "I'll tell you about football" vs. "Raising Alabama."

It's a single-elimination bracket to determine the best Alabama Sports Illustrated cover.

Vote on Twitter (@BamaCentral) or Facebook (@AlabamaonSI). The voting goes 24 hours for each matchup and the result added to the original post on BamaCentral.

Sweet 16

Nick Saban Regional

Game 34: I'll Tell You About Football (Bear Bryant) vs. Raising Alabama (Nick Saban)

I'll Tell You About Football

Story headline: I Know I’ve been motivated all my life

Subhead: Bear Bryant is the most successful and controversial college football coach in the nation. His Alabama teams – aggressive on offense, ferocious on defense and conditioned in the boot camp that Bryant calls a practice field – have been national champions three of the last five years, have appeared in a bowl game in each of the last seven and, since Bryant arrived eight years ago, have won 69 games, lost 12 and tied six …

Excerpt (with John Underwood): Well, like I say, I’ve done some stupid things and made some stupid decisions. I quit Kentucky because I got a mad on and made up my mind it just wasn’t big enough for me and Adolph Rupp, and that was for sure stupid.

I can tell you a lot about quitters. I used to have a sign at Kentucky: Be good or be gone. Jerry Claiborne used to say he had a different roommate every day. I don’t have that sign anymore. Don’t believe it’s necessary now, because I don’t believe you can categorize every boy who quits football as a quitter. For some it’s a matter of finding other interests, just like switching courses. But, from the time I played at Alabama until a few years ago, I believed that if you weren’t a winner, if the game didn’t mean enough to you, you’d probably end up quitting. So I’ve laid it on the line to a lot of boys. I’ve shook’em, hugged’em, kicked’em and embarrassed them in front of the squad. I’ve got down in the dirt with them, and if they didn’t give as well as they took I’d tell them they were insults to their upbringing, and I’ve cleared out their lockers for them and piled their clothes out in the hall, thinking I’d make them prove what they had in their veins, blood or spot, one way or the other, and praying they would come through.

Well, you never know. When I was at Alabama I quit one time, and Coach Hank Crisp went to where I was staying and brought me back.  

Raising Alabama

Story headline: In the Nick of Time

Subhead: Fed up with mediocrity and losing to Auburn, the Alabama faithful welcome Nick Saban as a coach tough enough to bring back the glory of the Bear

Excerpt (by Rick Bragg): They say college football is religion in the Deep South, but it's not. Only religion is religion. Anyone who has seen an old man rise from his baptism, his soul all on fire, knows as much, though it is easy to see how people might get confused. But if football were a faith anywhere, it would be here on the Black Warrior River in Tuscaloosa, Ala. And now has come a great revival.

The stadium strained with expectation. The people who could not find a seat stood on the ramps or squatted in the aisles, as if it were Auburn down there, or Tennessee, and when the crowd roared, the sound really did roll like thunder across the sky. A few blocks away 73-year-old Ken Fowler climbed to his second-story terrace so he could hear it better and stood in the sunlight as that lovely roar fell all around him. He believes in the goodness and rightness of the Crimson Tide the way people who handle snakes believe in the power of God, but in his long lifetime of unconditional love, of Rose Bowl trains, Bobby Marlow up the middle and the Goal Line Stand, he never heard anything like this. His Alabama was playing before the largest football crowd in state history, and playing only itself. "We had 92,000," he said, "for a scrimmage."

It felt good. It felt like it used to feel.